Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/83

74"find to be the avowed principles and claimed rights of all publishers, at the present day, and such we are determined shall be ours. We are thankful for your patronage and favors, gentlemen, but we deny being your debtor for either, or your right of censorship over our opinions."

Newspaper ethics in general have been discussed at greater length and in more sententious phrases; but the idea is pretty nearly all there, isn't it? And has anybody made it much clearer? Let it not be forgotten, moreover, that this sort of thing is nowhere more difficult to pronounce to your public than in the small town, such as was the Portland of the fifties, where the editor and publisher is in constant close personal contact with both advertisers and subscribers.

The views of Asahel Bush of the Oregon Statesman on the same subject were expressed in an editorial which appeared in his paper, then in its second year, November 20, 1852:

We are frequently asked to notice editorially matters which belong only to the advertising columns. We sometimes call attention to advertisements, but never advertise in any but the columns set apart for that purpose. We insert nothing in the editorial columns for pay, and receive no price for anything inserted there. We state this because a friend doing business some distance from here last week enclosed an eagle, asking us to mention that he had just enlarged his premises and increased his business. The eagle we return, and respectfully decline all such requests. We shall be pleased, however, in all such cases to make known through our advertising columns, the wishes of all who may see fit to patronize us and at the same time patronize themselves. But we can't consent to make an advertising medium of ourself.

Let us move now to the second oldest publication to come down from pioneer days to the present, the Oregon Statesman, founded at Oregon City but identified through the vastly greater part of its career with the capital city of Salem.

This newspaper's history begins with the effort of Samuel R. Thurston, delegate to congress, to get himself re-elected. The paper