The policy of the paper has been non-political, devoted more to information than to advice. Between May, 1914, and September, 1916, the publisher's ill health forced him to lease the Review, with Floyd Fisher as lessee. From September, 1917 to September, 1920, Minshall was in the field for the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen. The family took charge in that interval.
The present publisher is L. T. Ward, who bought the paper in 1938.
DOUGLAS
Roseburg.—Roseburg journalism had an eventful start, what with fire and firearms. The first newspaper was the Ensign, a four-page weekly, at $3, published by Gale Brothers (H. R. and Thomas). The first issue appeared28 in May, 1867. The plant was destroyed by fire in September, 1871; publication was resumed January 6 of the next year. For a time in 1871 the little town of about 500 had two newspapers, since the Plaindealer was started in '70. The Ensign was sold to R. Tyson of The Dalles Republican in 1872. He then began publication of the weekly Pantograph, a four-page seven-column paper, for which he charged $2.50 a year. The paper suspended in a few months.
The Plaindealer, ancestor of the Umpqua Valley News was start ed as a Democratic paper, in March, 1870, by William Thompson, picturesque westerner, who, born in Polk county, Missouri, in 1848, had come to Oregon in 1852 and settled near Eugene. There he attended Columbia College for one term, having for schoolmates such outstanding journalists as Harrison R. Kincaid and Joaquin Miller. With some type-setting and editorial experience under his in Civil War belt, obtained on the Eugene Herald-Register-Review years and the Guard in 1867-8, during which he became publisher of the paper at 18 and sold out for $1200— with all this background he accepted $1000 bonus from some good Joe Lane Democrats at Roseburg and started the Plaindealer for them. In his book, Reminiscences of a Pioneer, written in his old age at Alturas, California, he tells the story of his Roseburg experience:
My success (he wrote) was phenomenal,29 my subscription list running up to 1200 in two years. [Phenomenal if true, with the town's population only a few hundred.]. . . Success was not attained without gaining the enmity and bitter hatred of my would-be rivals in business. Theirs was an old established paper (the Ensign, started in 1867) conducted by two brothers, Henry and Thomas Gale. . . They sought to regain (business) by indulging in abuse of the
