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| Sunday, June 13, 2004 | (No comments posted.)
|CALUMET ROOTS with Archibald McKinlay
In the spirit of the season of commencement, I recently visited the University of Kansas, where my incredibly beautiful granddaughter, Meghan Beth Zorn, graduated from the William Allen White school of Journalism and Mass Communications. Although I had often been over and around the Sunflower State, I had never been inside Kansas, which I discovered is a time warp. The richest man in Lawrence sells saddle shoes. When Meghan chose Kansas, I thought she had OD'd on Wizard of Oz stories and, in fact, there were record number of tornadoes during our weekend in the Plains states. I was beginning to see Ray Bolger in every haystack.
Does the name William Allen White ring a distant bell with you? It should. We were all exposed to White in our high school American literature classes. He was the nonpareil country editor known as "the Sage of Emporia," who became world famous and a model for good sense and newspapers everywhere. His Emporia Gazette became one of the most famous and most quoted newspapers in the world, and I'd like to think that The Times, which has been named Indiana's best newspaper more often than the Wabash floods, was inspired by White's example. He won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, and was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer in 1947 for his autobiography.
After being educated at the University of Kansas, White became, in 1890, the editor of the Eldorado Daily Republican. He later worked on the editorial staffs of the Kansas City Journal and of the Star, and in 1894 bought the Emporia Gazette, his hometown paper. But it was his "What's the Matter with Kansas?" editorial that made him famous overnight. The Republican party reprinted the article and used it in the presidential campaign to elect cousin Bill: William McKinley, who was an atrocious speller. From then on, White's editorials played an important part in political affairs of the nation.
"What the Matter with Kansas?" was read and reprinted throughout America and the world. He also published such classics as "The Real Issue" (1896); "The Court of Boyville" (1899); "Stratagems and Spoils" (1901); "A Certain Rich Man" (1909); "The Old Order Changeth" (1910); "God's Puppets:" "In the Heart of a Foo;l" "Life of Woodrow Wilson" (1924); "Life of Calvin Coolidge" (1925); and "Masks in a Pageant" (1928). His major works also include "A Puritan in Babylon" and "The Changing World."
Barely more than a decade after White was cranking up the Emporia Gazette, Sidmond McHie bought the Hammond Tribune,"circulation a puny 137, brought in some of the best journalists in Chicago, and changed the name to Lake County Times. The new staff put out the first edition on June 8, 1906, built circulation up to 5,000, then quickly doubled it to 10,000.
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