31 minute read
Quips & Quotes
A Century on the LongView THE
Lower Columbia
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UIPS & QUOTES
Selected by Debra Tweedy O! Winter, ruler of the inverted year… I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturbed retirement, and the hours Of long, uninterrupted evening, know. --William Cowper, English poet and hymn writer, 1731-1800 Reflect upon your present blessings—of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. --Charles Dickens, English writer and social critic, 1812-1870 I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. --Henry David Thoreau, American naturalist, writer, and poet, 1817-1862 Christmas is a bridge. We need bridges as the river of time flows past. Today’s Christmas should mean creating happy hours for tomorrow and reliving those of yesterday. --Gladys Taber, American author and magazine columnist, 1899-1980
Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie. --Jim Davis, American cartoonist, TV writer and producer, 1945What a marvelous resource soup is for the thrifty cook—it solves the hambone and lamb-bone problems, the everlasting Thanksgiving turkey, the extra vegetables. --Julia Child, American cooking teacher and author, 1912-2004 Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something besides ourselves. --Eric Sevareid, American author and CBS news journalist, 1912-1992 Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every New Year find you a better man. --Ben Franklin, American statesman, writer, inventor, 1706-1790
Longview native Debra Tweedy has lived on four continents. She and her husband decided to return to her hometown and bought a house facing Lake Sacajawea.“We came back because of the Lake and the Longview Public Library,” she says.
Samantha Farland
As a Christian athlete I glorify God by remaining humble and treating others with kindness on the court. No matter the “ outcome of the game it’s important to me to radiate His light through my attitude and effort. Before the game my friend and I lead our team in prayer for a safe and successful game. It’s an honor to play for an audience of one!”
Weatherguard supports the FCA vison: To see the world transformed by Jesus Christ through the influence of coaches and athletes.
Castle Rock High School Volleyball
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painting 16 x 20 inches acrylic paint on canvas • by Joe Fischer
Celebrating The Planned City’s Centennial Longview is Alive with Art!
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SPONSOR PARTNERS
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Busack Electric Cowlitz PUD Don & Andrea Cullen Cutright Supply Evans Kelly Family Joe M. Fischer Richelle Gall Insurance The Lee Family NORPAC Michael & Marilyn Perry Perry E. Piper Port of Longview RiverCities Transit Weatherguard, Inc.
LEGACY PARTNERS
Merrilee Bauman Linda Calbom Elam’s Furniture The Gebert Family Robert & Pauline Kirchner Kirkpatrick Family Care Edward Jones • Nick Lemiere The Minthorn Family Rodman Realty, Inc. Holly & GM Roe Sessions Plumbing Stirling Honda Teague’s Interiors
A year-long feature series written and photographed by Southwest Washington native and Emmy Award-winning journalist Hal Calbom
proDuction notes
The Social Media
We’ve alWays had social media.
Researching the early days of Longview and its newspaper, The Daily News, I was struck by how much people relied on the paper simply to talk to one another — what we today call connectivity. There’s nothing especially new, it turns out, about using public media to socialize, publicize, gossip and even accuse. Newspapers began as message boards. They were portable, timely, ephemeral. Their sense of what was “news” featured the comings and goings of people and groups, civic events and governing, the building and maintaining of businesses, as well as entertainment, schedules and public debate. They were at the center of the community’s social life. The public joined in the dialogue. Letter writers, classified ad placers and advertisers all made their own views and opinions public. They could be especially candid, nasty and contentious.
The competition among newspapers was cutthroat. The term “yellow journalism” originated around the turn of the century as circulation battles between Pulitzer’s New York World and Hearst’s New York Journal grew heated and coarse. The term originated from the yellow ink used to print a popular Hearst comic strip, “The Yellow Kid,” referring to journalism that exploited, distorted, or exaggerated the news to create sensations and attract readers.
Today’s social media aren’t really much different. They are subject to the tyranny of real time. Emotion and spontaneity preclude any thoughtful
people+place
then: making news now: the power of voice
and editorial balancing or review. It’s yellow journalism as self-revelation dished out one post at a time. And, for better of worse, it’s turned us all into writers. Pundits despair that no one reads anymore. We’re all too busy rattling away at our computers and phones, posting anything that comes to heart or mind, instantly. Whether public or private, today’s media compete for our attention and content often suffers. It’s largely a social, not an intellectual endeavor.
TV anchors spend half their time begging us to stick around: Stay with us, Don’t go away, endlessly teasing the next segment in hopes of holding our eyes and ears, like a bad comic, “Don’t worry, it gets better.” “Extra, Extra, read all about it!” “Don’t miss the latest!” “Man bites dog!” It’s all social media.
where we’ve Been • where we’re GoinG
hoNoriNg LoNgviEw’s cENtENNiaL
1923 – 2023
The Long View project pairs history with modern context. To celebrate Longview’s 100th birthday, Columbia River Reader is expanding its monthly “People+Place” feature to contrast the historical “Then” with the contemporary “Now.”
“It’s important to look back and celebrate the past,” said publisher Susan Piper, “but equally important to track the changes that make us what we are today. How close are we to the founders’ vision? What remains? What’s entirely new?”
Thanks to tremendous community support (see Partner Spotlights, page 28), the Reader will present 12 months of “People+Place Then and Now” reportage, then combine and expand these features into a commemorative book. The Long View: A Planned City and America’s Last Frontier written by Hal Calbom, with a foreword by John M. McClelland, III.
The Reader is coordinating with the Longview Centennial Committee, led by Reed Hadley, to publicize civic activities and celebrations (see Centennial Countdown, page 29) and will host a Book Launch Gala June 30, 2023.
THEN AND NOW 1. Developing Dreams 2. Empire of Trees 3. Heavy Lifting 4. Work Force 5. Waste Not, Want Not 6. Telling Stories 7. Transportation 8. Power and Energy 9. Education for All 10. Sustaining the Spirit 11. Health and Wellness 12. Dreams Developing
Telling Stories
6.
THEN
Longview is isolated. Communication is slow, unreliable and infrequent. The town needs a newspaper.
NOW
News and information have gone global. Communities revere their roots.
people+ place then
Making News
Even under-populated, over-planned, debt-ridden and struggling for investment, fatigued from its monumental labors, Longview maintained its characteristic immodesty:
Measured in the scope of national importance, in gigantic financing, in human vision, human courage, human daring and adventure into an almost entirely new field of American endeavor — the Highest Peak, towering above all the structures we have surveyed, is the building of the wonder-city, Longview, Washington.
J.C. Nichols Speech, 1925 In the mid-twenties the “wonder-city” hung on thanks to two critical resources: cash and communication. Cash to keep the piles driving, the dredgers sucking and spewing, the great mills rising from the swamps. Communication to plan and produce efficiently, to advertise and market its vision aggressively, and ultimately to create a true body politic — a sovereign, independent city — no mere Company Town. Just like horse-drawn scrapers and back-breaking pick axes, sharing information was primitive and slow. It took time. It easily became convoluted and confused. By definition, civil engineers and real estate salesmen would be strange bedfellows, and they would clash continually as the Planned City figured out what to say for itself.
cont page 20 In the 1920s construction was a hands-on business. It relied on physics and geometry and chemistry but was overwhelmingly tactile — setting a line, digging a foundation, pounding a nail. Planners and builders shared an efficient, common language based on years of practice and experience. The left hand generally knew what the right hand was doing.
At a Distance: Planners vs. Builders
The Longview founders faced — and failed to adequately address — a more challenging communications problem. Their planners and their builders were separated by 1,800 miles of prairie, connected mainly by telegraph and the sketchy U.S. Mail. The ease and ubiquity of longdistance telephone service were still many years to come.
For the first year the site resembled a scene in a silent movie when the reel speeded up and then played backward and forward: surveyors staking out streets here, excavation there, grading in one section, digging for sewers and water lines in another. The pace was so hectic that the left hand hardly knew what the right hand was doing. Vandercook who oversaw general construction and Samuel Mark Morris who headed the new enterprise, many times were confused. Lenore Bradley
Robert Alexander Long Longview began and remained an isolated outpost both geographically and psychologically. Every day the builders, the people with their boots on the ground, were asked to make thousands of
Photos: Facing page: “Sketch R.A. Long’s Dream,” mural showing the home and first lumber yard of R. A. Long at Columbus, Kansas, featured on back cover of Long-Bell Log, August 1928.
Photo Credits: Historical photos from Longview Public Library digital archive. consequential decisions in real time. Yet they remained perpetually out of touch and out of tune with the visionaries, the planners and developers in Kansas City. The bosses.
The result was often friction and enmity. “What we have here,” as a famous movie line had it, “is a failure to communicate.”
Communicating Before Real Time
Invention and innovation were flourishing in the 1920s: the automobile, the airplane, the washing machine, the radio, the assembly line, refrigerator, electric razor, the camera, the television. Unfortunately, person-to-person communications did not keep pace.
It wasn’t a Communications Stone Age, but it had an almost leisurely lack of urgency to it. The frustrations and fulminations of Vandercook and Morris were tempered and cooled down by the media themselves — long letters, occasional terse telegrams. Business correspondence was an extension of polite conversation, observing corporate decorum; telegrams a quicker but still serial medium usually used to make a single point, or decision, at a time. Effective communication required proximity. Working from a “remote location” and making decisions in “real time” were largely unknown. To effectively present a new idea, drive a point home, argue one’s opinion, often required getting on a train and riding two or three days to show up in person and address one’s colleagues face- to-face.
Messages and their import decayed in transit. Passion gave way to patience. Time ticked. The founders and the builders never really solved their day-to-day communication problems. Many of their compromises, inspirations and errors remain on display in their handwork a hundred years later. Certainly the exorbitant costs of it all lay principally in their inability to establish and exploit a system of notifications and competitive bidding. There simply were no networks, no conduits, no easy ways to disseminate messages.
Silences and Screams
Meanwhile the counterpoint — and counterpart — to all those polite letters shuttling back and forth between Kansas City and Longview was the relentless clamor of advertising and salesmanship. The daily deluge of bombast and sales hype dominated the routine dialogue and decision-making . The circus master of sales for Longview was one Letcher Lambuth, a 31 year-old protege of J.C. Nichols and Seattlebased real estate developer.
MESSAGES AND THEIR IMPORT
DECAYED IN TRANSIT. PASSION
“I note that you folks are certainly running in high and not letting any grass grow under your feet,” wrote S.M. Morris to Long-Bell President Frederick Bannister:
Which is all well and good, but I’m just a little afraid that you are traveling too fast, this for the reason that we are not prepared to take care of such rapid construction work as we have no streets laid out except on the township map. J.M. McClelland, Jr.
R.A. Long’s Planned City Wesley Vandercook was less diplomatic. He expressed profound concerns over the founding plan’s expense, layout and strategy, both among colleagues in Longview and in a long letter to Mr. Long himself:
He had voiced his concern to Morris that the planners had laid out far too large a space for the residential and commercial districts, arguing that they “might be about right for a city of several million people.” Abraham Ott “Boulevards in the Forest” University of Nevada Las Vegas Master’s Thesis, 2008
Frustrations, big and small, go with most any construction project. But the magnitude, the investment, and the furious hurry raising Longview up from nothing were almost unprecedented, and exacerbated by distance and disagreement. cont page 22
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YMCA, at south end of Lake Sacajawea circa 1925 Proud Sponsor of
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We can be thankful for our City’s rich history!
While both Long and Nichols seemed enamored by
Lambuth’s optimistic projections about the city’s growth,
Morris was unconvinced. He argued that Lambuth was “way up in the clouds most of the time,” and that he should “get down to real business getting in some money and lay off of so much hot air work and fancy planning.” Abraham Ott “Boulevards in the Forest” UNLV Master’s Thesis, 2008
It jumps out in virtually every company conversation over Longview’s progress: The builder’s — and ultimately the founders’ — greatest fear and worry was simply that they might fail to deliver what they were promising. And publicizing. Abraham Ott:
GET DOWN TO REAL BUSINESS... AND LAY OFF SO MUCH HOT AIR AND FANCY PLANNING
This appearance of readiness was quickly becoming necessary, as already by August of 1923, the company was advertising in thirty-two regional publications, several national publications, and twenty-eight newspapers.
This conundrum of communications — both internal and external — had a predictable effect. The pressure mounted. The gap between what was expected, and what might be delivered, grew wider and wider. And all the time the cash flowed out like freshets on the Columbia.
What’s News?
In the 1920s the most influential business communications media, ironically, were public: newspapers, magazines, and their financial driver, advertising. A remarkable amount of private business was conducted and communicated over these shared channels: labor and job solicitations, meeting schedules and records, governmental decrees, Board of Directors’ minutes, “leaked” documents. And of course, most of a town’s community life, from weddings to church socials.
S.M. Morris hands promotional scrolls to soon-to-be airborne A.L. Gibbs to drop by parachute onto neighboring communities. The Longview News building under construction, 1923. Facing page: J.M. McClelland, Sr., at work, 1924. Newsprint rolls. Longview Daily News front page, Feb. 25, 1924. Newspapers were rarely the supposedly neutral, unbiased “journals” we expect today (though we still nurture our sense of their biases, of course). Early news rags had a transparent point of view, and they trumpeted it: both editorially and through the medium that paid the freight, advertising. It took barely a glance at a 1920s paper or magazine to gain a sense of its politics and its promotions. The public participated. Letters to the Editor became a regular way to share one’s opinions or those of one’s business or political faction. The Classifieds provided yet another forum for conducting personal business via this public platform. And, if you could pay for it, chances are you could always advertise it. The journalism could be inflamatory, often fickle, and rarely without bias. Even with wire service connections, the “news” was never simply a compilation of what actually happened, but an edited creative document. That day’s “news” was an often sordid stew of what contributors and editors and advertisers — and above all, owners — chose to publish and publicize.
cont page 23
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No wonder then that in the mid 1920s Long-Bell’s managers decided that the most important communications tool they might come up with was not a long distance phone system, not telegraphs in every office, not express mail. They needed their own newspaper. As with most of Longview’s development, the planners had the lead on the builders, and left execution of their plans to hard work, money, influence and chance. Once the founders recognized the power of a newspaper to publicize, persuade and advertise, they fast-tracked it, just as they had the Hotel Monticello and other key components of their plan.
Membership Has Its Privileges
The most difficult area of disentanglement between Long-Bell and one of its creations involved the newspaper. The lumbermen on the scene took it for granted that the company newspaper would be the voice of Longview, painting only what was good and favorable about the new city. That meant it needed to be also the voice of Long-Bell. John M. McClelland, Jr.
R.A. Long’s Planned City
The Linotype, being unloaded from the steamer Greyhound, moored to the bank of the Cowlitz, was dropped in the mud, but wasn’t badly damaged. Temporary quarters were erected on Baltimore Street adjacent to the temporary Community House. It was a frame building, 30 by 80 feet, with a tarpaper roof, two stoves for heat and no paint inside or out.
John M. McClelland, Jr.
R.A. Long’s Planned City
With characteristic singleness of purpose, the coalition putting the paper together lobbied the AP relentlessly and ended up on the agenda when their Board met January 24th, 1923, in New York. Though they had little more than promises to work on, and the influence of key business favors called in throughout the Long-Bell empire, the directors voted for The Longview News and gave it full membership in their exclusive club. It was a slick move not unappreciated by Longview’s chief historian, who himself would edit and publish the selfsame paper to maturity and success. McClelland continues:
This gave The Longview News the distinction of being probably the only newspaper ever to be granted an AP membership before it began publication.
The first issue of The Longview News, served by the prestigious AP, was published on January 27. Trial subscriptions were 25 cents.
cont page 24
To establish itself, and to compete with existing papers in Rainier and Kelso, the fledgling Longview newspaper enterprise set to work immediately. At stake was a key credential — membership in the Associated Press — which was awarded every year in January. Longview became desperate to have something on the street in time. They immediately leased a press — a drum cylinder, sheet-fed affair — that could print two pages, one side at a time. They bought a Linotype for $5,000. Along with some other equipment, their initial investment was $12,500. It was pioneer publishing for sure.
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from page 23
Whose News Is It, Anyway? “The importance of a newspaper to the town of Longview,” said R.A. Long “ ranks in our opinion with that of the churches and the schools.” Expressing hope that this might eventually become an independent voice in the community, Mr. Long went on to anticipate critical issues:
We expect to establish the newspaper and, if necessary, finance it as far as need be. However, would have you understand we have no intention whatever of retaining permanent ownership; in fact we realize that the newspaper, to be of proper service in the community, must be under ownership entirely separate from our corporation. R.A. Long October 1922 letter to Frederick Martin, General Manager of Associated Press
But what McClelland Jr. later called “the most difficult area of disentanglement between Longview and one of its creations” was, like so much of the other rites of separation and empowerment, impossibly mired in the stillmuddy streets of The Company Town. Though steady progress was made in self-management, and especially
SHOOTING THE MESSENGER WAS SPORT FOR BOTH SIDES
paying down debt and establishing revenue streams, The newspaper struggled mightily with a conflicted identity, even well into the 1930s.
The Longview Daily News, through all of its first 15 years of existence, was enmeshed in an uncomfortable predicament. Long-Bell’s competitors in the retail field, and especially the Kelso business community, regard it as a “Long-Bell paper.” Meanwhile the Long-Bell community was resentful because it was not a Long-Bell paper. The paper was condemned for favoring Long-Bell and for not favoring it.
John M. McClelland, Jr. R.A. Long’s Planned City
Photos: This page, left: First press in new Longview Daily News building, 1924; above: front office, Longview Daily News. Facing page, top: J.M.McClelland, Sr., with David Boice and Arthur Brisbane at Monticello Hotel. Brisbane was a Hearest newspaper columnist; Boice represented Longview Chamber of Commerce. Bottom photo: J.M. McClelland, Jr. (courtesy photo).
A Longview First Family: The McClellands
Among the first Longview influencers and founders from outside the immediate Long-Bell orbit (though he was in fact the brother-in-law of S.M. Morris) was John McClelland, Sr., who came out from Arkansas in 1923 to take over the new paper. The 39 year-old McClelland had newspapering experience, and had been managing a printing plant in Little Rock. He also represented an independent, high-minded commitment to journalism.
cont. page 25
Words of wisdom from Winston’s solid new friend
Life is only froth and bubble, Two things stand as stone: “ Friendship in another’s trouble, Courage in your own.”
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Vince and Susi; Tom and Joanna
At the playground near Martin’s Dock, Lake Sacajawea.
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Sculpture “Best Friends,” by Georgia Gerber, given to the City of Longview in memory of Violet and Harvey Hart, by their families. FREE Public Viewing/Preview Monticello Hotel, December 1st from 4:30-7:30pm. Warm winter drinks, holiday treats, photo opportunities,Santa’s greetings. Online Auction (excludes full-sized trees) Nov 30, 9am – Dec. 2, 8:30pm.
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Shooting the Messenger
From its very outset the paper and the town seemed to have a special symbiosis. Many of the criticisms leveled at The Longview Daily News reflected deeper-seeded resentments of paternal Long-Bell control. Shooting the messenger was sport for both sides. Anything appearing less than loyal to the company — and these were the days of overtly opinionated, biased “news” reports — was dubbed by news reports carping and faultfinding, or outright anti-company hostility. With all this drama — Long-Bell looking sometimes to exert its control and at others to surrender it — the paper served as forum, battleground, even gladiatorial arena. Lawsuits and accusations played out in its pages. Every nuance of the coverage was scrutinized, word by word. Many editions reflected this role as microcosm, amplifier, conscience, as the pioneer city acted out its growing pains in print. Mr. Long even commented that he often saw reports in the Longview paper that “he wished were not there:”
Yet, on reflection recognizing the obligation of The
News to the community, I concluded that I was wrong in even passingly taking exceptions to what Mr.
McClelland may have printed regarding the company. R.A. Long
McClelland’s early days at the paper read like a mash up of Andy Hardy and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Conditions, buildings and equipment are wretched; Kelso and Rainier papers accuse him of mooching advertisers and subscribers; he’s called on the carpet by Long-Bell ownership (and repeatedly given votes of confidence by Mr. Long). Far from being regarded as a trusted arbiter of truth and champion of the public interest, the paper is lambasted as either Long-Bell’s mouthpiece or its mortal nemesis. A crucial condition of McClelland’s employment was the option to purchase the entire enterprise after a tenure of between two and three years. In the fall of 1925 he exercised the option. His son and future successor writes:
This created no little consternation in the Long-Bell offices in Longview.
Considering all the trouble they had had with this independent editor when he was working for the company, they could well imagine how difficult he would be to deal with if he were entirely on his own. John M. McClelland, Jr.
Tough Times and Independence
The 30s brought the cataclysm of the Great Depression, the crippling of Long-Bell’s business, and finally, the death of the beloved founder himself, in 1934. By this time the paper was established and victim of fewer potshots and arrows in its back. Was Longview still a company town? Probably in some estimates, yes, but dramatically more independent, diverse and, in the crashed-out 1930s, preoccupied with fighting for its economic life. After a difficult birth and adolescence, the town and the paper were in this fight together. And there would be better days to come. John McClelland Jr. would take over from his father as editor in 1940 and publisher in 1950. The Longview Daily News would experience decades of success, influence, and even a Pulitzer Prize in its future.
ELECTRIC MACHINES
Any computer machine that interacts with the physical world can be called a robot. Most of us think of robots in the human form like from the Jetsons, or possibly a circular vacuum on wheels, but even something like a dishwasher can be a robot, where the mechanisms surround and clean up after us in a more controlled environment. Robots in this category from industry to the home came about in the 20th century, though most remain behind closed doors. Perhaps in another 10–30 years we’ll finally see a compelling and affordable robot that can do anything.
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6.
Telling Stories people+ placenow
THEN
Longview is isolated. Communication is slow, unreliable and infrequent. The town needs a newspaper.
NOW
News and information have gone global. Communities revere their roots.
The Power of Voice
It’s still the Golden Age of Radio. It never went away. So says Longview media mogul John Paul. While newspapers and even commercial television have fallen on hard times — thanks mostly to the Internet, phones and screens — the voice of radio survives and in many markets actually flourishes. Paul credits his emphasis on local programming, intimate involvement with the community and its good causes, and the timeless magic of the human voice as his recipe for success. “I am 100 percent committed to being locally programmed and operated,” said Paul from his West Kelso office and studio. Paul and his wife Nicki recently bought the KLOG radio franchise — three broadcasting stations — from Longview’s Hanson family who had owned them over THERE ARE NOT MANY LOCALLY, 50 years. “There are not many locally, familyFAMILY-OWNED RADIO owned radio stations left anymore. That’s our STATIONS LEFT ANYMORE recipe for success.”
Owner John Paul at his desk in the offices of KLOG/KUKN radio
“DESERT ISLAND DISCS
With the chance to quiz someone who’s programmed popular music half his life, who can resist the proverbial question: “Give me your five desert island discs.”
For those for whom this is NOT a proverbial question: If you were marooned on a desert island with nothing at all to your name (except, of course a solar-powered state-of-the-art stereo system) what would be the five records you’d simply HAVE to have?
John Paul’s discs, in no particular order:
Glen Miller Orchestra •Essential Glenn Miller
James Taylor • Greatest Hits
Billy Joel • The Stranger
Warren Zevon • Excitable Boy
John Mayer • Any Given Thursday Let the debate begin!
COUNTRY KUKN
John Paul avoids the digitally programmed, nationally syndicated approach which has powered most of the radio world for decades. Instead, he serves up home cookin’ —- that’s KUKN / Cookin’ Country at 105.5 FM to be precise — as well as the venerable KLOG at 100.7 FM and Still locally-generated, programming 1490 AM, and 101.5 The Blitz. streams digitally as well as over the air. “Country stations have superloyal audiences, birth to death,” he said, but all three of his audiences seem to appreciate the homemade programming and its relentlessly local emphasis. Paul employs a staff of fifteen, remarkable in these days of digital dominance and pre-packaged audio streams. “We do local news every hour. And our advertisers are aware that we’re delivering local content to their local customers.” Paul’s is an inspiring hometown story, despite years spent working around the country for large market broadcasters. “It’s pretty rare to have somebody who worked here at age 13 come back and buy the place!” he said. Once he’d been in the audio booth as a teenager recording the “Monticello Mustang Minute” on KLOG, the Longview native was hooked. “Right then I went in and asked Steve (Hanson) to hire me, and I started out as a janitor hanging around the place.” This is still Golden Age radio but certainly not old-fashioned. Paul augments his home KUKN with state-of-the- art dot.com streams and a podcasting business, plus production services for advertisers. “I’m not necessarily bullish on radio country-wide, but I am bullish on the way we do it here — local-connected radio.”
STATE OF THE NEWS PART 1
TDN general manager Dave Cuddihy is quick to remind us that there is another one hundredth anniversary in the works next summer: “The city’s centennial is ours, too. And The Daily News takes that very seriously.” Cuddihy and his team from Lee Enterprises, a national chain of newspaper and media companies, face the unenviable task of keeping a legend alive, in times that haven’t been kind to the newspapering world. Their offices may be less teeming than years previous, their printing done somewhere else, and their reliance on the web and electronic media their main source of revenue, but their pride and sense of mission seems unaltered.
“We’ve told this city’s stories for a hundred years,” he said. “We’ve helped these advertisers for a hundred years. And we’re proud also to have a regional following beyond just the Longview city limits.”
Now better known simply as TDN, The Daily News faces the challenge of creating brand new sources of readers and subscriptions. Meanwhile, they must retain the loyalty of those for whom folded sheets of newsprint are still the only form a “true newspaper” will ever take. “The web presence is actually a huge benefit for advertisers,”said Cuddihy, a genial native of Ohio who now calls Longview home, and loves it. “We are basically a full-service ad agency that can connect advertisers to all kinds of audiences in many different ways, from Amazon to across the street.”
Cuddihy voices his appreciation to the community for its response to the morphing of TDN from what it was previously. “People come here, including the reporters we hire — I would call them ‘adventural.’ Is that a word? A combination of adventurous and entrepreneurial?” And that’s the spirit of this paper.”
Dave Cuddihy
President, The Daily News Regional President,Community Northwest Lee Enterprises
STATE OF THE NEWS PART 2
“I don’t think we had any idea what the Internet would do to the advertising base, especially the classified ads,” said John McClelland III, scion of Longview’s first family of newspapering. “And Craig’s List, and all these other sources.”
The Daily News was sold well before the Internet’s disruption reached full scale. But JMMIII recalls it as never an easy business. “There was always new technology — going to offset printing, for instance. And there were job and union issues. The pressmen and the printers did not get along very well.” McClelland is proud of the role his forebears played in the founding and shaping of Longview, despite the battles for editorial independence. “My grandfather was certain that he wanted his own voice and editorial control without any pressure from Long-Bell,” he said. “Nowadays newspapers are fighting for their lives, independent of not. And you rarely see a home-grown editorial.”
John McClelland III
John Paul believes in the human factor and employs a staff of 15.
HOME COMPANION
The so-called Golden Age of Radio spans the 1920s to 1950s. In 1925, RCA claimed that 20 percent of American homes owned a radio. Five years later that number doubled to 40 percent. Longview was probably behind this trend, since smaller markets were less likely within range of strong broadcast signals. Longview’s relative isolation inhibited radio’s growth somewhat, even as the cities and suburbs thrived. In the 1930s, the home radio would become an indispensable companion as the Great Depression ravaged the country and disposable income disappeared. Entrepreneurs built ever larger and more powerful broadcast networks, and radio extended its reach even to the hinterlands. The Longview Daily News even made a couple of ventures into radio, in an attempt to diversify in the 20s and 30s, but eventually sold the properties to concentrate on its core newspaper business. By 1940, and later during World War II, radio reigned at the very center of American media life. 83 percent of American homes listened in for their news, entertainment, and “Fireside Chats” from their president. In the 1950s came the advent of television, dubbed the “radio killer.” But like a voice-over playing perpetually to our hearts and minds and memories — from oldies rock to modern talk — the companionable voice of radio just kept playing. And it plays on still.
Hal Calbom is a third generation Longview native who works in public affairs television and educational publishing. This is his fifth year photographing and writing Columbia River Reader’s People+Place feature. Reach him at hal@halcalbom.com.
