Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/261

252 The paper had 13 columns of advertising out of a total of 28 columns of space that day—a percentage which usually means a profitable paper.

There was no change of policy during the Putnam direction of the paper—though old-timers say they think the rather less volatile George Putnam of today could have accomplished as much with less explosion as in the old days of storm and stress.

George Putnam left Medford in 1919 to take over the Capital Journal in Salem, which he is still publishing today. In a final editorial, April 1, 1919, he took only 250 words to say good-bye, announcing his retirement as president of the Medford Printing Company and editor of the Mail Tribune,

"having sold my interests to my associates, Messrs. Ruhl and Smith of the Medford Sun. For eleven and one-half years it has been my pleasure to daily tell the current story of the Rogue river valley . . . and to have been a vital factor in community development.

During all these years. . . years of boom, years of slump and years of recuperation. . . the Mail Tribune has been aggressively on the firing-line for progress—social, industrial and political—or endeavors to be.

An indulgent public has apparently become convinced of my sincerity—for I have not been jailed or assaulted for a long time. Its toleration. . . has earned it a respite—or some would say—a surcease of evil."

The new editor of the Mail Tribune, Robert W. Ruhl, had come to Medford in 1911 and bought a substantial interest in both the weekly Sun and the daily Mail Tribune. He conducted the Sun in a way that attracted attention to the soundness and the cleverness of the paper. An Illinois native, he had been graduated at Harvard. One of his classmates there and a fellow-member of the Harvard Crimson staff was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Early newspaper experience, after the Crimson, was gained in 1904-06 on the New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser. In 1907-09 he was on the editorial staff of the Republican in his native town of Rockford. Two years on the Spokane Spokesman-Review staff, and he was ready to step out for himself. He chose Medford and bought into both papers there.

In his unsigned salutatory April 2, 1919, Mr. Ruhl, speaking for himself and Mr. Smith, said, in part:

"In short, to be as brief and painless as possible, this paper is to be independent, as a reading of the title to the left indicates. Not independent in a non-partisan sense, but independent in a literal and perfectly sincere sense. Shocking, we know. but true, quite true."