<\/p>\n
Of all common things, one of the most common today is the newspaper. We have had them in this country since the 17th century, and they have been in Maine since the appearance of the Falmouth Gazette in what is now Portland in 1785. Both as weeklies, and less frequently as dailies, they have come and gone through the subsequent period of nearly two centuries since 1785. Some lasted for many years, others for only a few months.<\/p>\n
It is interesting to note the number, kind and location of newspapers published in Maine today, and how long they have been running, either under their present name, or under changing names. In 1978, Alan R. Miller, Prof. of Journalism at the University of Maine at Orono, published a valuable book in this area of Maine history. It is entitled, “The History of Current Maine Newspapers.” Professor Miller found two years ago that Maine then had 48 newspapers, at least one in every Maine county. Eight of them were dailies, most of the other forty were weeklies, but the Courier Gazette at Rockland came out then twice a week, and the Times Record at Brunswick, a merger of the Bath Times and the Brunswick Record, was almost a full daily being published five times a week. Monday through Friday.<\/p>\n
Only two Maine cities had both a morning and an evening daily. Portland had the Press Herald and the Evening Express. Lewiston had the morning Sun and the evening Journal. But in both Portland and Lewiston, the two papers were under the same ownership, so there was no competition.<\/p>\n
For many years, newspaper competition was thought good for a community, especially if it was politically oriented. For many years, Portland’s two morning papers, the Republican Press and the Democratic Argus, provided heated competition. In Waterville the Republican Mail vied with the Democratic Sentinel. Even a few towns had competing weeklies, as was the case in Skowhegan at the turn of the century. Even as late as 1978 when Prof. Miller published his book, he found one Maine town with two papers under different ownership. That town was Millinocket, which then had the Katahdin Journal and the Katahdin Times, but the town lost that distinction almost a year ago when the Journal sold out to the Times.<\/p>\n
The oldest newspaper in Maine having never changed its name is the Kennebec Journal. It was founded in 1825, when a group of Augusta business men persuaded Luther Severance and Russell Eaton to leave the National Intelligencer in Washington and start a newspaper in Augusta. It was not Augusta’s first paper. One had lasted a few months in 1800; then for three years Peter Edes had published a weekly there. Edes was the son of James Edes, publisher of the Boston Gazette, in whose office the group of men who formed the Boston Tea Party are said to have met to paint their faces and don Indian garb before they dumped the tea into the Harbor. Peter Edes found that publishing a paper in Augusta was so unprosperous that he closed his shop and left the town for Bangor, where he put out that community’s first paper for a number of years. From 1808,when Edes left Augusta, the town was without a newspaper until Severance and Eaton printed the first issue of the Kennebec Journal in January 1825.<\/p>\n
For eight years the KJ struggled along, barely keeping its head above water, until good fortune came in 1833 with the removal of the state’s capital from Portland to Augusta. That gave the KJ access to the earliest legislative news, and the paper was soon designated officially as the State newspaper. It became the paper in which all state advertising had to be placed, and that revenue alone started the KJ on the road to prosperity.<\/p>\n
In 1854 a young man from Philadelphia, who had married an Augusta girl, bought the Kennebec Journal. That man was James G. Blaine, the only Maine man who, to date, has ever been the candidate of a major party for President of the U.S. Blaine kept the KJ for only three years, selling it in 1857 when he was elected to Congress. In 1870 the KJ became a daily paper, to which a year’s subscription cost $7. By 1910, its circulation exceeded 10,000. It was in 1929 that the KJ came into its present area of ownership. Guy Gannett, “the Augusta son of William H. Gannett, the magazine publisher who had made Augusta one of the largest second class mailing post offices in New England, bought the newspaper in his home city. He had already acquired the Portland paper and the Waterville Sentinel. The publisher of the Gannett papers is now Guy Gannett’s daughter, Mrs. Jean Gannett Hawley. In the 155 years since 1825 the name of the Kennebec Journal has never been changed.<\/p>\n
Our own present Waterville paper, the Sentinel, has an interesting history. Its first issue came from the press on March 4, 1904. The town had 15 previous newspapers, the most long lived of which was still in existence, the Waterville Mail, which had been coming into local homes since 1847. Long a ,weekly, the Mail became a daily evening paper early in this century.<\/p>\n
The Mail was staunchly Republican, and there had been several attempts to set up a competing Democratic paper. Previous to 1900 the most successful had been run by a hot-headed, highly controversial publisher, Benjamin Bunker, who tried to make life as miserable as possible for the state’s Republicans. In 1904 a group of prominent Democrats, led by Cyrus Davis, Charles F. Johnson, and William R. Pat~ngall decided the time had come to give the Waterville Mail some of the same kind of competition it had formerly received from Bunker’s now defunct paper. The result was the Waterville Sentinel. In 1906, Pat~ngall, just as fiery an editor and an even more clever writer than Bunker, became the editor. He stayed for only two years, leaving in 1908 to become the state’s leading Democratic politician.<\/p>\n
When the Waterville Mail ceased publishing in 1907, the Sentinel, by that time a daily, became the city’ s only newspaper. It remained strongly Democratic until the new owner Guy Gannett, in the 1920’s declared all his papers independent of partisan politics. During the second quarter of chis century, both the editor and the business manager of the Sentinel became persons well known and highly respected. They were Caleb Lewis and Howard Gray. On Lewis’ retirement he was succeeded by Robert Drake. Within the past few years both Drake and Gray have retired and the new leadership is seeing the Sentinel reach its most prosperous height. Its circulation now covers 76 towns in five Maine counties. A recent innovation has been the placement of blue white-labeled boxes in rural areas where the Sentinel is delivered daily by carrier.<\/p>\n
The 38 existing Maine weeklies are of considerable variety and size. Once they were nearly all four-page papers. It is modern advertising especially that beyond the local area that has increased the number of pages until some weeklies have as many as 20 pages.<\/p>\n
I want to tell you about one of those weeklies, not only because it is published in the town where I spent the first 18 years of my life, but also because it is the oldest newspaper in Maine that has always been owned in the same family, and today is regarded as one of the best of the Maine weeklies, having won several state awards. It is the Bridgton News, published in a town of 3,400 people. It covers 14 Cumberland and Oxford county communities. Its owner has been three generations of the Shorey family, each named Harry A. Shorey. The paper is now 110 years old. In 1870, Civil War Major Harry A. Shorey closed his printing office in Bath, where he was publishing the Maine Temperance Advocate, moved his press and equipment to Bridgton, and started the News.<\/p>\n
It is interesting to note that Shorey’s press was brought to that inland town entirely by water. Bridgton would not have a railroad until ten years later when it got one of Maine’s two-foot narrow gauge lines. The press and equipment were taken by steamer from Bath to Portland, then by canal boat through the locks of the Cumberland and Oxford Canal to Sebago Lake, through the lake and the Songo River lock to Brandy Pond’s Bay of Naples, then up Long Lake to Plummer’s Landing at Bridgton, from where an ox cart hauled the Shorey load to his printing office on Bridgton’s Main Street.<\/p>\n
From the start, the News was successful. The Major promoted many local projects, especially the railroad. He was not a strong business man, but somehow managed to keep the paper going. Reluctant to give up control, the Major kept on for 53 years until 1923, when he turned the News over to his son Harry A. Shorey, Jr. who put the paper on a sound financial basis, and greatly extended its coverage. The second Harry Shorey, always called Harry, died in 1952, and was succeeded in publishing by his son, Harry A. Shorey III, who still owns the News.<\/p>\n
When the present Harry Shorey was appointed local postmaster, he gave up all direct management of the paper, and turned the editorship over to his wife, Eula Shorey, an even more experienced newspaper person than her husband. A native of Indiana, Eula Shorey had worked on newspapers in that state and neighboring Michigan before joining the staff of the New York Daily News. She then edited house organs for the Squibb Company and several insurance firms. The Shoreys have gradually gathered a competent staff of writers and reporters, and have correspondents allover the two counties. Mrs. Shorey’s genius has brought several innovations and has increased the size of the paper to 16 or more pages. Standing by to take the leadership of the paper when his parents retire is the fourth generation Shorey – Stephen, son of, Harry III and Eula. Thus the most prosperous and soundly established of Maine weeklies will continue to be controlled by the Shorey family.<\/p>\n
The years have brought significant changes in Maine newspapers. One is the trend toward mergers. We have already mentioned the Gannett dailies and the merger of Bath Times and Brunswick Record. Jay Hinson, a Colby graduate, now owns both the Calais Advertiser and the Machias Valley News. Very marked have been changes in printing. When I was a small boy, the Bridgton News, like many other Maine papers, was turned out by a letter press powered by a mill wheel on Stevens Brook. In the past few years papers have changed to photo-copy printing. Many have done this in their own plants, thereby retaining a profitable sideline of job work. But others have given up press work altogether, and farm out the printing of the paper to some other shop. One of the most prominent of those shops is the Northeast Publishing Co. at Presque Isle which prints the Presque Isle Star Herald, the Fort Fairfield Review, the Houlton Times, the St. John Valley Times and the Katahdin Journal. The press of the Belfast Journal now prints besides that paper, the Camden Herald, the Lincoln County News, and the Island Ad-Vantage of Stonington. The Ellsworth American, perhaps today the most prominent of all Maine weeklies because its editor once headed the Washington Post, prints also the Bar Harbor Times, the Katahdin Times, and the Quoddy Tides. The distinguished Bridgton News is now printed in Norway.<\/p>\n
The high cost of publishing does not deter the start of new papers. Since Prof. Miller brought out his book two years ago, Maine has seen a new weekly, the Maine Paper published by Mrs. Linda Jones of Windsor.<\/p>\n
Year: 1980<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1251, Broadcast on November 2, 1980<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35324,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}