JACKSON NEWSPAPER BEGINS 125TH YEAR

JACKSON -- Newspaper content changed a lot during the past century.

In the old days, editors ran poetry on the front page, and if someone called someone else a scalawag, there it was in black and white.

There weren't so many lawsuits then.

Nobody in Cape Girardeau County knows newspaper history like the staff of The Cash-Book Journal, a weekly paper in Jackson. Their office basement is filled with copies from as far back as the late 1800s.

The publication is so much a part of Jackson that Mayor Paul Sander declared this week Cash-Book Journal Week.

Owner and publisher Gerald Jones attributes his newspaper's longevity to making community news a priority. Little space is given to state or national news unless it affects Jackson.

"Other newspapers will certainly cover the big, controversial stories in Jackson, but what about the church supper and committee meetings?" Jones said. "Larger newspapers don't have space and television doesn't have time. We've found our niche."

Editor David Bloom, who doubles as a reporter, said he feels spread a little thin sometimes, trying to cover all of Jackson's activities with only two reporters. Still, he rarely says no to someone who calls with a story or photo suggestion.

W.L. Malone began the newspaper's history of local coverage in 1871 with The Missouri Cash-Book. A year later, Jones Drug, Jackson's second-oldest business, opened. Every other business in existence then is gone.

Even the Cash-Book had shaky times. There was competition in the early part of this century. J.G. and Fred Kies operated The Jackson Items and a German-language newspaper called The Deutscher Volksfreund. They merged the two papers into the bilingual Cape County Post.

The newspaper stopped being bilingual Aug. 29, 1919, when a group of anti-Germans gathered at the office and threatened to destroy all the German type.

The Cape County Post and The Cash-Book Journal merged in 1962 when John Hoffman bought both of them, creating The Jackson Pioneer. About the same time, Ward Denman began publishing the Jackson Journal.

Wayne Freeman bought the Pioneer and christened it the Post and Cash-Book, which Marvin Proffer and Joyce Peerman bought in 1967. In 1970, they joined with publishers of newspapers in Chaffee, Perryville and Charleston.

Publisher Jones became a part of Cash-Book history when he purchased the Jackson Journal from Gary Rust. Proffer, who had become the sole owner of the Post Cash-Book, merged with Jones in January 1977.

Once again, Jackson's only newspaper was The Cash-Book Journal. Jones became its sole owner in 1984.

The newspaper's circulation is more than 8,300 and is published every Wednesday.