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Print | E-mail to a friend HD CELEBRATES 100 YEARS

The Herald-Dispatch celebrates 100 years

January 16, 2009 @ 11:42 PM

LAURA WILCOX

The Herald-Dispatch

HUNTINGTON -- For Mary Lynne Calhoun, The Herald-Dispatch has been more than just a newspaper. Growing up, it was a family affair and a window to the outside world.

Calhoun's grandfather, Boyd Jarrell, was among the first editors of The Herald-Dispatch when two Huntington newspapers combined in 1909. He met his wife, a bookkeeper, there and they married several years later. Calhoun's father, also named Boyd Jarrell, was managing editor in the 1960s.

As The Herald-Dispatch celebrates its 100th birthday today, Calhoun was one of several who reflected on the many ways the newspaper touched their lives and the Tri-State community.

Calhoun spent many evenings as a youth doing homework in The Herald-Dispatch or meeting her father on his quick break from work at nearby Jim's Restaurant."As a child of a newspaper man, I always felt like I had the inside track of what was going on in the world," she said. "Something would come over the AP wires before the rest of the world knew about it. We had a sense -- my family, my brother, and I -- of really having a window into the bigger world."

The newspaper business was very important to the Jarrell family. Her uncle, David Gideon Jarrell, was named after one of the newspaper's first publishers. He also worked in journalism, reporting for The Herald-Dispatch, the Washington Times-Herald, and the Dayton Journal-Herald.

Calhoun's time inside The Herald-Dispatch gave her a sense of the newsroom experience and the integrity of the business, she said.

"Our dinner table conversation also focused on the responsibility of a free press in a democracy, how important it is to get it right and how important it is for the open sharing of information. I grew up with that strong ethical sense of the role of a newspaper in the community," she said.

Calhoun's father was 13 years old when the elder Jarrell passed away. He went to work for The Herald-Dispatch as a copy boy soon after. Calhoun said he became an adult under the care of The Herald-Dispatch. He worked at the paper until 1972.

Pat Thompson Frantz, current president and publisher of The Herald-Dispatch, continues to be grateful for the dedication of so many employees and readers.

"As we begin to celebrate our 100th year anniversary, it's a perfect opportunity for me to thank our loyal readers and advertisers, and our outstanding employees. We thank all of you for making The Herald-Dispatch your community newspaper," she said. "We will continue to transform the ways we deliver the news and advertising to you, but to me the best definition of a good newspaper is a paper that reflects the community in conversation with itself. We look forward to many more years of good conversation."

For many years, what is now The Herald-Dispatch was actually two newspapers, The Herald-Dispatch and The Advertiser. The papers merged in 1979.

Staffs at the morning and afternoon papers worked in the same space on the third floor of 946 Fifth Ave. Competition within that office often drove the news, according to Don Hatfield, retired newspaper editor and publisher.

Hatfield, now 73, started working as a sports writer at the afternoon publication, The Advertiser, when he was 18 years old. During many of those years, the newsroom was divided.

"There was competition for the news between the papers. When I was managing editor of the afternoon paper, I told everyone that our motto would be 'Kick Hell out of The Herald,'" he said.

When the walls came down, Hatfield had to tell his staff to forget that old motto. He said becoming a "big, happy family" was not without challenges.

Tom D. Miller, now 70, also remembers the division.

"The thing that was most interesting to me was the competition," he said.

Miller's career also began as a sports writer for The Advertiser. He became a political reporter for both papers in the 1960s.

It was an interesting time in journalism, and Miller said his bosses had connections that sent him to places he wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Some of his most memorable experiences came from political coverage. He sat with playwright Arthur Miller in the VIP section at one political convention and was surrounded by "hippies" protesting in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. He also recalled protesters letting off a stink bomb in the hotel where he was staying.

"That's the closest I've ever come to getting hit with a billyclub by a police officer. They swung at everybody," he said.

But journalism wasn't always fun and exciting. A lot of breaking news was tragic.

Hatfield most remembers the 1970 Marshall plane crash, when 75 Marshall University football players, coaches and fans died in a crash on their way back from a game in North Carolina.

"I had almost 50 years in the newspaper business, but there's never been a time like the night of the Marshall plane crash," he said.

Ernie Salvatore was the executive sports editor at the time of the Marshall plane crash and said it was the biggest, most terrible story of his life. He remembers the evening before the crash as mundane.

"It was a typical Saturday night, football games all over the place. I had dinner downtown," he said. "It was routine. I got a phone call (saying) I better get back to the office. Then we heard the sirens start. I thought it was a fire or something."

Salvatore soon found out that a plane had crashed in neighboring Wayne County.

"We had a terrible feeling that it was probably the Marshall plane," he said.

He sent reporters and photographers to the site. He said Jack Hardin, a longtime writer for The Herald-Dispatch, was on the scene for 17 hours.

Hatfield said the tragedies often occurred near the end of shifts, when pages were ready to go to print. He also was working when John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy were shot.

"You tear up page one and you start all over and you shove to the back of your mind what tragedy has occurred," said Hatfield, who retired as a regional vice president for Gannett southwest newspapers in 2000.

Gannett Co. owned The Herald-Dispatch from 1971 to 2007, when GateHouse Media purchased the paper in May and sold it to Champion Industries months later. Prior to 1971, the paper was operated by the Long family until it was sold to the Honolulu Star Bulletin and then to Gannett 10 months later.

In the beginning, Floyd S. Chapman founded The Huntington Dispatch in 1904. The Herald and The Dispatch merged in 1909 to become The Herald-Dispatch. In 1927, the newspaper became a part of the Huntington Publishing Co. with Col. Joseph Harvey Long, the owner of The Huntington Advertiser. Col. Long came to Huntington in 1893 to purchase The Huntington Herald. He published The Herald for 18 months, sold it and then purchased The Advertiser.

Long's journalism legacy also lives on in his great-grandson Marcus Brauchli, who is executive editor of the Washington Post.

Brauchli visited Huntington and The Herald-Dispatch with his parents in 2003 to learn more about his family's history in journalism.

"I didn't know that much about it," he said in an interview this week.

Brauchli said he also learned of his roots in 1980 while he interned at the Parkersburg Sentinel. He learned that his great-grandfather helped to found a newspaper in Wheeling, W.Va., before taking over in Huntington.

"Apparently, my great-grandfather was a very talented man with the printing press," he said.

Brauchli himself started working for papers in the 1970s, writing his first paid story on the 1976 congressional campaign in Colorado. He said his interest in journalism was piqued following the Watergate scandal and the role newspaper reporting played in the investigation.

The important civic responsibilities of journalism attracted many young reporters at the Huntington newspapers, as well.

"I really felt that newspapers had to be tremendously responsible," Hatfield said. "I felt that we had an enormous trust given to us and that required the obligation of being fair, and above all else, being honest and truthful."

The Herald-Dispatch has a long tradition of working with young reporters. Both Hatfield and Miller joined the staff while in college at Marshall and were hired under Salvatore, who Miller said taught them a lot.

"He taught us how to develop our own angle," he said. "It turned into a real education for me as a junior in college."

Miller continues to write columns and freelance for the paper.

Former production manager Jerry Epling, 69, said the people were one of the best things about his job at The Herald-Dispatch. He said he loved working with young people, many of whom called him "Grandpa."

Epling started working for the newspaper in 1959 and remembers when making The Herald-Dispatch was all about manpower. The fourth floor of the building was once full of typesetting machines and people operating them, he said.

Epling said he always knew he wanted to be involved in newspapers and he felt lucky to be at The Herald-Dispatch.

"I was one of the few people who worked 44 years and every day was like going to a ball game. It was stressful at times, but it was always fun. Every day was a new challenge," he said.

Hatfield said The Herald-Dispatch has published a lot of great stories, but his most wonderful memories are of the staff.

"Great memories are the people you work with. I worked with an awful lot of really good people," he said.

Salvatore also said the job was fun. He started working for The Herald-Dispatch in 1948, covering everything from business and politics to crime and sports. He recalled a noisy newsroom with typewriters going nonstop, 35 deadlines a week, and pneumatic tubes sending copy.

Calhoun also remembers watching the newsroom tubes send stories to the typesetting machines.

"That was awfully exciting to see all those tubes whooshing around," she said.

Salvatore, now 87, said he was very fortunate to be part of the industry. He retired as executive sports editor in 1986.

"We smoked too much. We worked too hard. The pressure was terrible, but we didn't think it was terrible at the time," he said. "There was a lot of romance in journalism back then."

He said there's still a niche for the hard copy of newspapers, and he hopes print editions will always be around.

"I wish it was just starting again," Salvatore said.

Today's newsroom has its own excitement and challenges, said Ed Dawson, executive editor of The Herald-Dispatch.

"All the new technology means the news moves at an even faster pace, with breaking news updated throughout the day and delivered to readers online, as well as in print," he said. "And the focus more than ever is still on local news."

The Herald-Dispatch has a daily circulation of 27,600, a Sunday circulation of 32,200, but the newspaper also reaches thousands more through its Web site. Launched in 1998, www.herald-dispatch.com receives about 4 million online page views each month, with about 350,000 unique monthly visitors.

"We have a 100-year commitment to covering the news in our community," Dawson said. "And that's pretty inspiring every day."

The Herald-Dispatch

The Herald-Dispatch celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

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