2/16/2011
By DAVID CLOUSTON Salina Journal

There's no greeting card tucked inside today's edition of the Salina Journal. Not even a front-page photo of a birthday cake, although one might be appropriate, for the newspaper you are holding today marks a significant milestone.

Today is the Journal's 140th birthday.

The Journal traces its history to the founding of the Saline County Journal on Feb. 16, 1871. Today it remains the largest daily newspaper in north-central and northwest Kansas.

About 25,000 paid subscribers in more than 100 communities in a 31-county area receive the Journal daily. Sunday circulation is about 27,000.

"What I think about is in 140 years, how there are very few businesses that have survived that long and thrived," said Tom Bell, the Journal's editor and publisher.

Mason D. Sampson and Wallace H. Johnson were the first proprietors of the Saline County Journal, a weekly that published its first edition on Feb. 16, 1871.

Sampson recalled in print 11 years later how a "wise contemporary" had advised him that the newspaper would die within three months.

Their odds against success were great -- The Salina Herald already was an established newspaper here.

The Herald had several advantages, not the least of which was the kinship by marriage between its publisher, Capt. B.J.F. Hanna, and Col. William Addison Phillips, Salina's founder and most powerful political and business figure in its formative days. Hanna was married to a sister of Phillips.

With that relationship came clout, especially when it came to dispensing the largess of official printing from city and county governments.

Johnson and Sampson were stout fellows, however. They had been Union Army captains and they quickly made a target in their news columns of the scandal of the government printing contracts.

Hanna struck back and their feud made for lively reading. Johnson and Sampson had other concerns as well. They campaigned for a sidewalk from the rail station to Santa Fe to keep visitors out of the mud. And they campaigned for a fire company equipped with a fire engine. Their campaign was successful, although not until after a great fire in December 1871 destroyed a dozen of Salina's business buildings.

Later, Joseph Bristow acquired control of the Journal, now a daily, and merged it with his Salina Daily Republican. Bristow became a U.S. Senator and needed a newspaper manager in Salina. He hired Roy F. Bailey, who had temporarily deserted journalism to operate a music store.

Bailey arrived in Salina on Jan. 29, Kansas Day, in 1911. He took over at a time when the newspaper was $15,000 in debt, the printers were on strike and circulation was 2,070 -- mostly unpaid.

Bailey brought the Journal back to solid financial ground and eventually owned about half of the business.

In 1925, R.J. Laubengayer and Bailey consolidated the Salina Evening Journal and the Salina Daily Union. Bailey stayed as manager.

Finding a home

In the 1930s, Laubengayer helped in the development of the former post office, now the Smoky Hill Museum, at Eighth and Iron streets. When construction of that building was complete, the old Federal Building next door was available and became the Journal's home. The Journal remained there until its present building -- the first Journal home designed for newspaper use -- was completed in early 1962.

In 1938, John P. Harris, the Hutchinson publisher, acquired an interest in the Journal. In 1949, Bailey retired and was followed in the editor's chair by Whitley Austin.

Living in The Castle

Long-time Salinans fondly remember "The Castle," the distinctive three-story red brick building at Seventh and Iron streets that housed the Journal from 1938 to 1962. The space is now a parking lot. The building acquired its nickname because of its Neo-gothic architecture and imposing round tower.

But what the building offered in style, it lacked in practical features -- there was nowhere to store the large newsprint rolls. Newsprint was warehoused on Fourth Street and trucked downtown each day. The building also lacked parking.

"But the most important reason was a piece of the tower building fell and almost hit a lady as she was walking by on the sidewalk. They decided then and there that the building was not worth repairing. That's when we started looking for a site," recalls Fred Vandegrift, another Journal publisher.

Austin wanted a new building and soon found the site where the Journal building is located today.

An innovative editor

Austin was an innovator. He developed the Sunday edition and a photography department, expanded circulation through a broad area of Kansas and led the change from hot type to phototype and offset printing.

Austin's frugality was as notorious as his personality that shone through countless editorials authored with wit and vigor.

Dave Atkinson, the Journal's production director, remembers once telling Austin that he needed to buy a $5 wrench to work on the press.

"He asked me if I really needed that $5 wrench. And I said, 'We're getting by with what we're doing now, but it would make it much easier.' And he said, 'Well, if it's going to be easier on you, why don't you buy the wrench?' So I did," Atkinson recalled with a grin.

Austin also found time to serve Kansas on public bodies, including the Board of Regents and the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission.

He retired in 1975, and Glenn Williams, his longtime managing editor, became editor, while Vandegrift, who had been advertising director, was named president and publisher.

The age of electronics

Vandegrift and Williams guided the newspaper into the age of electronics. Williams retired in 1982 and was succeeded by Harris Rayl, who had been associate editor of the Johnson County News at Olathe, later to become the Olathe Daily News. The News and the Journal were members of the Harris Enterprises group of newspapers headquartered at Hutchinson.

Vandegrift retired in 1985 and Rayl succeeded him as editor and publisher. In 1988, Rayl gave up the title of editor, but remained publisher. During Rayl's tenure, the Journal became fully paginated. The interior of the building was remodeled, including an expansion of the newsroom.

Bell was named editor and publisher in June 1998. During his tenure, the Journal has adopted new methods of delivering content. The Journal's website, salina.com, for instance, averages 115,000 page views a day.

The Journal offers readers the choice of an e-edition, an exact digital replica of the Journal with the ability to turn pages on the user's computer screen. Users can scroll around the page and they can print and e-mail stories.

Print subscribers receive the e-edition free with their subscription; people also may subscribe to the e-edition exclusively.

"We have a mobile edition that goes to phones. We're very close to having an iPad app to go to the iPad or other kind of tablets that will come along," Bell said.

He said the challenge remains keeping up with almost daily changes in technology, while maintaining the capital-intensive infrastructure for delivering traditional newspapers to 31 counties.

That traditional process for producing a newspaper that lands on the doorstep every day requires prodigious amounts of paper and ink.

The Journal's annual newsprint usage is about 2,100 tons at a cost of almost $1.4 million. The Journal uses about 44,260 pounds of black ink and 23,000 pounds of color ink a year at a cost totaling about $124,000.

The traditional newsprint and ink newspaper isn't going away in favor of an all-electronic edition any time soon, Bell says. His experience in the field goes back some years. He was part of an online research and development project -- Harris Electronic News -- in 1982 in Olathe. At its peak, there were 370 subscribers for the service, which offered a variety of local news and wire service content. The product was discontinued in 1985.

"There's nothing that fully replaces ink on paper," Bell said. "Foldable screens the thickness of a sheet of paper are in our future, or news projected from eyeglasses -- all that's coming. Some of our sister papers are trying different things. We're all upgrading how we present the news electronically."

n Reporter David Clouston can be reached at 822-1403 or by e-mail at dclouston@salina.com.

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