it here, went to work in A. G. Walling's printing office.[1] Having learned the trade, he went on the Bulletin as pressman and, in 1874, worked in the state printing office at Salem. In 1879 he was working as pressman on the Bee.
It is a rather general view that reporting is a "young man's game" and that it ought not to "begin at 40." In Coldwell's case he never became a regular reporter until 1881, or in his 42nd year, and from then on newsgathering was his life; and when a Portland old-timer thinks of reporters, Coldwell is among the first to come to his mind. He started his reporting at a time when most people are beginning to feel rather restless at it and casting longing eyes, perhaps, at the copy desk, and he remained at it, always on the Oregonian, for 25 years, retiring only when physical ills compelled it, and dying two years later, in 1908.
Harvey Scott, his editor, spoke of the quaintness, humanity, and gentle humor of Coldwell's writing. Joe Levinson, for years his city editor, called him the "best all-around reporter I ever knew" and spoke of his philosophy and humor. "Whenever he learned a fact,'" said Joe, "he felt it his duty to impart his information to mankind." Scott and Levinson really were giving the definition of the good reporter.
One of Mr. Slauson's odd experiences recalls the Governor Pennoyer-President Cleveland feud of the 90's. In 1894, when Slauson went back to Washington from the Oregonian, he ate, on the eve of his departure, a Thanksgiving dinner in Portland on the day set apart by Governor Pennoyer, who chose to ignore the President's designation of the regular day. Then, on his arrival in Washington, the ex-Oregonian sat down to another Thanksgiving dinner on the day regularly set apart by the President.
John M. Lownsdale, another Oregonian old-timer, dating back to 1890, recalls some of his interesting contemporaries of those early days. The staff was building up a bit. Baltimore was city editor, directing as reporters Jerry Coldwell, Max Shillock, Ernest Bross, Henry E. Reed, and John Lownsdale. Lownsdale,[2] who had spent a year on the Telegram, where he succeeded W. M. (Billy) Sheffield on the local side, had night police for his first beat on the Oregonian. This was a far cry from the market stuff he had been doing for so many years; but soon he was doing markets as well as marine, court house, and a few other odds and ends in a Portland whose population was still far under 100,000. An old-timer who had left not long be fore Lownsdale's arrival on the paper was Robert C. Johnson, kinsman of President Johnson of the University of Oregon. Johnson, who spent a lifetime in newspaper work, died in 1936 while a member of the staff of the Oregon Journal. In his last few years he produced a book on John McLoughlin, Patriarch of the Northwest, which, critics said, showed careful research as well as interesting writing.
