The Wild West of Yester-Year
Newspapers in the Old West
By Rachel Kovaciny
If you love western movies and shows like I do, you are used
to seeing a newspaper office portrayed as an expected part
of every small Old West town. Many of them feature newspaper
reporters dedicated to pursuing stories and presenting them
to the public. Sometimes, the story portrays printing or
reporting for a newspaper as glorious, dangerous, or even as
scurrilous. But moviemakers take for granted that even a
small town in the Old West had a newspaper. How accurate is
that image to the real history of the Old West? Let’s look
at the facts.
They published approximately ten thousand weekly and daily
journals in the seventeen states and territories that made
up the Old West between 1840 and 1900. While some
publications were short-lived, rising up and dying off as
swiftly as the gold rush communities they served, others
like the San Francisco Chronicle and the Denver Rocky
Mountain News are still in circulation today.
When Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States in the
1830s, he remarked, “In America there is scarcely a hamlet
that has not its newspaper.” In 1867, a Nevada newspaper
editor noted, “American pioneers carry with them the press
and the type, and wherever they pitch their tent, be it in
the wilderness of the interior, among the show covered peaks
of the Sierra or on the sunny sea beach of the Pacific,
there too must the newspaper appear.”
Many towns in the West had at least one newspaper up and
going before they ever built a church, a school, or a post
office. Pioneers, miners, and their compatriots thirsted for
news of every sort.
Newspapers were prized and, if they were scarce, a single
issue might pass from person to person until the paper fell
to pieces. Although there was a large demand for news, not
everyone who wanted to read a paper could afford to buy
one. Sharing a newspaper was common, and those who were
illiterate might gather with a friend who would read a paper
aloud to a group. In cities, a daily paper could be a viable
business model, but smaller towns usually maintained only a
weekly or monthly paper. Many newspaper owners made their
living not from selling papers, but from printing
advertisements, signs, and posters for other businesses in
town.
The “news” papers printed isn’t what we might consider
newsworthy today. Local stories could include an unusually
large litter of pigs, a lost pet being found in a miraculous
way, or an announcement that new shoes in all sizes had
arrived at the local mercantile. Recipes and housekeeping
hints were common inclusions. They copied national news
items directly from a big-city newspaper, though most
printers would politely cite the original source of a
borrowed story.
Men and women both took part in the newspaper trade, and
sometimes a married couple started a paper together. While
men took on the editorial duties, women worked as
typesetters, news reporters, and managers. People from all
walks of life became reporters and publishers. The most
famous today is Bat Masterson, who served as a buffalo
hunter, Army scout, gambler, and lawman before discovering a
talent for writing editorials and columns. He eventually
traded his western adventuring for a job as a sportswriter.
The most popular style of press in the Old West appears to
have been the Washington Hand Printing Press, a flat-bed
press that involved rollers, moveable type, and a
hand-operated pressing mechanism. It weighed over 1,800
pounds, but could be disassembled and reassembled, which
made transporting it to new towns workable. If a town could
not support a paper, the paper’s owners would pack up their
press and find a new place to set up shop.
Today, you can read Old West newspapers online. These are a
treasure-trove for historical fiction writers like myself,
but they are fun for the casual history-lover too! I find
the advertisements and classifieds the most interesting,
especially the prices of everyday items and the job
descriptions. Hollywood’s portrayal of newspaper offices
existing in every corner of the Old West is fairly accurate.
What do you know, the movies got something right! ♦