Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/117



THE 60's and 70's were not periods of great growth or advancement in Oregon; and, naturally, the Oregon newspapers followed the same small curve of development. Just a look at the fate of the Oregonian's competitors and a glance at the struggle of the Oregon Statesman will serve to show a stagnation attributable, probably, to the Civil war, which diverted a good deal of the energy that would otherwise probably have been used in the opening of the great West, and, in the next decade, to the business "recession" following the "panic of 1873."

It is the policy here to speak guardedly of causes and effects, with an eye on the double danger-one, that important sources of journalistic development will be overlooked, and the other, that the tendency to generalize may result in building too broad a conclusion on too narrow a premise.

Critics and observers of journalism are agreed that, whatever may be said of the effect on the newspaper as a business, the stimulating effect of war on the news and editorial sides of the papers is unquestionable.

There will be here no effort to prove what is already accepted as obvious, but as the story of Oregon journalism is carried along its various threads, such developments as have been recognized by this writer w be noted

One of the forces resulting in establishment of daily papers, apparently, was the heightening of controversy and the warming of emotions in the days just prior to the war, the period when the new state was lining up its policies, and before the actual outbreak of hostilities had resulted in the occasional forcible suppression of southern-slavery-secession opinion as it existed to a greater or less degree in various parts of Oregon

The year 1859, then, would be a time when expansion of newspaper enterprise would be expected, and it came. It can be said that the daily newspaper came into Oregon, practically speaking, with statehood. No publication more frequent than weekly was established in Oregon territory. Though a daily, the Metropolis Herald, was mentioned in the Oregonian of August 11, 1855, it seems to have disappeared almost immediately and, in fact, is nowhere recognized as the first daily-which honor goes to the first of the several successive papers called the News, published in Portland. This one was started in April, 1859.