The Pacific Monthly/Volume 10/Prominent Newspapers of the Pacific Coast, Part 4

Prominent Newspapers of the Pacific Coast

IV. The Spokesman-Review

By N. W. Durham

FEW journals anywhere, none in the Pacific Northwest, have a field of more varied interest and resource than that filled by the Spokesman-Review. This newspaper had a sworn average circulation in February, 1903, (Daily and Twice-a-Week) of 43,583 copies, a list that will have grown to 45,000 ere the Pacific Monthly containing this article is laid before its readers. These figures are given to convey quickly and clearly an idea of the scope and influence of this paper and the city of its publication.

No easy field this in which to edit and publish a daily journal. Having a commanding circulation in Washington, Eastern Oregon, Idaho, Western-Montana and Southern British Columbia, the Spokesman-Review must necessarily print the news and discuss the interests of four states and one foreign country. It must, for example, print the legislative news of all these various governments. It must deal constantly with agriculture, mining, fruit-growing, lumbering, stock-raising, fishing and irrigation, not to speak of scores of minor interests which ramify these chief industries.

This would be exacting work in the older communities of the Union. In this newer land, where the village of today may be the aspiring city of another decade, and where a single year may change lonely prairie regions and primeval solitudes into populous communities, the need of constant study of changing conditions is imperative.

In this complicated field the Spokesman-Review has grown apace with the fine country around it. Year by year its daily message has been borne afar by railroad trains and steamboats, by stage coach and pack train, by canoe and cayuse, and by resolute mountain carriers on snowshoes.

This article would be misleading if it conveyed an impression that the present attainment came with easy effort or lack of long anxiety and severe financial losses. There were years of ruinous competition, and other years of profound depression, when it seemed that effort to establish here a large and successful morning newspaper had been conceived in false judgment. Other men, possessed of ability and means, had tried and given up the task in despair, and many a time it seemed that the effort was to end in grievous disappointment.

The history of every successful newspaper has interest, and that of the Spokesman-Review bears out the rule. As the name implies, the paper is the result of a combination of two competing journals. The Review was the older paper. It was founded as a weekly by Frank Dallam, now residing at Loomis, Washington, in May, 1883. Spokane was a little frontier town, and as facilites were lacking here, Mr. Dallam was under necessity of carting the forms of the first numbers to Cheney, where they were printed on the old Sentinel press.

The winter of 1883–4 brought the stampede to the Coeur d'Alene mining

district, and the outside world began to hear of Spokane. The town put on a bold front and grew ambitious. Mr. Dallam caught the fever and in June, 1884, began publication of a little evening daily. He nursed this along until the autumn of 1886, when he changed to a morning paper and began to print a "pony" telegraphic report from Portland. And all the while the little daily was put to press on the primitive hand THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW BUILDING

W. H. COWLES.

Proprietor Spokesman- Review.

machine which had done service for the weekly edition.

Mr. Dallam, in the summer of 1887, sold two-thirds of the property to H. T. Brown and H. W. Greenberg, and a little later disposed of his remaining interest to his associates and removed to Davenport, in Lincoln county.

In March, 1888, Col. Patrick Henry Winston and Willis Sweet came to Spokane from Lewiston, Idaho, bought into the paper and organized the Review Publishing Company. With them were associated James Monaghan and C. B. King. The paper was managed and edited jointly by Col. Winston and Mr. Sweet. A few months later Mr. Sweet disposed of his interest to Monaghan and King:, and returning to Idaho, entered politics and went to Congress. He was recently appointed Attorney General of Porto Rico.

On December 1, 1888, Winston, Monaghan and King transferred the paper to A. M. Cannon, of Spokane, and H. W. Scott and H. L. Pittock, of Portland, Oregon. The editorial control was entrusted to J. M. Adams, then register of the United States Land Office, who remained in charge until October, 1889, when he was succeeded by N. W. Durham, who has continued as managing editor until the present day. F. C. Goodin took the business management in 1888, and remains to the present.

Early in 1890, a company of bright, experienced newspaper men came here from Chicago and established the Morning Spokesman. Joseph French Johnston, now a member of the faculty of the University of New York, and J. Howard Watson, present private secretary of Governor McBride, were the directing spirits until the arrival, a few months later, of W. H. Cowles, from Chicago. Mr. Cowles soon increased his holdings, and later became sole owner of the new daily.

For three years severe competition existed between the Spokesman and the Review. After the two papers had suffered losses aggregating more than $200,000, Mr. Cowles, in 1893 and 1894, bought out the Review and consolidated the two papers.

Meanwhile the former owners of the Review had obtained a permanent home for the newspaper. The Presbyterian Church had found itself hemmed in by business property by the city's rapid development, and desiring a more quiet place of worship, sold the church building and corner lot at Riverside and Monroe. The

W. H. DURHAM, Editor Spokesman-Review.

paper's owners built a frame shack addition to the brick church. In 1890 they began construction on the stately structure shown in the accompanying illustration. It was completed in October, 1891, and the event was celebrated by a public reception attended by 8,000 persons. Addresses were delivered by Col. P. H. Winston, Congressman Willis Sweet, S. C. Voorhees and many others.

Since consolidation of the two papers in 1894, the Spokesman-Review has been under the constant direction of W. H. Cowles, its owner. It has aimed to be enterprising, bright and newsy without verging on sensationalism, and to be fearless and independent.