EXTRA! EXTRA!: SOUTHEAST MISSOURI PRESS ASSOCIATION CELEBRATES CENTURY OF NEWSPAPER WORK

"Don't get excited, gentlemen, because a newspaper sees fit to criticize your public acts. That's what we are holding office for, to be criticized; and that's what we are conducting a newspaper for, to criticize officeholders and public women. We are here to stay in office until we are voted out and in the newspaper business till we are starved out. We are for self first, the Lord next, and then the people, and `agin' the Devil and Grover Cleveland all the time."

Ben Adams, The Cape Girardeau Democrat

Oct. 28, 1893

In 1893, publishers and printers from newspapers throughout Southeast Missouri joined together to form the Southeast Missouri Press Association, dedicated to helping newspapers grow and better serve their communities.

Newspaper people from Southeast Missouri will gather Saturday for the 100th meeting of the association, continuing that tradition of service to the community.

The first meeting of the association was held in Poplar Bluff. Little is known about the gathering, except that it started a strong tradition in Southeast Missouri.

At Saturday's meeting, a book containing the minutes from the early meetings through the 1980s will be presented to the regional archives, housed at Kent Library on the Southeast Missouri State University campus.

The minutes reflect the hardships and triumphs of these early newspaper people; the changes in technology from handset type to computers; and the great number of issues faced during the early years, which are still faced by newspapers today.

The minutes and a series of scrapbooks concerning the newspapers in Southeast Missouri have been zealously guarded by Mildred Wallhausen, 78, whose family has operated the Charleston Enterprise-Courier since 1936.

The scrapbooks highlight the people behind the newspapers. Wallhausen said it started as she began clipping stories about her friends in the business, and it grew from there.

"I was interested in the people involved and the people who helped make the newspapers in the Bootheel," Wallhausen said. And she said, those newspapers helped build the Bootheel.

"When my husband (the late Art Wallhausen) told his parents he was coming to Southeast Missouri, they said it was a mistake to come to this swampy, mosquito-infested part of the state," Wallhausen said. "But he saw potential here.

"My husband never cared who got the glory, but he would get behind an issue and push and shove until something happened," she said. "We love the people and love the community."

Wallhausen's children, grandchildren and even her 2-year-old great-grandson, who runs copy from the computer printer, have followed in the newspaper tradition.

"As newspaper people, we have to have one foot in the past and one foot in the future," Wallhausen said.

In the early days, publishers and printers attended the Southeast Missouri Press Association meetings by train. Roads throughout the areas were bad; cars didn't exist. Carriages met them at the train station.

In 1897, the publishers toasted "the swamp angels," who were the ladies who attended the meetings.

In 1899, publishers discussed issues including, "Does the press of today lead or follow?" and "Just to Fill Up," a discussion of bad habits editors fall into. At the meeting, "cigars and punch were served," the minutes note.

In 1904, the group attended the St. Louis World's Fair for their annual meeting.

Bringing in the press association meeting was a coup for a town; it meant an influx of 100 or more people. Towns planned events to lure the meeting.

At the 1908 meeting in Cape Girardeau, "Sunday morning, the motor car on the Houck road was placed at the disposal of the editors."

In 1913, the meeting was held in Marble Hill and a lavish party was held.

"It was the first time many of the editors had visited Marble Hill and Lutesville," the minutes note. "They found both places thriving and clean, morally and physically."

The winter meeting of 1915 "was changed by unanimous vote. It was argued by several members that the day after Thanksgiving usually found so many publishers laid out from holiday feasting or drinking or visiting mothers-in-law that attendance was impossible for them."

At the 1918 meeting, "the attention of Southeast Missouri be directed to the fact that in the process of reconstruction (from World War I) through which the world is now passing, this nation has been called upon to carry to all the world the twin lights of education and real Christianity and that the work of reconstruction must be that `I am my brother's keeper' in its best application."

During the same year, members discussed concerns about rising postal rates, a concern echoed today.

In the 1930s, publishers discussed the impact of radio on newspapers. In the 1970s, the discussion focused on cable television.

The minutes include numerous resolutions, approved by the association in hopes of keeping the ideals of journalism and service to community alive.

In 1927, members resolved: "Make your advertising columns independent of the editorial columns and do not let one influence the other; build up prestige for your paper, because readers usually have the same attitude towards advertisement as they have for the mediums in which they appear; avoid free publicity, or puffs, for no man will pay for something that he can get for nothing."

Allen Black, former owner and publisher of the Malden Press, will speak at the anniversary meeting Saturday. Black started his newspaper in 1950.

"I didn't have any money to buy one, so I started my own," Black said. "I was just out of college and had the yearning to have a weekly newspaper. I looked around the area for a good community where the opposition was not all that great. That's why I chose Malden."

Black said, "In a community newspaper in a small town, you are sort of the mirror that reflects the community and the community watchdog. But you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. I've seen communities lose newspapers and it's a heart-breaking experience, and yet they don't particularly appreciate you when you're here."

But newspaper publishers stay at it.

In 1971, members of the association passed a resolution: "We stand as guardians of truth and light. In local affairs, especially, our readers have no other place to turn for help in knowing about their city and county government, their schools, their hospitals and other public institutions, and their law enforcement agencies.

"If we shirk our duties to our readers because `someone might take offense' with a story which should and must be reported on, we abdicate our position in the newspaper field and become advertising pieces. We stop pushing and nagging our town to grow and improve. We tell our readers that we don't have the courage to do our jobs."