Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/208

Rh had some experience as executive news editor, and his interest was, perhaps, more largely in news than in editorial. But he had to a considerable extent, grown up editorially under Scott's eye and influence, as had Holman notably before him. On the death of Scott the position of editor was not formally and officially filled for several years. Mr. Piper continued as managing editor, but he was acting editor, ultimately taking over the title of editor-in-chief. And that title meant something—he was the head of the paper's news and editorial end.

Edgar Piper by 1910, when he took up the torch from the hand of Scott, had gone a long way from the Oregon-born lad who at 13 was printer's devil for the State Rights Democrat in Albany, the youth who played a horn in the Salem band while attending Willamette University and reporting on the side on the Statesman. His was a lifelong educative process, a constant widening of interests and power. He had been printer, reporter, college student, city editor of the Oregonian, city editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer at 24, editor of the Seattle Press-Times, forerunner of the present Seattle Times, at 29, then an Associated Press editor, then co-publisher of the Post-Intelligencer with his brother George U. Piper at 32. So it was a well-rounded, well-educated, thoroughly trained man who occupied Harvey Scott's old seat in the Oregonian tower in August 1910.

Mr. Piper took his journalism seriously. His serious-mindedness must have appealed to Mr. Scott, whose "solidity" has been noted. He never believed in the old, extreme personal journalism of the so-called vituperative "Oregon style," although he could dish it out on occasion. He saw the rise of jazz journalism but never yielded to it, any farther than to urge a bit of liveliness in writing without trying to get all his effects with black type and pictures. He held the paper to its old conservatism of appearance—although anything like anything like a close reading would have shown it was not highly conservative in its written style. On the same day in which Editor & Publisher, newspaper magazine, devoted a whole page to his life and death (April, 1928) it carried a quotation from the head of a great newsgathering agency predicting the early end of the jazz era. Yellowness in journalism has not triumphed; the tempo has speeded up, pictorial journalism has come in, with the aid of processes undreamed of through the greater part of Mr. Piper's career. This, however, can be classed as bright, vivid, direct journalism, not necessarily "yellow."

In his years as editor of the Oregonian Mr. Piper became, like Mr. Scott, a real institution. With all his strength and studiousness he never lost the human touch. He liked to mix with his fellows. He was a familiar figure at meetings of editors and publishers. He liked them, and they liked him. He could disagree heartily without making the incident too personal (54).