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HISTORY OF OREGON NEWSPAPERS
451

Daily Examiner. Baltimore, when superseded as city editor, became special writer and dramatic critic, where he had more frequent use for a thesaurusful of adjectives, on the Telegram. He left Portland for Oakland in 1896.

Mr. Levinson was probably the first city editor in Oregon who had the responsibility of directing one or more reporters. Up to his time "city editor" had been a sort of courtesy title. He was first on the job in 1879. His brother Louis and later Allan Slauson, John M. Baltimore, and E. L. (Jerry) Coldwell were among Joe's earliest reporters. Slauson, who succeeded Louis Levinson on the local staff in 1882, had come on the paper as a printer a few months before, depositing his card from the Denver union. Slauson was Joe's sole assistant on the local side of the paper.[1] He had done reporting on the Republican, Tribune, and Rocky Mountain News in Denver.

Jerry Coldwell, who was one of Slauson's competing reporters, working on the Daily Standard, for Tony Noltner, was added to the Oregonian staff. Slauson and Coldwell had been friendly rivals, often going down the street side by side on their way to their respective news sources, and it was on Slauson's suggestion that Coldwell was taken on the paper when an opening came.

The Sunday Welcome gave Slauson credit for good work, saying that the Oregonian had improved somewhat since the "Colorado curiosity" had begun unbottling his wit and humor. Slauson had a column of human interest stories entitled "Willamette Wavelets," signed Porthos.

One of this old-timer's prized recollections deals with a libel suit based on one of his news stories, although he had been well trained in libel law in Colorado, where the need appeared to be greater than in the rather more peaceful Portland. A rather well-known waterfront character, whom we shall not name here, was notorious for shanghai-ing sailors for Portland's foreign carriers. Alan wrote a story about the situation which was generally regarded as safe, except for the heading. City Editor Joe Levinson, who used to edit the local copy and write what heads there were, had entitled this one "T———'s Nefarious Trade." The case was settled out of court.

In 1894 Slauson went back to Washington, D. C., and after four years took a position in the library of congress, taking over the periodical division at the time when the new librarian, John Russell, a former newspaper man of Philadelphia, established the various divisions more or less as they are today. Back in Portland for his wife's health in 1905, Mr. Slauson, after a few years in life insurance and real estate, returned to the Oregonian in 1917 when the war began to drain the paper of its young man power.

Coldwell was a native of Nova Scotia, born in Gaspereau, July 1, 1839, and educated in Horton academy, Wolfville, N. S. He came to Oregon from California on a lumber schooner in 1870, and, liking