LeBaron: Sonoma County marks 165 years of local newspapers

There is a sweet little novel by Paulette Jiles called “News of the World” — it may even have been a film — in which an elderly gent travels around Texas in a buggy in the years following the Civil War, reading aloud his condensed version of what newspapers in big cities were reporting about current events.

That a man could make a living at this, going from community hall to saloon to the middle of a dusty Main Street, anywhere a crowd gathered and paid to hear the stories he had to share, speaks to the importance that newspapers have had in human history.

There is nothing that reflects the passage of time more than the yellowing pages of an old newspaper. And there are piles of those around the office.

Which brings me to the topic at hand. Friday marked the beginning of the 165th year Santa Rosa residents, neighbors and visitors have had a regularly published (well, maybe an early-day glitch or two) newspaper they could count on for that “news of the world” and of their town and their region.

In the late summer of 1857, midway between the founding of the town and the official city charter, a young man named Alpheus Russell, who had been in town for several months operating a general store on Third Street, called on some prior printing experience and began publishing the town’s first newspaper.

There is a story, of course, that goes with the event. One of the town’s leading citizens was John Taylor, an entrepreneurial gent who owned a substantial tract of land south of town that included a sulfur spring and a tall mountain. It is said that he encountered Russell one late afternoon in the saloon at Santa Rosa House, the stage stop and hotel that was the community gathering place.

In the conversation that ensued, Taylor, hearing of Russell’s profession and his thoughts of starting a newspaper, produced a $5 gold piece and clapped it into the printer’s hand, pronouncing himself the “first subscriber” of the Sonoma Democrat.

On Oct. 22, 1857, the first edition was published. In a century further on we might have said “hit the streets,” but in this mid-1800s town, it would have disappeared in a puddle of either mud or dust.

Russell, whose theme was progress, wrote editorials calling for a railroad and other growth inducements for a year before selling the paper to another peripatetic printer named E.R. Budd, who also lasted about a year before following Russell’s journalistic path to Ukiah and beyond.

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THAT’S the beginning of the story. As it unfolds, it is all about change.

The little weekly paper grew in size and community importance after another young man sat down in the editor’s chair. He was Thomas Thompson, age 23, born in Virginia, who had started his newspaper career while still in his teens as the “editor-in-chief” of the Petaluma Journal — an ancestor of today’s Argus-Courier.

In 1858, some say with the financial backing of wealthy Southerners anticipating the trouble that lay ahead, Thompson left the prospering river town to become editor and publisher of the Democrat, fighting his own Civil War with the Petaluma Argus editor, the staunchly Republican Sam Cassiday.

Thompson’s Sonoma Democrat teetered on the brink of treason through the Civil War and, still young and eager for new worlds to conquer, he sold the paper in 1868 to launch two Solano County papers. But he was back in Santa Rosa running the Democrat by 1871.

He would continue as the “voice” of the Southern settlers in Sonoma County, often using overtly racist language, until his death in 1897. He became a leader of Santa Rosa’s participation in the Pacific Coast boycott of Chinese labor in the 1880s.

His dedication to the Chinese Exclusion and the Democratic Party’s anti-Asian platform of those years was the foundation of his selection for a state office, two terms as Sonoma County’s congressman, and an appointment as U.S. Minister to Brazil. In his political absences, his brother Robert A. Thompson, county clerk and the area’s foremost early historian, edited the Democrat, some said with a gentler hand.

One of the several “big” changes in this newspaper’s history was already underway when the 1896 election of Republican William McKinley ended Thompson’s political career and brought him home from Brazil. He was in his 60s, weary and ill. And there was an eager young journalist waiting in the wings.

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THE NEXT abrupt change in Sonoma County journalism came with a young man named Ernest Latimer Finley who had grown up in Santa Rosa. His father was a minister and president of Pacific Methodist College. His mother was a poet, a writer and a dedicated woman suffragist.

In 1895, Finley was 25, in search of a profession, had invested in some ranch land on the Laguna but was intrigued with the theater, music and the arts in general, as well as American history. He and his friends Grant Richards and Charles Dunbar, a future mayor, determined that the town needed a “modern” newspaper and began publication of a small daily they called The Evening Press.

It was such a good idea that two years later, Finley bought the Democrat from Thompson. The two names, joined, became The Press Democrat, and began chronicling what would be a long and loving look at the county’s 20th century.

The Finley tenure was dedicated to the needs of this agricultural county. Generations now past would remember and speak often of such things as the free firewood at the newspaper office in Depression winters, or the acceptance of creative ways to pay a classified bill or a year’s subscription with a basket of apples or a freshly killed fryer.

The inscription that accompanies Finley’s portrait in the California Press Foundation’s Hall of Fame credits him with the belief that “the news media had more responsibilities than simply reporting the news” and for “fighting for causes that were often unpopular.”

When Finley died unexpectedly in 1942, the paper was left in some disarray. There were a few brief but memorable years when the staff photographer was also the county coroner, a sports writer was the assistant county clerk, the longtime state senator (Herbert Slater) wrote a daily column on state politics, and the editor was actively running for a political office.

Then in the early 1950s, with Bill Townes, a journalist with a reputation as a “newspaper doctor,” as the new general manager and an old-style, no-nonsense editor running the newsroom, the Finley mission reemerged. Townes’ tenure was short, but his successor, United Press veteran Dan Bowerman, along with Finley son-in-law Evert Person, kept on with changes, creating a regional paper with a network of correspondents that extended coverage and circulation north into Mendocino and Lake counties, even southern Humboldt. Later, shifting publication from afternoon to morning, the PD became one of the first papers to bring computers to the newsroom and shift away from the Linotypes and “hot lead” of the olden days.

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FINLEY FAMILY ownership extended through 80 years of the most dramatic changes in this county, this country and the world.

In 1985, Finley’s daughter Ruth and her husband, Evert Person, accepted an offer from the New York Times. The family had waited patiently, turning down offers from less-respected news chains, to become the first Western acquisition in the Times’ Regional Newspaper Group.

It wasn’t a case of importing New York-style journalism, but rather bringing publishers and editors who streamlined the old system, installed state-of-the-art presses and delivery systems and began an exciting news era that broke away from dependence on the Bay Area dailies and swelled the circulation.

It was great fun to be part of the Times era here, which lasted for 25 years and a little more. Staff members achieved professional goals, with opportunities to travel the world for in-depth reporting, and won prestigious national awards. For some of the “old hands” it was the topper for long and varied careers.

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BUT CHANGES in our “trade” were coming thick and fast. Caught, with print journalism throughout the world, in the surge of online news, the New York company divested itself of satellite enterprises to concentrate on just the New York paper.

In 2012, the entire regional group was sold to a Florida publisher who made it clear he had no interest whatsoever in a California company.

That’s when the current owners, Sonoma Media Investments, stepped in.

A group of local investors, SMI owns not only the PD but the Sonoma Index-Tribune, Petaluma Argus-Courier, North Bay Business Journal and La Prensa Sonoma.

In the roiling change of journalism today, we are still (yet? again?) a “local rag.” But we are not only still here, but going forward, heading, I’m sure, for more change along the way.

Change is the nature of the beast. And it rocks the boat, no doubt about it.

Maybe it helps to remember that old guy in Texas, reading aloud to people who are hungry for the “news of the world.”