Medford Mail Tribune (Medford, Oregon)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
2,095 issues from 1909 to 1916, published in Medford, Oregon, digitised for Chronicling America.
Although it quickly grew into southern Oregon’s largest city, Medford began as merely a depot on the Oregon and California Railroad, established in 1883. The town’s first two newspapers, the Southern Oregon Monitor and the Southern Oregon Transcript did not last long and left little impression. Founded in 1888, the Medford Mail would prove to be a more viable enterprise. Thomas Harlan established the paper as an independent weekly, issued on Thursdays. Felix G. Kertson became the publisher in 1891. By the following year, the title was changed to the Southern Oregon Mail, and its editorial policy had skewed Populist. In 1893, the paper was purchased by Albert S. Bliton, who again shortened its name to the Medford Mail, reasserted its political independence, and gradually increased its circulation.
In 1909, the Mail was sold to the publishing heir and experienced newspaperman George Putnam, who had been operating a rival paper, the Medford Daily Tribune, since 1907. Putnam consolidated the two papers as the Medford Mail Tribune, inaugurating a most lively period of journalism in southern Oregon. Putnam was highly outspoken and willing to criticize public officials. “The paper that has no enemies has no friends,” he editorialized, and quickly earned plenty of both. Accused of libel by the president of the Rogue River Valley Railroad, Putnam spent a night in the Douglas County jail in 1908. Upon being released, he published an exposé on conditions at the jail which led to its…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Medford, 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