56

Tells of Staff
of Yesterday

Roland Jones Finds
Man Well Known
Names Upon List

BY ROLAND M. JONES.

The newspaper reporter and editor
fill a dual role. Daily they inform
or enlighten or amuse a news
hungry world with a recitation of
current event served hit off the
griddle. At the same time they are
compiling a record of inestimable
permanent value.

Undertaking the pleasant but
difficult task of resurrecting the
reportorial past of The World-Herald
this writer found the clipping
"morgue" of the newspaper plethoric
with information of people
and events within its purview, but
singularly sterile concerning the
shifting staff of writers who recorded
this information. This reportorial
past is unrecorded. It
lives chiefly in tradition and faulty
memory.

Early Reporters.

It didn't take a very hefty staff
to man the new Evening World,
when Mr. Hitchcock brought it into
existence in 1885 as a four-page
newspaper. Still it had to have a
staff. Even a four-page daily was
a good deal more than one-man
job. The manning editorship was
handled by W. V. Rooker, a minority
stockholder, who sold out after
a few years and left Omaha. Sands
F. Woodbridge left the old Herald
to become city editor, a job which
evidently included gathering and
writing a good deal of the news
also, John M. Tanner, known far
and wide as "Doc," was one of
the first reporters.

Will Gurley, another minority
stockholder, and Lucien Stephens,
a dashing young man about town
in those days, appear to have done
some of the early reporting for
The World. But their real love
evidently wasn't with printing ink
and presses. Gurley sold his stock
to Mr. Hitchcok and became a
shining legal light of Omaha while
Stephens turned to business. They
linger in the memory of old time
newspaper workers as dilettantes
of the art rather than as full
fledged journeyman reporters.

Woodbridge Permanent.

Within the next two or three
years the paper had acquired a
more or less permanent staff with
Mr. Woodbridge as city editor,
"Doc" Tanner, R. L. Metcalfe and
Lee Hurley as reporters. There
was also a chalk plate artist who
filled the multiple role of cartoonist,
dramatic critic and exchange
editor.

Of this group Woodbridge only
was really permanent. As city
editor and assistant managing
editor he remained with the paper
through its vicissitudes and its successes
until physical infirmity
forced his retirement. He would
have died with the harness on had
not his family physician almost
forcibly yanked him out of it.
When he did pass away some years
later, he was still in spirit, in the
minds of his old associates, at least,
still a member of the staff.

He had been chosen, Mr. Hitchcock
once recalled in reminiscence
at a social meeting of the staff, because
of his sobriety and reliability.
That was in a day when
flashes of brilliance were more the
hall mark of the reporter than plodding
diligence. Members of the
staff used often to wonder if he
ever slept. His scent on the news
trail was unerring and his pursuit
of it unflagging. As city editor he
was an easy, kindly, gentle boss
who got diligence out of his reporters
because of the love and
respect he inspired in them.

One Becomes Judge.

Metcalfe wanted to be always a
reporter, specializing in the personalities
of the men and women
who make the news. It was his
fate to become associate editor,
editor in chief of The World-Herald,
then editor of Bryan's Commoner,
civil governor of the Panama
Canal Zone, mayor of Omaha
and finally co-ordinator of federal
activities under the new deal.
"Doc" Tanner graduated into publisher
on his own hook of a South
Omaha newspaper with a side line
of politics which sent him to the
state senate for several terms. Helsey
became a police judge of
Omaha.

The purchase of the Herald and
its merger with the World as The
World-Herald added a morning
edition and necessitated of course
an enlargement of the staff.

List Is Long.

Among the reporters who live
in recollection of the youthful days
of The World-Herald in the '90s
are Gene Mayfield, now in retirement;
Will M. Maupin, state railway
commissioner; Colonel Ray C.
Eaton, now living in Denver; John
Becan Ryan, who helped promote
the city Auditorium; Roger C.
Craven, who retired a few years
ago as telegraph editor; H. E.
Newbranch, now editor-in-chief,
and Ernest C. Hunt, who typified
the star reporter of romance. He
abominated routine, but Lord how
he could work on a big story! And
how he could write!

Then there was T. W. McCullough,
who was a night editor of
The World-Herald before entering
upon his long service with the Bee
and the Bee-News where he still
occupies and editorial chair, the late
J. H. Van Dusen, South Omaha reporter
who later became a leading
lawyer of Omaha, and Alber Fetterman,
who engineered a great
scoop on the return of this First
Nebraska from the Phillippines, became
a homesteader and lawyer in
Grant county and died in service
in France during the world war.

The succession of managing
editors included, after Rooker, Fred
Nye, Robert B. Peattie, Carl Smith
and finally W. R. Watson whose
management grew from the comparatively
simple staff of the '90s
to the organization of the present
including subeditors, copy readers,
rewrite men, reporters, camera
men and artists.

With Managing Editor Peattie
a member of the staff was his
wife, Elia Peattie, who became a
celebrated pen woman. She was
engaged as a woman's editor and
editorial writer. An anecdote of
those days concerns her work in
association with Al Fairbrother,
also an editorial writer.

A great controversy was then
raging over the abolition of hoop
skirts. Mrs. Peattie cam to their
defense in The World-Herald with
an editorial, the last line of which
read, 'As for us, we shall continue
to wear them," Fairbrother, one
of the old school dignified type of
gentlemen, came down the next
morning in a towering rage. Had
she written that editorial? She
had. Would she please read it
again? She wouldn't. But finally
at his insistence she read aloud
the last line. "Madam," he exploded,
"you may continue to wear
them, but I'm dammed if I will."

Boyd Mayor 50
Years Ago; City's
Lawyer, Connell

James E. Boyd was mayor of
Omaha in 1885. His term as governor
began in 1891.

William J. Connell, widely-
known pioneer lawyer, was city attorney
in this administration. City
treasurer was Truman Buck, city
clerk, J. J. L. C. Jewett. Other
officers were: Marshal, Thomas
Cumings; police judge, Gustave
Bencke; engineer, Andrew Rosewater;
street commissioner, Michael
Meaney; chief fire department,
John H. Butler; city physician,
Peter S. Leisenring; sealer of
weights and measures, Joseph
Redman.

The city in 1885 comprised six
wards. Six councilmen were elected
at large and six by wards, as
follows: By wards, C. C. Trane,
John F. Behn, P. Ford, W. F.
Bechel, Ed Leeder and J. B. Furray.
Councilmen at large were:
C. Kaufman, Isaac C. Hascall, J.
B. Redfield, P. F. Murphy, C. D.
Woodworth and William Anderson.