Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/233

224 The first number of the Independent was issued in 1888. On the mechanical side the publisher was assisted by A. S. Auterson, a young printer from the Middle West, now a partner in the Auterson-Bennett Co., printers, Portland.

Mr. McMahan was succeeded in the ownership in 1892 by J. F. Day, a Presbyterian minister, and Mr. Auterson. In 1898 Mr. Auterson, who had acquired full ownership, sold the paper, first one half and then the other, to Herbert L. Gill, who had published newspapers in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Kansas, and Washington before coming to Oregon and who, among other achievements, had to his credit the founding, in 1890, of the first daily in Olympia, the News.

Mr. Gill sold the Woodburn Independent in 1911 and moved to Portland. In the meantime, however, he had started two papers in another town—the Borealis (1900) and the Observer (1911) in Aurora, just a few miles to the north of Woodburn.

A. E. Adams, to whom Mr. Gill had sold the Independent carried it on for three years. He then appealed to Mr. Gill to returrn to Woodburn. "The people want you back," he wrote the former publisher. For a time he retained a half interest but finally disposed of it to Mr. Gill and left for California. Mr. Gill, who had associated with him his son, Wayne B. Gill, in charge of the mechanical department, retired in 1930 after 52 years in journalism. Since then the paper has been conducted by his son, in partnership with Rodney W. Alden, a former Salem newspaper man, as editor. Herbert L. Gill died in 1936.

The only competition met by the Independent came into the field when Mr. Gill left for Portland and moved out on his return. The Woodburn Tribune, a four-page seven-column publication, was started March 3, 1911, by R. M. and J. B. Barnes, editors and publishers. G. A. Hurley, active Oregon newspaper man, at one time a partner of A. E. Scott in the News-Times at Forest Grove, announced in the issue of July 14, 1911, that he was taking hold as editor and manager. The paper was sold by J. B. Barnes, owner, to L. H. McCarter October 13 of the same year. The last few months of its existence the Tribune was published by Collier & Lyon, who suspended March 6, 1914.

Mr. Gill the elder had associated with him on the news side of the paper his wife, Corinne B. Gill. Speaking of Judge McMahan, the founder, Mr. Gill wrote several years ago, "His paper was bright, fascinating, alive. He depended mostly on editorial work to get large circulation, finally going to a semi-weekly." The semiweekly, however, was in 1891 a little in advance of the town, so close to Salem and Portland, and the paper soon was again made a weekly, which it has remained.

Politics were hot during the McMahan administration of the