The Daily Morning Astorian (Astoria, Oregon)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
3,921 issues from 1883 to 1899, published in Astoria, Oregon, digitised for Chronicling America.
DeWitt Clinton Ireland launched the Daily Astorian on May 1, 1876. It was a four-page broadsheet with skinny columns titled “general news,” “banking and insurance,” and “miscellaneous” that ran every day except Sunday. In 1883 the title of the paper was changed to the Daily Morning Astorian, which was shortened in 1899 to the Morning Astorian. Whereas many early Oregon newspapers were founded by relative novices, D.C. Ireland was already an accomplished reporter and typesetter before coming west, having worked on such big-city papers as the Detroit Free Press and the New York Tribune.
Astoria, a port at the mouth of the Columbia River, had been the site of the first European settlement in Oregon. At the time of the paper’s founding, the town was on the brink of economic boom. Lumber was shipped to San Francisco. Salmon, an abundant local staple, was canned and exported globally. Though local coverage focused on front-page shipping news, the Astorian’s motto set the tone for what would become one of the Northwest’s most respected small papers: “Impartiality, ability, fairness, reliability. A paper for the commercial man, for the farmer, for the mechanic, for the merchant, for every person.”
That is not to say there were not divisions in Astoria. The town was at times rife with tension between the dominant Anglo-American population, the nearby Native American tribes, and immigrant laborers from Finland, Sweden, and China. Though the Daily Astorian rarely touched on race…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Astoria, Oregon, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress