James McClatchy (1824–1883) was an Irish-born American newspaper editor. He was the second editor of The Sacramento Bee, which grew into The McClatchy Company, taking over just days after the newspaper began publication in February 1857, then known as The Daily Bee.
Born in 1824 in Ireland, McClatchy was a journalist on the editorial staff of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune in 1848 and went to California where he took a position in the summer of 1849 with the Placer Times, which was published at Sutter's Fort.
The next year he went to work for the Sacramento Transcript, the Democratic State Journal and the Sacramento Times before joining founder Rollin Ridge at the fledgling Sacramento Bee. Less than a week after the new paper appeared in 1857, McClatchy had become its editor. He married Charlotte Maria McCormick (1829–1916) and had at least four children including Charles Kenny McClatchy.
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