Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/20

Rh They took what was easy to get. Results— long accounts of meetings, political and otherwise, the promoters of which used the papers for publicity purposes; long political letters from non-staff members; short shrift to other types of news, which, indeed, in many cases would not have been recognized by the reporters or editors unless so labeled by the news sources. I can hear some city editors say sadly that some of their reporters are still like that; but let's give them the benefit of the doubt.

Anyhow, that's the kind of papers we are dealing with in the territorial period, and to a lesser extent after the Civil war. The nonpolitical tone of news and editorial in so many twentieth-century newspapers would have been difficult for the "old Oregon" folk or, for that matter, their old neighbors back east, to understand, unless the paper were frankly "religious" or "literary."

Sweeping generalities, of course, are at least as dangerous in deal ing with newspapers as with other phases and institutions of modern life. Not every paper was as highly political as, for instance, the Oregonian and the Statesman of territorial days. But these political papers, appearing often with a minimum of other matter and scarcely any local news in the early years, were the most successful and influential papers, apparently for the reason we are assigning.

The early Oregon towns sprang up along the rivers, which were the highways of those early days. Note some of the earliest of the Oregon towns, which, of course, were the seats of the first Oregon newspapers—Oregon City, Milwaukie, Portland, Salem, Corvallis, Eugene, The Dalles, and so on—river towns all. In the next generation other towns were to spring up responsive to railroad-building and promotion. Some rather well-established papers were to be doom ed to slow death because their towns, for one reason or another, were left off the railway.

The early days were days of relatively many newspapers in pro portion to population. Five hundred was a large community in the 1850's, and many towns smaller than that were contriving somehow to support at least one newspaper. Pioneer editors' living was hardly up to Reilly standard, but they got along. If a little town had a paper of one party, the other side would try hard either to purchase control or to start another—and in those days starting a paper involved very little cash. Credit was easy; there was no machinery beyond an old hand-press and perhaps a jobber or two. A few cases of type were a nominal expense. Circulation didn't bring very high white-paper bills. So the young country was plentifully served with newspapers. This condition continued—was in fact, intensified—un til the day of expensive machinery and otherwise increased costs. A newspaper has now become a big investment, figured no more in hundreds, but always in thousands, up toward the hundred-thousand mark in the smaller cities, much more in the metropolis. Finally, it