Lux et Lex, Volume 12 Issue 1

The Chester Fritz Library maintains perhaps the largest collection of North Dakota newspapers outside of the State Historical Society. Its collection spans from 1870 to the present, and includes all regions of the state. Library holdings also include foreign language newspapers in Danish, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and the Dano-Norwegian dialect, and several student newspapers from area colleges. UND's Dakota Student exists from 1888 to the present.

The Library's historical state newspaper collection is held almost entirely on microfilm and is available at the Periodicals desk. Most newspapers are listed in the online catalog (ODIN), and a printed finding aid may be obtained from the Library's Reference & Research Services desk. The “Golden Age” of North Dakota Newspapers

Newspaper publishing thrived during North Dakota's homesteading period and early statehood days. Dakota Territory afforded a productive environment for newspapers to flourish, beginning with the earliest recorded territorial newspaper, The Frontier Scout (not held by UND). The Scout was published from June to October 1865, at Fort Union near Williston and then Fort Rice, just south of Bismarck.

A mitigating factor in the success of many early Great Plains newspapers was the signing of the Homestead Act into law in 1862. One feature of this Act required homesteaders to “prove up” their land claims and run “proof notices” in a local newspaper. The great rush of homesteaders after the Civil War guaranteed a boost to even very small town newspapers. As Paul Schmidt writes in his article “The Press in North Dakota,”

Whatever else these eager land seekers may have

lacked, they did not want for local newspapers. And the

newspapers, at least during the period when most

homesteaders were “proving up” their claims, did not

lack for revenue. Publication of the “proof notice” ran

for five consecutive weeks and cost the homesteader

from $5 to $10.

(North Dakota History. vol. 31, no. 4. Oct. 1964. p. 218)

The Rocky Road to Statehood

“The Dakota delegates at Washington are doing nothing
besides making consummate asses of themselves.”
The Bad Lands Cow Boy (Feb. 21, 1884, page 1)

Politics and journalism were apparently full-contact sports back on

the 19^th century prairie. The Bad Lands Cow Boy was published for only two years during the mid 1880s in Little Missouri, a frontier town just west of present-day Medora. Its page one article by an unnamed correspondent (or perhaps the newspaper's editor, A. T. Packard) suggests nefarious plots and schemes in our nation's capital meant to work against the then hoped-for admission to statehood. The Cow Boy hints, “We very much suspect that it is a deep-laid Democratic scheme to help along this discord as much as possible so that a Republican State may be kept out of the Union as long as possible.” The delegates are offered this bit of advice:

It is disgraceful to Dakota that the delegates are all so pig-headed that they cannot reconcile minor differences and agree on at least one point. Come back home and hide your diminished heads in shame.

Plain Spoken

A. T. Packard was hardly the only newspaper editor who knew how to express his opinions on the printed page. Shelby Smith, publisher of the Lidgerwood Broadaxe, clearly lived by his masthead motto: “Hew to the Line, Let the Chips Fall Where They May.” He candidly wrote on the front page of the paper's March 1, 1888, edition about certain questionable statements published in some lesser Wahpeton chronicle,

The windbag that furnishes the Brandenburg items for the Wahpeton Times writes three columns of rot endeavoring to get back at the Broadaxe for showing up his glaring errors and falsehoods two or three weeks ago. By reading his effusion over two or three times we find there is some little good even in his cant.

Smith, evidently having the good fortune to have printed his critique long before libel and slander statutes had either existence or force in the new state, goes on at some length condemning the “windbag's” assessment of pauper aid administered to a farm family in Lidgerwood who endured great calamity the previous winter. The family had suffered multiple cases of diphtheria, apparently killing four of the children. The county stepped in and arranged for a physician to care for the remainder of the family, paid for funeral expenses, and ordered merchants to contribute goods to help the family through the harsh winter. “And for this humane action the windbag loosens its puckering string and omits a blast calculated to give the impression that the affairs of the county are going to the damnation bow-wows at lightning speed.” Opinions about welfare and social justice on the prairie were clearly contentious.

News of a Sort Comes of Age

Eventually newspapers would focus nearly as much attention on news as their editorials. The question of what constituted news would become clearer, although publishers and readers alike would continue to maintain persistent ideas about what was really newsworthy.

The September 12, 1901, front page of the Ward County Reporter, published in Minot, carried a report on the proceedings of the Board of County Commissioners, the return of Misses Georgie and Larrain Walthen “to their respective schools, after visiting their parents and enjoying a pleasant outing here [in Berthold],” as well as a typical array of ads touting the latest watches, blackberry “cordials” to relieve bowel troubles, and the like.

Inside on page three of that issue are stories about seemingly less critical events around the nation and world—such as the assassination (still then an unsuccessful attempt) of President William McKinley. An “Anarchist's Foul Deed” describes the shooting by deranged anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, who put two bullets in the President on September 6 while McKinley was attending a reception in the Temple of Music at the Buffalo Pan American Exposition. His condition, considered front page news today, was still serious as of the newspaper's account on the 12th. His care unfortunately proved beyond the ability of turn-of-the-century medical procedures and techniques. The second bullet could not be located and it would be decades later, following Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin in 1928, that medicines would be developed that could fight off bacterial infections. President McKinley died during the early morning hours of September 14th.

Anyone familiar with the socialist heritage that runs throughout North Dakota history will not find it surprising that, less then ten years after the events recounted about McKinley's assassination, no less a figure than Emma Goldman would find herself invited to give a talk at Maennercher Hall in Bismarck on June 8, 1910. While Goldman was questioned about events surrounding McKinley's assassination, she was never implicated in any way.

Medical Progress on the Prairie

Whether it was “One School Girl's Battle” or a “Suddenly Prostrated” woman, it seemed no one was left

without recourse to the wonders of the latest pharmaceutical advances. Advertisements and newspaper articles hailed the latest colored pill or syrup guaranteed to offer the user all manner of relief from their suffering and numerous physical and mental discomforts. While ads such as those quoted

above would continue for some time, a report produced by the Carnegie Foundation in 1910 would take states, and western colleges in particular, to task for their poor training and licensing of medical professionals.

The “Flexner Report,” as it later came to be known, was a call to college officials and the American Medical Association to strengthen the rigor of medical education and apply greater resources and funds to the institutions which trained physicians. Dr. Henry Pritchard, President of the Carnegie Foundation, contributed an

introduction to Abraham Flexner's report and “severely scored and condemned the western medical colleges for the number of unqualified graduate[s] turned out every year.” A front page article on the June 6, 1910, Minot Daily Reporter agreed, suggesting that there were “Too Many Incompetent Doctors.” However quickly medical

schools responded, newspapers of the day made clear that the critique was heard and taken very seriously.

As indicated above, most of the Library's newspaper holdings are listed in its online catalog (ODIN). A quick way to

locate newspapers if you do not have a newspaper's name is simply to do a keyword search and add the word “newspaper” to the town or county name, for instance, “Mountrail newspaper” or “Bismarck newspaper.” Researchers may also check the newspaper webpage for the North Dakota State Historical Society, at

http://www.state.nd.us/hist/newshome.htm, which offers listings by city and county, as well as links to current daily and weekly newspapers. The North Dakota Newspaper Association lists currently

published state newspapers, http://www.ndnewspapers.com . Two printed inventories are also available: North Dakota Newspapers, 1864-1976: A Union List, compiled by Carol Koehmstedt Kolar (REF. PN 4897 .N9 K64) and The North Dakota Newspaper Inventory, by the State Historical Society (REF. Z 6945 .N67 1992) in the Library's reference collection. In addition, a searchable subject/date index to the Dakota Student from its inception may be

Table of Contents

NORTH DAKOTA NEWSPAPERS

The Rocky Road to Statehood

Plain Spoken