Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/210

Rh broke out of the Oregon penitentiary in the early summer of 1902 and left a path of terror and bloodshed over the Northwest before he was slain in a wheatheld in eastern Washington.

Mr. Kelty left the Telegram in 1905 and became city editor of the Los Angeles Examiner. During three years on that paper he was city editor, news editor, managing editor, and on the frequent occasions when he felt like it, reporter. He returned to the Oregonian as night editor in 1908, handling that work with outstanding success.

One of his best known achievements was his playing a successful hunch on the eve of the United States' break with Germany April 6, 1917 (55). Convinced from a close reading of the news from Washington that the break would come early the next morning, the night editor had Ned Blythe, then his assistant, work up an entire front page of new stuff for an extra, leaving the first column open. He wrote a banner line in advance (in days when it took an epochal story to command a banner in that paper): "Diplomatic Relations with Germany Broken." The first bulletins from Washington on the opening of the wire the next day confirmed the hunch of Kelty, who was already on the job, and the extra was on the street in a few minutes. He had beaten the whole coast.

Instructions from PK to staff members were almost always type written. Those little notes, slipped into the reporter's or desk man's typewriter, are still recalled by many as models of definite conciseness. They always said what the situation required, and no more.

In the summer of 1924 Mr. Kelty and his son Eugene S. Kelty, graduate of the University of Oregon School of Journalism, purchased the Eugene Evening Guard from J. E. Shelton and the estate of Charles H. Fisher, following a long-time yen for a career in the small-town daily field. After several years in the Eugene daily field and a year or so of rest Mr. Kelty was called in 1931 to the editorship of the Oregonian. He resigned the editorship in February 1939, and the position has not been filled. His three associates-Messrs. Callvert, Lampman, and Parrish-continue their functions as associate editors.

It would take many pages to do justice to the hundreds of capable, in many cases extremely talented, men and women who have made the Oregonian and the other Portland newspapers the great institutions they are; who have given Portland a set of newspapers recognized as distinctly outstanding in cities of their class

It has been possible to mention the earlier ones in higher percentage, but not because they were, in very many cases, superior in their journalistic ideals and attainments. The effort has been to show, not too pointedly, the relative weakness of the earlier papers, particularly on the news and advertising ends. While, of course, such a thing as a Sunday magazine is a recent development

Around 20 years ago, for instance, Oregonian editorial writers