Oklahoma's newspapers - yesterday, today, tomorrow and the next century

OKLAHOMA'S NEWSPAPERS
THE HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA NEWSPAPERS:  THE PIONEERS

Part 1: Recording Oklahoma's history

BY M. SCOTT CARTER

The story of Oklahoma's newspapers - much like the story of Oklahoma, itself - is a story of people.
A tale of saints and scoundrels.
A tale of the titans and the timid.
A story of the men and women who, each day, sought to make sense of the events taking place around them; who worked to record history and who tried to inform; who spent their lives - and sometimes their fortunes - telling the story of their time.
With little more than 100 years separating our beginnings from the present day, the story of Oklahoma's newspapers isn't found in some ancient, dust-covered volume tucked away in the far corner of a little used library; but, instead, our history is alive, written in the faces of those who practice the craft of newspaper publishing today.
It's a story rich in characters - and as varied and unique as the landscape of Oklahoma, the 46th state.
It's a story that begins, not in 1889 with the white settlement of the land known as Indian Territory, but almost half a century earlier with the natives - the Cherokees.
Born in Tahlequah on Sept. 26, 1844, and printed in both English and Cherokee, Oklahoma's first true newspaper was the Cherokee Advocate.
A descendant of the Cherokee Tribe's first newspaper - the Cherokee Phoenix, which was published in Georgia more than 20 years before - the Advocate was printed in Tahlequah, but circulated well beyond Oklahoma: in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Its editor, William Potter Ross, was a fire-brand crusader who, according to newspaper historian L. Edward Carter, "set a high style of journalism... that was hard to match."
At 23, Ross - the nephew of Cherokee Chief John Ross - was a graduate of Princeton and, by all accounts, a remarkable man.
"Ross was a fearless, sharp and crusading editor," Carter wrote in The Story of Oklahoma Newspapers. "He wrote well and he worded his editorial criticism careful." 
And he understood just how powerful a newspaper could be.
"Ross devoted the first issue (of his newspaper) to an explanation of the Cherokee government and its departments," Carter wrote. "The front pages of the first and subsequent issues often were filled with essay material, agricultural information and anecdotes."
The Advocate was, for all purposes, the only mass produced information source in Indian Territory.
While the Advocate has the distinction of being the state's first newspaper, it was only four years later - in 1848 - that the Choctaw Telegraph appeared in Doaksville. That publication, like the Advocate, was sponsored by a Native American tribe, the Choctaw Nation. 
According to Judith Michener, an assistant oral historian with the Oklahoma Historical Society, communication was very important to the Native Americans.
"One of the first things a community needed was a newspaper," she said.
Still, the Native Americans weren't the only ones who recognized the power of the printed word. By the time of the land run of 1889, historical records show there were about 27 active newspapers in Indian Territory.
It was those papers, coupled with the thousands of ambitious settlers and a growing, oil-based economy, that ignited the spark that would - in 1907 - become statehood.
"Once the settlers came, then people started talking about statehood," Michener said. "Then the news-papers began talking about statehood. After that it took off."
With the founding of each new town another newspaper was born, and those newspapers were the only large vehicle for distributing information.
"Keep in mind that thousands of people moved to Oklahoma from other places that had newspapers," Michener said. "The overall truth is that a majority of the people had access to newspapers. They were used to the newspapers in other states."
With settlers, money and those who were willing to take a risk backing the idea, the number of Oklahoma newspapers began to grow quickly, much like mushrooms after a spring rain.
Along with the Advocate and the Telegraph, the Creek Nation followed the trend of tribal publishing in 1875  with the Indian Progress.
That newspaper, Carter wrote, was the first of the state's "boomer" papers - publications that "boomed" (or promoted) the opening of Indian Territory to homesteaders.
Edited by Elias C. Boudinot, the Progress pushed for the white settlement of Indian Territory - much to the chagrin of the Creek tribe. 
"The Creeks learned quickly that Boudinot was in the pay of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad," Carter said. "The railroads had become the loudest advocates of opening the sparsely-settled Indian lands to settlers."
And the Creeks were not happy about being duped.
Following a hastily called tribal meeting in late 1875, Creek leaders demanded the removal of the newspaper's building and equipment from Creek soil.
Boudinot was out of a job.
Sensing trouble, the former publisher "loaded the printing plant on wagons and took it (the newspaper) to Vinita in the Cherokee Nation."
Leery of tribal-sponsored publica-tions, but realizing the necessity of communicating with their members, the Creeks tried again - this time, forming a publishing company and founding the Indian Journal. 
That paper, Carter wrote, eventually was located in Eufaula in 1887 and is still being published today.
Though many early newspapers were born, published and died - almost as quickly as the tall grass grows on the Oklahoma prairie - many others papers thrived, usually on the skill of their publishers or through other, sometimes nefarious, means.
"It was a struggle just as big then as it is now," Michener said. "Before the newspapers the only methods of communication were letters or news items from shipping and trading companies. The newspaper changed that. But it was a difficult task."
That task, Carter said, would get more difficult with the dawn of 1889 and the end of what he called Indian Journalism.
As the federal government pushed for settlement of the Indian and Oklahoma territories, more people migrated to the area - and some brought the newspaper with them.
But starting a newspaper was one thing; keeping it alive was another.
"The rules were considerably different for the operation of a newspaper in Indian Territory compared with running a newspaper in Oklahoma Territory," Carter wrote.
Newspapers in Indian Territory, he said, could "not expect much" advertising or fees for printing legal notices - both principal sources of income.
For newspapers in Oklahoma Territory, however, business was better.
 "Business was good from the day new lands were opened to settlement," Carter said. "Advertising sales were brisk and many governmental notices and other legal advertising provided profitable income."
Equipment also was easy to obtain.
The early publishers, Michener notes, "had access to the Red and the Arkansas Rivers. "They could get stuff very quickly. They could get their equipment from the big industrial areas."
It wasn't "as hard as it seemed." 
With an influx of people, access to equipment and profit, newspapers began to multiply rapidly in Indian Territory. In fact, many newspapers, Carter wrote, appeared "in the larger towns on the two principal railroads."
In Oklahoma Territory, most towns supported at least two rival newspapers; in many places close to a half-dozen publications fought for readership and revenue.
"Oklahoma Territory newspapers were far more active in waging partisan politics than Indian Territory newspapers," Carter wrote. "And newspapers appeared quickly in Indian Territory after 1889."
Like the homesteaders who raced to claim their 160 acres, newspapers  too raced to claim their readership.
"Each land opening was to become a race to see which newspaper would come out first and possibly stake a claim on being the new town's permanent weekly or daily publication," Carter wrote. "The opening of the Unassigned Lands in April of 1889 was to set the pattern for all other newspaper editors... those who dream of starting their own sheets in a brand new land."
And though those newspapers didn't have the huge resources their neighbors back East did, they did play a vital role in the birth and development of the 46th state - Oklahoma.
"No, they (the early publishers) didn't have the resources or means to print several thousand copies,"  Michener said. "But then, there was a need, just like now, to know what the government was doing."
And come hell, pied type or high water, the first newspapers of Indian and Oklahoma Territory did just that.