The Medford Tribune was, really, a continuation of the old Ashland Tribune, which, founded in 1896, had been conducted as a semi-weekly. Publisher J. M. Potter moved the plant to Medford in March 1906 and started the Tribune for the Tribune Publishing Co. as an evening and weekly Republican paper. The Tribune had, as a twice-a-week edition, the Southern Oregonian, established four years before by Sidney D. Charles. The S. O. had absorbed in 1906 the old Jacksonville Times, conducted so many years by Charles Nickell, and adopted its volume number, going back to 1877. The weekly Sun, issued Sundays, also had been running since 1906, when it was started by L. C. Branson and S. Sumpter Smith. All four of these papers are included with the Mail in the genealogy of the Mail Tribune.
In 1902 Mann ran for a time as a semi-weekly and was encouraged by the young semi-weekly Southern Oregonian, which greeted Mann's announcement with the hope (expressed June 21) that "the Enquirer will meet with the success which its enterprise merits. From a semi-weekly it is but another step to a daily; and when Medford is in a position to support a daily newspaper it can truly be called a metropolitan town."
The daily did not come from either the Enquirer or the Southern Oregonian. The Enquirer faded out before long, and the Southern Oregonian became the semi-weekly edition of the Tribune under George Putnam.
Both the Mail and the Tribune were publishing dailies. Both had started in 1906, the Mail issuing in the morning and the Tribune in the afternoon.
Under Editor Charles the Southern Oregonian, a four-page seven-column semi-weekly (Wednesday and Saturday), told its readers in its first week (April 5, 1902) that "advertisements would be inserted at reasonable rates" The twice-a-week was sold to subscribers at $1.50 a year or $1 for six months.
The paper advertised its telegraphic news as "the latest. Twenty hours ahead of the Portland and 25 hours ahead of the San Francisco papers.
An editorial urged the setting apart of Crater lake as a national park; another urged a state appropriation to help the historical society, the Native Sons, Native Daughters, and Pioneers' association in preserving early historical data and materials. An issue a little later (May 17) was one of the first school editions, prepared by school children, in the history of Oregon. "The Southern Oregonian," said an editorial, "concerned itself only with the mechanical part of the edition—all the rest was handled by the school children." The profits, $60, went to buy uniforms for the high school band. Twenty-five hundred copies were printed.
So we have George Putnam in Medford in 1907 succeeding A.
