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Generation after generation, they’ve chronicled the big events, but just as important, say their publishers, they’ve chronicled the little events.

The antique Linotype parked at the Marysville Journal-Tribune represents more than newspaper history. To Kevin Behrens, it represents family history. His great-grandfather Bruce Gaumer operated the typesetting machine 100 years ago.

“After hearing stories from people who knew my great-grandfather and talking to a handful of people who worked for my grandfather, it makes me appreciate continuing things,” says Behrens, 30, the newspaper’s general manager.

Family-owned newspapers such as the Journal-Tribune in Marysville, Ohio (pop. 15,942); the Cairo (Ga.) Messenger; and Rains County Leader in Emory, Texas—which all celebrate a century of family publishing this year—are rapidly disappearing across America as they are purchased by larger companies.

While some 725 of the nation’s daily newspapers were family-owned in 1976, the number dropped to 372 in 1990, and today only about 250 remain. And only a fraction of those newspapers have been published by the same family for a century or more.

Generation after generation, they’ve chronicled the big events, but just as important, say their publishers, they’ve chronicled the little events. The owners have grown up in the communities and feel a sense of place and obligation. They know their beat—hometown news.

“Sometimes I get flak over the local meanderings—who played euchre or bridge club—but people like that stuff,” Behrens says. “Our niche is the local market.”

Managing Editor Chad Williamson, 31, shepherds the Journal-Tribune’s newsroom of six. Five have hometown roots and all have worked at the newspaper for eight years or longer.

“This paper is less about bad news and more about bettering the community,” Williamson says. “We’re very mindful of the issues, but we lean heavily on the positive side.”

Behrens adds, “If it’s good for the community, we’re probably in favor of it, even if it doesn’t make money.”

Four summers ago, for example, when downtown shopping dried up during street repaving and sidewalk construction, the newspaper ran full-page notices with store names and hours and construction maps and dates. The newspaper nudged readers to support their downtown neighbors.

Printing and politics

In 1904, Gaumer bought the Union County Journal, then added the Marysville Tribune in 1950 and merged the two. Even earlier, Gaumer’s father, Dr. Thomas Gaumer, and his two brothers jumped into the printing and newspaper business in 1881.

“Back in the 1800s, these newspapers just changed hands back and forth every year or so,” says Editor and Publisher Dan Behrens, 60, and father of Kevin. “Someone would run it until his money ran out. Sometimes he’d buy it back later if he had money.”

Although Gaumer was a Democrat, he leaned conservative and didn’t spare newspaper words against President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s programs, such as the National Recovery Administration (NRA). To show compliance, employers publicly displayed the NRA’s blue-eagle symbol. One family story that still circulates is about the time a federal inspector visited Gaumer and asked the whereabouts of his NRA placard.

“Mr. Gaumer said, ‘It is in a prominent place’ and pointed behind his spittoon. Anything that didn’t hit the spittoon, hit the placard,” Dan Behrens says.

Editors with spit and fanciful writing—“Hotel of Pretentious Proportions Is Planned” screamed a 1904 headline—enlivened those early newspaper pages. Headlines came to life letter by letter plucked from type cases. In the early 1900s, Gaumer bought the Linotype, a typesetting marvel invented in 1886 and dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World” by Thomas Edison. With its keyboard, it could cast an entire line of type in the form of a solid hot-metal slug.

“When you were done with the paper that day, you’d drop all that type into a pot and melt it,” says Dan Behrens, who has performed almost every job at the paper. He and son Kevin both started their newspaper careers at age 8 as paperboys. Dan is also a magistrate judge and Kevin is the high school wrestling coach.

The Linotype has been silent since 1972, replaced by cold type or offset printing. The pages today are composed on computer and sent by Internet to the printer, yet one century-old habit remains. Near deadline, Williamson heads into Dan Behrens’ office and hands him a proof of the front page. Dan reaches for his pen.

“You’ll never eliminate all the mistakes, but you’ve got to have people still proofing the page,” he says.

Neighborly news

Getting everyone’s name spelled correctly is doubly important in towns where publishers typically know their neighbors. Local names and faces are golden to readers, says Earl Hill Jr., 65, publisher of the Rains County Leader in Emory, Texas (pop. 1,021). His grandfather Tom W. Hill Sr., bought the weekly in 1904. Nowadays, the paper has 3,000 subscribers.

“And, boy, if they don’t get their paper, they call up and let me know,” Hill says. “The local flavor and personal touch, more than anything, is what people like.”

Reading the Leader’s country correspondents is like having a front-porch chat with neighbors. “If anyone wants turnip greens, just come by my house,” writes Mary Bishop in an “Elm News” column. She further reports, “I found my pie dish. It was at Bertie Young’s house where I took her dinner in it, and I had forgotten about it.”

Those little happenings are especially big news at weeklies that don’t carry national news. A 1904 edition of the Messenger in Cairo, Ga., (pop. 9,239), carried news about Mrs. J. L. Paulk killing a fine turkey hen on the Ochlocknee River. A 2004 edition carried news about the 44th Whigham Rattlesnake Roundup where rattlers sold for $7 a foot.

“People like to read about their children and their grandchildren and relatives, and that’s what we give them,” says Publisher Randy Wind, 39, the fifth generation to appear on the newspaper’s masthead. His great-great-grandfather Fuller John Wind bought the newspaper in 1904.

The Messenger still prints its own newspaper, which is unusual for a small-town paper. Senior citizens and high school students converge each Wednesday to insert newspaper sections by hand.

Preserving the family newspaper legacy is more important than making money for some publishers.

“Sometimes I pay my employee more than the newspaper makes,” admits Andy Lewis, 51, publisher of the Woodville Republican in Woodville, Miss. (pop. 1,192). His great-grandfather, Capt. John South Lewis, bought the newspaper in 1879 and it is Mississippi’s oldest continuous business, established in 1824.

He stays afloat by running two businesses at his U-shaped desk. On the left is the computer for Lewis Insurance Agency and on the right is the computer for the Woodville Republican.

“When I was a little boy on press day, Daddy would call me in and I’d hand-fold the newspapers,” recalls Lewis, adding: “It’s kind of nice to stick your chest out and boast that your family has been serving the community longer than anyone.”

Back in Ohio, as a pledge to the next generation, the owners of the Marysville Journal-Tribune and three other nearby family-owned newspapers formed a partnership and built a $7 million central printing plant in 2000.

“Each of us had work to do on our own presses and we were going to have to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars,” Kevin Behrens says. “Our families have known each other for several generations and were good enough friends that it’s worked.”

The partners are the Kenton Times, the Bellefontaine Examiner, owned by the Hubbard family since 1891, and the Delaware Gazette. The Delaware Gazette is America’s oldest family newspaper, owned since 1834 by Abram Thomson and his descendants.

As it begins a second century of service, the Journal-Tribune is printed by state-of-the-art presses, but great-grandfather Gaumer’s publishing philosophy still guides.

He wrote the slogan 100 years ago that still rings true on the newspaper’s flag: “If it’s for the good of Marysville and Union County . . . We’re for it!”

Family Publishing Legacies

American newspapers owned and operated by the same family for a century or more are exceedingly rare. Below is a partial list of papers handed down through two to six generations and their years of family publishing.

170 years

• Delaware (Ohio) Gazette

153 years

• Dixon (Ill.) Telegraph

140 years

• Rome (N.Y.) Sentinel

137 years

• Southern Star, Ozark, Ala.

127 years

• The Chronicle, Willimantic, Conn.

125 years

• Woodville (Miss.) Republican

123 years

• Capital Journal, Pierre, S.D.

122 years

• Iola (Kan.) Register

121 years

• Anniston (Ala.) Star
• Vicksburg (Miss.) Post

120 years

• Sonoma (Calif.) Index-Tribune

118 years

• Warren (Minn.) Sheaf

117 years

• News-Gazette, Lexington, Va.

114 years

• Hampshire Review, Romney, W.Va.
• St. Bernard Voice, Arabi, La.

113 years

• Bellefontaine (Ohio) Examiner

112 years

• Montgomery County News, Hillsboro, Ill.
• Randolph Leader, Roanoke, Ala.

111 years

• Morgan Messenger, Berkeley Springs, W.Va.

110 years

• Breeze-Courier, Taylorville, Ill.

108 years

• Emporia (Kan.) Gazette

107 years

• Bakersfield (Calif.) Californian

106 years

• Transcript-Bulletin, Tooele, Utah

102 years

• Harrodsburg (Ky.) Herald
• 101 years
• Butler (Pa.) Eagle
• Glencoe (Minn.) Enterprise
• Journal-Herald, White Haven, Pa.
• Mooreland (Okla.) Leader
• The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, Okla.

100 years

• Cairo (Ga.) Messenger
• Marysville (Ohio) Journal-Tribune
• Rains County Leader, Emory, Texas

Marti Attoun is a frequent contributor.

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