there were a few "sticks" to be rilled in at the last moment, on hurry-up call from the composing room, he always had something that he could prepare."
The Telegram's society reporter under John Barrett as city editor was "the unique Victor Lewis." He is credited by Barrett with having had "an imagination that could soar like a Zeppelin airship" and with developing "the first real society column or section that Portland recognized as such." In Barrett's opinion he surpassed Freddie Gilmore of the Oregonian. Lewis's articles on Portland's eligible spinsters and bachelors created, wrote Barrett, "both a sensation and a panic in society! I was kept busy answering queries from those under these classifications as to why they were included or excluded. I always referred them to Lewis, with the result that he barely escaped battles of fisticuffs with bachelors or having his hair pulled by spinsters. Finally Mr. Moffett said I had better stop those articles because all the young men and women friends of his wife and daughters were beseeching them to use their influence that they should be left out or included, as the case might be. Lewis nearly cried when I told him that he must stop and try something else to make his column popular or unpopular."
Mr. Barrett paid a tribute to Otto Greenhood, "the whole thing or push on the Telegram" before its reorganization under Moffett. Greenhood had had full charge of the local news. He was, as Barrett describes him, a most picturesque character: Tall, slender, almost of bone-showing thinness, with a face of patronizing dignity, dominated by an immense nose and crowned with grayish hair, illuminated by big blue eyes and finding expression through a mouth that had a peculiar quirk, dressed always immaculately, and usually wearing a high hat and spats, carrying a cane, he strode about Portland like a king, and was known to everybody from the newspaper urchins to the greatest bankers and society women." This odd newspaper figure, Barrett wrote, was "always helping those in distress, even to the extent of eliminating his meals at the end of the month when his salary payment for the last month was exhausted."
Edward Lathrop (Jerry) Coldwell goes into Barrett's record as "the one great historic reporter of the Oregonian." What Scott and Pittock were to the editorial and business departments, Coldwell, 25 years on the Oregonian, was, in the opinion of many, in the news department. "As he went daily from city hall to post office, the county court building, and to the various political and business headquarters, he was the living embodiment of the Oregonian walking about," Barrett wrote. "Somewhat tall and portly, always carrying an umbrella in his hand, he might easily have been mistaken for the owner rather than the chief reporter of the Oregonian. I believe that he knew in those days every man, woman, and child in
