I’ve written before about the importance of old newspapers in my research for my novels about Oregon pioneers. The Oregon Spectator’s issues from 1948 through 1852 provided a lot of background for Now I’m Found and My Hope Secured. So as I began to research my next Oregon novel (I’m still researching and won’t be ready to start writing until near the end of this year), I looked for Oregon Spectator issues in 1864.
Unfortunately, the paper stopped publishing on March 10, 1855—much too early to be of any assistance in my research.
When I discovered this, I looked for other historical newspapers from Oregon in the era. Nothing is available online, so I am searching for other contemporaneous accounts of life in Oregon in the 1860s.
Recently, I went back to look at that last issue of the Spectator. The editor’s lament on page 2 of that issue about why he stopped publication sounds much like our local newspaper publishers today:
“. . . For over eight years has this paper struggled for existence—sometimes gliding along smoothly, like bark upon the unruffled wave on a summer’s day—then heaving and tossing, amid the storms of dark hours and delinquents, like the mad billow when it foams against the rock-bound shore, spending itself again and again . . . . at last, the throes of dissolution seize it with the forces of a maelstrom, and hurl it to the bottomless pit long since fixed as its destination, by those individuals who have not paid for what they have had . . . .
“For months we have seen that in Oregon City a newspaper could not, under the existing pressure of the money market, even live, and much less, to make anything. . . . Because, even in times of plenty those who do pay are not willing, of course, to pay for the delinquent side to such an extent as will more than balance our income and expenditures. Our advertisers pay us just as little as possible for favors done to them, and our subscribers would have us throw them all out, and hire help to the amount of more than the total income, to fill up the weekly blank which would thereby be made.”
Farther on in the column, he wrote,
“Newspapers in Oregon cannot now be afforded for less than five dollars per annum, and all who take them at that price should pay for them, too, if they expect them to survive. That paper in Oregon which furnishes its copies for less money will break, depend upon it . . . . That paper who sends its five hundred copies per week regularly for one year and only gets pay for one hundred and fifty will show evidence of a sinking business.”
Apparently, the publisher had agreed with the former owner to continue the Spectator for at least a year. And he did so, but could not publish it any longer. “[Continuing publication] could be done if all who have taken it had paid for it.”
Although the owner professes not to be bitter, he wrote, “You do not want a paper here any longer, and as we profess to be of an accommodating turn of mind, we can aid you a little just now, in doing compliance to your own wishes.” And so he bid the residents of Oregon adieu.
I suggest you read the entire editorial. In addition to a lesson on the economics of running a newspaper—a lesson which today’s local papers could expound on with equal dismay—he details his editorial and political philosophy. That philosophy is dated and abhorrent by today’s standards, but it depicts Oregon in 1855.
I am a firm believer in local newspapers, and my husband and I subscribed to The Kansas City Star for forty years. However, I came to the opinion this last year that the Star was no longer delivering sufficient value to warrant our paying for a paper copy. The Circulation Department could not figure out how to make a simple change of address work on the date I specified, then could not find our new house, leaving us without the paper for six weeks. I didn’t miss anything but the puzzle page, so I decided not to renew our paper subscription. But we still pay for the digital edition, and I read it daily.
Do you buy your local newspaper today? Is it worth what you pay for it?
We still subscribe in support of local journalism and for the tactile nature of newsprint. The others we read online: WSJ, NYT, USA Today and KCBJ.
Steve, kudos to you for supporting the Star. We subscribe to the paper edition of the WSJ still, though I often read it digitally instead. And we subscribe to a couple of other digital papers and magazines as well.
Theresa
No. Don’t take it anymore. Not worth it.