HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AHD DEVELOPMENT of by Mulford
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AHD DEVELOPMENT of ARIL.ONA llli\/SPAPEH PUBLISHING By Mulford Winsor Phoenix, Arizona February 12, 1946 HISTO1UCAL BACKGROUND AJ;'LJ DEVELOPMENT OF ARI2,ONA 1'EvuSPAPEH PUBLISHING l A . ' / An addressAdeliverea at a breakfast meeting of the Repub lic and Gazette Executives Club, bela at the Adams �-Botel, Phoenix, Arizona, February 12, 1946, � Mr. chairman, frlbends, executives of' the Hepublic and Gazette: When the newspaper virus gets a good hold in one's system it is hara to eradicate. It is some tbirt)-five years now since I was connected with newspaper work in any capacity, yet to this day I find myself appraisine the newspapers that come to my attention, not merely from the standpoint of reader interest but in a technical sense, wivh respect to format, typographical style, news and eaitorial policy, the character and quality of' special features, and all that goes to charac terize a newspaper, to distinguish one from another and the new�paper of today from that of my day and earlier days. , Nor is this all that reveals a lingering trace of the newspaper virus in my veins. It is about fifteen �ars since I retired from the fiela of political activity and engaged in a service the claims of which upon my time and nervous energy were such as to oblige me to deny myself the pleasure of in dulging ln speech-making.· But when Charlie Stauffer gave me a bid to talk to you executives of the Republic and Gazette the tempt&tion was too gre&t. I could not resist the oppor !- tunity to spend an hour or so with so aistinpuished a �roup of representatives of the profession in which I �as once priv- .., ileged to play a minor and inconspicuous part. It will not be wonaered at, however, that in accepting tJ •• OCT 2 the invitation I was seizea with serious misgivings. After so many years of separation from the Fourth Estate, what coula I say that would prove of interest, much less of profit, to you men and women who are making Arizona's greatest news paper duo? But when a subject was sug�ested--"The Historical Background and Development mf Arizona Newspaper Publishing 11- which gave me the broadest sort of a field, it ctia seem that I shoula be able to fird enough to say to fill the time. Now the fear may well be that I shall not know when nor where to stop. rieverting to the newspaper virus in my system, which, next to Charlie Stauffer, is responsible for my presence at your breakfast table, perhaps you will indulge me while I give you a little account of how it got there. It may lend a degree of authenticity to my remarks which � fear they wi ll otherwise lack. The inoculatior occui:;_ed--as you no doubt have inferred from the chairman's vague but suggestive allusion to my age- a long, long time ago. Its locale was a small frame house in a small county-seat village way out on the blizzard-swept plains of northern Kansas, where the winter temperature--and the incident 1 shall relate occurred auring one of those winters--hba no compunction against falling to 32 or more below, and it was no unusual experience to awaken in the morninr to find the snow banked on the winaward siae clear up to the eaves,- with a streamlined norther of incalculable speed anu fury screaming around the co1�ers. � e house to which 1 have referrea wa� the office of the Jewell County rlepublican, anu at one ar.d the same time the residence of its editor and publisher, my father--a pioneer, frontier country -2- newspaperman. The office and printshop of tne Hepublican were in the front part of the house, the residence in the rear. To complete this picture of pure pioreering I mieht add that my father built the house with his own hands. At tre moment to which I would ask your attention a huge base-burner stove--the favorite heating device of that period and part of tne cour,try--occupiea the center of the printing office. Its rounded sides were aglow, its interior loaded to capacity, with what--coal?--oh, no, with corn--corn on the cob, if you please--an indigenous, more plentiful and cheaper fuel--and the ola heater was doing its red-hot, roaring best to repel the winter while Jewell county's palladium of liberty was in the throes of going to press. 1he little old Cottrell hand-cylinder--one of the earliest of its species, purchased second-hand and hauled overland from Leavenworth, for no railroad had as yet pierced the prairies of northern Kansas- was standing by, waiting to receive the two forms of the "out side" of the weekly Republican, then two days late. Under the base-burner sat a great pan of printer's ink, undergoing the process of being reduced to the proper viscosity for effect ive use. Well, the stage is set. But before the hero enters, I· should reffiind you that the rear portion of tee house formed 1 the residence of the pioneer ea1tor s family. And speaking of the family, the latest a�dition to or of that family, ac cording to how you spell it, was a brivit young gentleman aged two years and four months. I say bright advisedly, for he haa the measles, in a peculiarly illuminating form. In keeping with the limited facilities of the northern Kansas frontier, he was hospitalized in a little room of the residence. The -3- mother, who nursed this young hopeful day and nieht for all the world as if he were worth it, thinking her patient was asleep, left the room for a few moments. �hen she returned the bed was empty. Her hope and pride, measles and all, had mysteriously disappeared. A quick search failed to reveal him under the bed or elsewhere. With fear tugging at her heartstrings she ran into the newspaper office, perhaps to giver her husband the scoop before the paper went to press. But she got no further than the base-burner. r�ere, with his legs stuck under the stove, the pan of printer's ink drawn up between them, both arms in the black, slithery semi-fluid as deep as a politician's in the public trough, was her pride and joy, but all signs of the measles were gone--they were literally blacked out. There he sat, happy as a lark, print er's ink from head to foot, though as it afterward appeared, most of it must have gone to his head. And that is how the newspaper virus got into my veins. By dint of scrapinr and scrubbing, shaving my head, and such other devices as were available, a portion of the printer's ink was removed, but it just seems that not all of it ever came off. With such a ceremony I first proclaimed my adherence to the sacred prin ciple of freedom of the press, and my faith in that principle has never simrr.ed. It is a sure cure for the measles. When, .after some years, the eyes of the Winsor family turned toward Arizona my parents, I daresay, were seeking sur- � cease from the rigors of the northe�Kansas winters, but as far as I was concerned the climate had nothing to do with it. The secret lay in that pan of printer's ink. The newspaper virus was in my veins to stay. I was looking for the end of the rainbow of freedom of the press. -4- And if any of you think I didr.'t find. it when I struck Prescott, Arizona, you are very much mistaken. The only thing that could possibly have meant greater freedom of the press in the Arizona of that day would have been more press, and there just weren't readers enough for that. True, it was a kind of freedom all its own. It was indi vidualistic--an intensely personal thing. It stood militantly for the right of every editor having control of a case or so of type, some kind of a printing machine, a few quires of paper, ana a little can of the all-essential printer's ink, to publish what he pleased, when he pleased, in the terms he pleased, of whoever he pleased. Personalities of the most vivid cgaracter constituted the veritable hallmark of Arizona journalism. This proclivity was exercised with especial free dom in exchanges between editors of their opil.ions of each other. To go back a few years, when the practice was in its fullest bloom, the passages at arms, with pencils for swords, between Euitor John Marion of the Miner, at Prescott, Judge 11im. J. Berry of the Sentinel, at Yuma, John Viasson of the Cit izen, at Tucson, ana P. li. Dooner of the Arizonan, at the same place, were classic examples of the early Arizona brand of IJ � • freedom of the p-l:-a-ee. A search of the newspapers of that per- iod would reveal so many samples of this brand of journalism that the day might be spent in quoting them--ana I am not cer tain that it would not be much more interesting than anything I may say, but i� oi: ...m}l. eagerl'.les.s -to t-alk I shall offer just a few of them by way of illustration. On a certain occasion the Arizona Miner startea one of the numerous passages between Editor . arion and Juage Berry of the Sentinel by questioning Berry's right to the title of -5- Juage, while conceding that he was a judge of whiskey.