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November 14, 2009

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Prominent journalists flourish on Newspaper Row

By Mike McCormick

TERRE HAUTE — By-lines were not commonly used to identify newspaper story writers until well into the 20th Century.

Only columnists and poets deserved to be identified in those days and, frequently, the name was fictional. As a result, efforts to identify the outstanding journalists who worked for newspapers and magazines in Terre Haute during the 19th and early 20th centuries when “Newspaper Row” flourished, are frustrated.

Over the years, this column has discussed the successes of many noteworthy local journalists during that era, including Major Orlando Jay Smith, Edward Price Bell, Mary Hannah Krout, Ida Husted Harper, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Edward A. Insley, Mique O’Brien, Claude G. Bowers, and Robert Debs Heinl.

Major Smith, a Civil War hero and popular author, founded the Terre Haute Gazette and later the American Press Association.

Bell, the first journalist ever nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, worked for the Gazette in the 1880s after it was owned by William C. and Spencer F. Ball. He also worked for the Raccoon Valley Independent, Terre Haute Daily News and Terre Haute Express.

After a long career as a successful foreign correspondent with the Chicago Daily News, Bell became political editor of the Terre Haute Saturday Spectator.

While Bell was working at the Gazette, Insley — a Terre Haute native and later an editor for the Chicago Tribune, Harper’s Magazine, Los Angles Examiner and the Sacramento Union — was a reporter there, too.

O’Brien worked for the Gazette before moving to the Indianapolis Sentinel. Then he became the dramatic critic for the Cincinnati Times. He was so popular he was hired by the New York Telegraph, where he wrote drama and sports for many years.

O’Brien returned to his hometown to work as a critic for the Terre Haute Tribune.

Few local journalists became as well-known as Bowers, a prolific author and ambassador to Spain and Chile from 1933 to 1953. He came to Terre Haute in 1903 as an editorial writer for the Terre Haute Star.

After many successful years in journalism on the east coast, Heinl founded his own news service in Washington, D.C., and eventually sold it to the Washington Post.

Krout was the first female editor of a major Indiana metropolitan daily when she was hired by celebrated publisher James H. McNeely of the Terre Haute Daily Express.

After submitting anonymous letters to Perry Westfall’s Saturday Evening Mail, a popular Terre Haute weekly, in 1872, Harper began writing a column using the pseudonym, “John Smith.”

Later she wrote a column for “Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine,” published in Terre Haute and edited by Eugene V. Deb. Harper became official biographer of Susan B. Anthony and author of two volumes of “The History of Woman’s Suffrage.”

There is no firm evidence that Boynton, who married Terre Haute lawyer William S. Harbert in 1870, wrote for a local newspaper while a student at John Covert’s Terre Haute Female College, where she graduated with honors in 1862.

But she later became a suffrage activist, a popular newspaper columnist for the Chicago Inter-Ocean and author and editor of “New Era” magazine.

Charles M. Reeves was a writer with the Gazette before becoming city editor of the Terre Haute Daily News. He then was hired as director of publicity for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

Clifford Sanders was working for the Gazette in July 1875, at the time of the notorious Long Point Murder near Greenup, Ill. On his way to Greenup, Sanders met a rival newspaper reporter who had interviewed everyone of importance about the crime.

Sanders liked what he heard and offered to buy his friend a drink. An hour or so later, the other reporter was tanked and Sanders scooped all competitors with a seven column story.

John Raymond Cummings launched his journalism career with the Gazette. He was the newspaper’s telegraph editor in the early 1880s. He later became an economist, writing several books, including “Natural Money: The Peaceful Solution” and “A League of Nations: What Are We Fighting For?”

Shortly before 1900, Norman P. Rood was a creative cartoonist-reporter for the Gazette. He was succeeded by Frank Williamson Skinner, a practical joker and a talented artist.

In about 1903, Skinner moved to Minneapolis where he associated with the John H. Mitchell Advertising Agency. He relocated to Beaver Bay, Minn., in 1939, founding Studio Inn Resort, where he created some of his best landscape art.

Charles S. Anderson, another Gazette reporter, became a success in advertising. Charles C. Carlton, son of Terre Haute lawyer Ambrose Carlton who headed the Utah Commission for several years, was another Gazette reporter who did well as a Washington correspondent.

Until 1904, the block between Wabash and Ohio on South Fifth Street was known as “Newspaper Row.”

The Terre Haute Express, a successor of the Western Register and Terre Haute Advertiser founded in 1823, was located at 16 S. Fifth St. The Gazette, its biggest competitor, was across the street at 25 S. Fifth St.

The Terre Haute Banner, the city’s oldest surviving German-language newspaper, was situated at 23 S. Fifth St. The Terre Haute Journal, another German newspaper, shared offices with the Terre Haute Express.

Later the Express moved into the building once occupied by the Banner. The Terre Haute Tribune, established in 1894, then made its headquarters at 16 S. Fifth St.

John O. Hardesty’s Terre Haute Courier had offices for a few years at 10 1⁄2 S. Fifth St.

Perry Westfall’s popular Saturday Evening Mail was located at 22 S. Fifth St.

The Argo, a weekly newspaper published by veteran journalist Edwin Seldomridge, was not on Newspaper Row but at the northwest corner of Fifth and Wabash, a short distance away.

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