A Century in Print: The Newspaper Business in Johnson County, 1860-1960
The worth of the average town as a place of residence is measured by the progressive features of its newspaper.
--Ed Blair, History of Johnson County Kansas, 1915
To some people Kansas is the Land of Oz, but it might more aptly be called the Land of Newspapers. In no other state’s history has the press played such an active and pervasive role in community life. This is evident in the numbers alone. As of the mid 1930s, the state of Kansas had spawned a total of 4638 newspapers, at least one thousand more than any other state.
Johnson County can claim title as the birthplace of Kansas journalism, based on the fact that the earliest known publication produced in the area later known as Kansas was printed at the Shawnee Baptist Mission. The religious periodical published there in the late 1830s was noteworthy in that it was not in English, but in the Shawnee Indian language, painstakingly transcribed into the Roman alphabet from the spoken native tongue by a dedicated printer and missionary named Jotham Meeker. Meeker arrived at the Baptist mission in 1833, bringing with him a printing press and an extensive knowledge of native languages. In February 1835, Meeker produced the first issue of Siwonowe Kesibwi called in English The Shawnee Sun. Its readership totaled perhaps as many as 200 Shawnee at all the Christian missions in the area. Although Siwonowe Kesibwi began as a monthly, it appeared somewhat sporadically until the last issue in 1844. The only known original example of Siwonowe Kesibwi, dated November 1841, is in the holdings of the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Border Troubles
This short-lived venture represented the earliest printing in the area, but it bore little relation to the frenzy of newspaper publishing that erupted after the Kansas Territory was opened to white settlement in 1854. Editors set up shop in many new communities almost immediately, usually with the purpose of espousing either pro-slavery or antislavery sentiments. In Johnson County, the business took off a little more slowly, due in part perhaps to the disruption of border warfare during the Territorial and Civil War years.
Oral tradition has it that the earliest publications in Johnson County were official documents printed in Gum Springs (now Shawnee) before Olathe became the center of county government in 1859. Two newspapers were launched in Olathe soon after. The Olathe Herald, according to some sources, began publication in 1859, although the earliest issue on file at the state historical society dates from August 1860. The Herald held to a Democratic proslavery party line. The Olathe Mirror, begun in 1861, was the first Republican newspaper in the county and supported the antislavery cause. The disruptions of wartime dealt both papers a heavy blow. In September 1862, southern sympathizer William Clark Quantrill and his followers raided Olathe and destroyed the Herald office, thinking it was the Mirror. They soon realized their error and attacked the Mirror, but failed to destroy the printing press and some of the type, which had been hidden. The Herald’s editor sold the fragments of his business, including the subscription list, to the Mirror, which struggled to survive through wartime. In the July 11, 1863 issue, the editor wrote:
We have been asked why we don’t revive the Mirror in full. During the past two years, we have been promised protection by our Governors, Generals and Senators. Notwithstanding that fact every town in our county has been sacked from one to three times... We shall make the Mirror, after the war, what it was before—the largest and best paper in the State.
Competing for Readers
Between the Civil War and the end of the century, newspaper publishing in Johnson County followed a pattern seen throughout the state. Printing was a highly competitive business, and newspapers appeared and disappeared with startling rapidity. A small town might at one time be home to three or four papers and within the year have none. In the competition for subscribers and advertisers, editors did not hesitate to criticize their rivals, often in harsh terms. The viewpoint of The Olathe Mirror could not be mistaken, for example, when it referred to a neighboring town’s paper as a “6 x 9 driveling patent-medicine sheet, with its circulation of one hundred...”
Johnson County communities watched many newspapers come and go. In Olathe, the Mirror was soon challenged by the Kansas Central. Republican in politics with a decided anti-Southern slant, this paper disappeared in June 1868 after only a few months in business. In Gardner the first newspaper, The Young Kansan, appeared in 1889 under female editorship. It expired after a run of fourteen months, followed by The Kansan (seven months), The Gardner Graphic (slightly over two years), the Kansas True Flag (fifteen months, called The Gardner Flag after the first year), and The Gardner Weekly Message (1 1/2 months). Some stability finally arrived in the form of The Gardner Gazette, which began in 1899 and lasted till 1942. De Soto, in contrast, did not have its own newspaper at all until the establishment of The DeSoto Pioneer in 1897.
In Spring Hill, things got off to an earlier start with the appearance of the Enterprise in December 1870. Created as a Republican paper, it soon changed ownership, becoming first a Democratic sheet then returning to the Republican fold. By 1875, its newest owner had not only switched political allegiance from Republican to Independent, but had also renamed the publication Western Progress and moved the whole operation to Olathe. Spring Hill was without a newspaper until the spring of 1878, when C.F. Hyde, formerly with a paper in Wisconsin, began The Kansas State Register. His paper carried minimal local material consisting of a front-page list of local lodges, clubs and churches, and some scant reporting and commentary on Spring Hill doings. The editor of the Western Progress observed that the Register seemed to consist mostly of “patents”—that is, sheets preprinted elsewhere with non-local news and features, with white spaces filled in by the local editor with his masthead and community news. Although this was a common practice among small-town papers of the day, the editor of the Register expressed outrage, shooting back that at least he had not forsaken Spring Hill for Olathe. Apparently the Register’s appeal was weak within its own community. In October 1878, Mr. Hyde announced that he would soon close up shop due to lack of support among local businessmen.
Support from subscribers and advertisers was crucial, and many editors failed to earn enough to stay in business. The Olathe Evening Meteor, a two-page daily that lasted from April 1879 to October 1880, alluded to this problem with its motto, “With malice toward all, and charity for none but paid up subscribers.” After a short shaky time in business, the Edgerton Enterprise added to its masthead “Quit borrowing the Enterprise from your neighbor”. The editor of the Kansas True Flag voiced an undoubtedly common frustration when he wrote, “there is not a dull line in the flag. An[d] there never will be as long as the present editor runs it. However, we are going to kill 194 delinquent subscribers next week.”
Declaring an Identity
Often, a newspaper established a distinctive competitive identity by declaring itself the voice for a particular cause—a political party or social movement. The Johnson County Democrat began publication in 1882 as counterbalance to Olathe’s Republican Mirror. It survived until 1891, when the editor moved out of state. The Democrat was revived in name and politics in 1921 by George and Frank Hodges, prominent Olathe businessmen. The Olathe Leader, published by the Patrons of Husbandry beginning in 1879, proclaimed its purpose “to Protect the Rights of the Farmer and Mechanic” and claimed to be the only paper in the United States owned and controlled by farmers. The Kansas Plain Dealer, started in Olathe in 1887, aligned itself with three major causes of the day—“Prohibition – Anti-Monopoly – Woman Suffrage.”
A strong political orientation could be a detriment to business as well as an attraction for readers of like mind. The Olathe Tribune began publication in the 1890s, basing its appeal on its Populist stance. A Populist governor had taken office in Kansas in 1893, and the future looked bright for the third party, which advocated economic reforms to improve the lot of the farmers and laborers. By 1907, however, Tribune editor John Richardson noted that support for the party and faded as Populists allied themselves with Democrats in order to win office, and so the paper had switched to a Republican orientation in 1906. Unfortunately, Richardson wrote, Olathe appeared willing to support only two newspapers—one for each of the two major political parties—and the Tribune, being the third, made a crowd. In the summer of 1907, the Tribune ceased publication.
Other newspapers specialized in non-political areas. The Kansas Star, and institutional newspaper, was started in 1876 with the purpose of “teaching the art of printing to the pupils of the deaf and dumb asylum,” and continued in production until around 1916. The Educational Advocate appeared on a monthly basis throughout much of 1880 with the aim of improving the schools of Johnson County. For a few months in 1889-90, Mary F. Beets edited the Gardner Young Kansan, “in great measure devoted to the entertainment of the young folks.”
Covering the Northeast
For some years newspaper publication was confined to the southern half of the county, with Olathe, Gardner, and Spring Hill dominating the field. De Soto got its first paper in the late 1890s, and the Lenexa News began publication in 1906. In 1913, the Kansas City Suburban Newspaper Company of Kansas City, Missouri, published three virtually identical papers for the Johnson County marked, titled the Stanley Review, the Lenexa World, and the Merriam Herald-Chieftain. Although edited by three different individuals, these papers were virtually identical in content, including sports and entertainment news, serial fiction, and agricultural and household features. Each devoted two columns on the front page to communities within its own readership area. Local coverage included lists of churches, lodges, and clubs, and reporting on such events as the meeting of the Merriam Improvement Association, which at the time was promoting improvements in the areas of street lighting, sidewalks, and policing.
In 1923 C.W. Mays, a veteran editor from Edgerton, started a newspaper in the unincorporated village of Overland Park. Mays’ new paper, first known as The Overland Park Weekly Herald, was distributed only in that community. Later owners built up subscriptions in Lenexa, Merriam, Shawnee, and Mission. The Herald soon became the official paper of Lenexa and Shawnee and the name was changed to The Northeast Johnson County Herald. During the Depression years, the paper was owned and edited by Elizabeth Barr Arthur, who described herself as “an Old ‘war horse’ in the newspaper field, accustomed to doing without just about everything for the sake of ‘the cause’,” Mrs. Arthur managed to keep the paper afloat despite hard times, reminiscing in later years that she “worked days, nights and Sundays for nine years carrying the paper through the depression and came out with pernicious anemia, arthritis, dropsy and nerve exhaustion and no money.” Its editor may have been exhausted, but the paper survived, eventually moving to improved quarters at 5921 Metcalf in Mission, known for years as “Herald Corner”. In 1941 the name of the paper was shortened to The Johnson County Herald.
During these years, Northeastern Johnson County also was covered by The Suburban News, a weekly published by The Mission Press, with offices in Merriam and Kansas City. Community news columns covered events in Shawnee, Mission Hill Acres, South Park, Holliday, Morris, South Ridge, Tower, Merriam and Turner.
Johnson County had entered the 1930s with eight active newspapers in Spring Hill, Gardner, Olathe, Merriam, Overland Park, and De Soto. In 1940, six survived. Two ceased publication during World War II. In December 1942, The Suburban News suspended publication due to the fact that its editor, Kenneth R. Kepferle, was entering military service. He announced that the paper would return “as soon as Hitler and Company are disposed of,” hopefully by Christmas of 1943. The Gardner Gazette, which had served its community continuously since 1899, mostly under the editorship of Ed Eaton and his son Manford, was forced to shut down in late 1942 due to wartime shortages of manpower and material. By war’s end, four long-time newspapers remained in the county—the Olathe Mirror, and the Johnson County Democrat, the Johnson County Herald and the Spring Hill New Era. In addition, the editor of the Spring Hill paper had started up the Gardner News in 1944.
Peace and Prosperity
In the post-war years, Johnson County boomed as the suburbs grew. In 1950, a new publication started in the northeastern community of Prairie Village. The glossy tabloid titled The Prairie Scout, sponsored by the Prairie Village Merchants Association, was edited by Stan and Shirley Rose. The editors pledged to keep an eye on local news, and it fulfilled this function, covering activities of church groups, schools, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, neighborhood associations, and other such organizations. The paper’s sponsorship was not forgotten, however, as approximately three-quarters of every page was occupied by advertisements for local businesses.
Despite efforts to maintain local interests and local identity, Johnson County, like the rest of the country, was increasingly subjected to the pressures of cultural and economic homogenization. Mass media and chainstores began to dominate, and newspapers, like other businesses, felt the effects. In 1960, as the first century of journalism in the county drew to a close, two long-time weekly newspapers disappeared. As of January 1, 1960, the Olathe Mirror and the Johnson County Democrat came under the ownership of the Harris Chain of newspapers, run by John P. Harris of Chanute. The two weeklies ceased to exist and were merged into the Olathe News, soon to become the first daily printed in the County. The old days of editorial uproar and storefront operations were drawing to a close, for better or for worse.
--ALBUM vol.14, no. 1 (winter 2001)