RISE OF THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER
THE Oregon Herald was the first Oregon newspaper to publish a Sunday edition. This was issued for a few months in 1866, and it was 15 years before economic conditions became favorable enough to permit a regularly issued Sunday edition of a daily paper in Oregon. The Sunday Oregonian led the list.
The Sunday newspaper was relatively late in becoming an established Oregon institution. The churches were unfriendly to Sunday newspapers. Ministers had expressed opposition to a paper circulated for Sunday reading, while making less objection to a paper circulated Monday, the work on which had been done on the Sabbath.
The first Oregonian printed for Sunday circulation was not, strictly speaking, a Sunday Oregonian. It was an extra of the Morning Oregonian, so announced in a note at the head of the editorial column the previous day, Saturday, June 5, 1880, and so marked in the dateline June 6. The Republican national convention which nominated Garfield and Arthur was in session that week, and the announcement pointed out that news of this gathering had not "for years been sought with as much interest." The paper would, there fore, "issue a special edition tomorrow morning. It will contain full convention, general, and local news, and will be distributed free to all city subscribers. Single copies can be had at the business office and from newsboys." The paper, it is recalled, was selling in those days at 10 cents the copy.
A line on the intensity of advertising soliciting at that time may, perhaps, be gained from the statement, in this announcement, that "advertisers requiring space should apply before 8 o'clock this evening."
It was a seven-column four-page paper, and the advertisers "required" only about three columns of space out of the 28, a mere fraction of the average amount running daily. It is possible that if the advertising response had been heavier, the practice of running this Sunday edition would have been continued. But there was no announcement of any intention to continue; the "special," or "extra," as it was called, fulfilled its purpose, and the next week there was the usual gap between the Saturday and the Monday paper.
The convention, incidentally, did not reach the nomination in time for the Sunday paper, which was decidedly a straight-news paper, with a minimum of Sunday "feature" stuff. Two and a half solid columns of type on the first page were devoted to the convention. The other big story was carried on page 2. Three columns and a quarter were devoted to the "grand picnic at Dallas" Friday to celebrate the completion of the narrow-gauge line of railroad into Dallas. (The headline said Independence).
