Newspapers of the Old West (Part 2)
There were still problems obtaining an adequate supply of newsprint. Sometimes they were forced to print on cigar paper, tissue paper, or colored paper. They might also change the size of the paper or frequency of publishing to preserve stock on hand. The Civil War also disrupted supplies. Some bigger papers started up their own pulp mills first with rags than with wood chips.
What did they print? Some papers printed speeches and sermons and poetry, though some papers charged for them to be inserted, believing this material did not have broad interest. They printed news of special interest to a town, like Butte, Montana, printing mining news from other mining towns. They reported murders and war news to sell papers. Some made up stories, most notoriously the Territorial Enterprise of Virginia City, Nevada. Mark Twain wrote stories with clues embedded to prove their falseness, yet most readers did not pick up on them. Some publishers liked to take pot shots at each other, which was very entertaining for the readers. Many printed the local controversies. Some started specifically to promote a business such as a real estate office or a railroad.
There were several foreign language papers, at least 20 in German and 13 in French. There were also papers to serve the Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Danish, and Swedish. Most papers did not have Sunday editions until after the 1880s. One owner of the San Francisco Chronicle was killed because of his paper's crusade to expose city graft. The death did not stop the paper's goals. Papers welcomed telephone communication to speed delivery of the news even more. The Deseret News was probably the first to get a telephone in 1878.
The publishers unionized fairly early with printers organizing in San Francisco in 1850. The typographical union was one of the first. They had their share of strikes and disputes and blackballing. There were also press associations.
A newspaper was a fairly easy enterprise to make a good profit from a relatively small investment. still, hundreds of papers failed. Some chose the wrong location: the main economic driver such as mining would end and the town would become a ghost. In some towns there were too many competing papers. Others failed because they extended too much credit to subscribers and advertisers. This led to a cash only system for some papers. Ultimately, though, many of them survived into modern times, especially in the big cities.
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