Born To Be a Newspaper Man

by Martin J. McGowan Jr.

The Monitor and News

My uncle, Joe McGowan, was the longtime publisher of the Swift County Monitor at Benson. Eventually he acquired a competitive paper, the Swift County News, and ran the two papers as twin weeklies, the News on Tuesday and the Monitor on Fridays. He did very well with them.

What made him most successful was to acquire the contract to print the Minnesota Legionnaire, the paper for the American Legion in Minnesota. To do that with its large circulation he bought a rotary press fed from long rolls of paper. This was the only press of its kind in the area and also among weekly papers.

Joe added to all this by becoming Benson postmaster. He was a delegate to the Democratic national convention in 1936. He was an avid golfer, headed the Benson Golf club and had a park named in his honor at the golf course.

Joe was not the editorial writer my father was. I don't believe Joe wrote many editorials. He was quite busy with other affairs. If he did write any editorials they seemed to have been approved by his. Wife, Mary.

There were two times when there was a bit of editorial controversy between my father and Joe. The first time was during World War II. There was a contest between Appleton and Benson to see who could raise the most scrap metal for the war effort. I forget who won but the contest became quite spirited.

The second time was over the matter of a hospital in Benson, which was to be a county hospital. Appleton already had a hospital and citizens there did not see why they should be taxed to support a hospital in Benson. This intra-county rivalry was of long standing. Appleton people did not shop in Benson. They went to Montevideo. About the only time they had anything in common was in high school football and basketball. The battle over the hospital became so heated that there was discussion of the six western townships in Swift county, including Appleton, seceding from the county. The editorials in the two town papers became white heated. As I recall a compromise was worked out so Appleton didn't have to be taxed for the Benson county hospital.

All Joe's success created a certain amount of envy among his brothers. There was almost no socialization among them with Joe. My Dad, as the senior member of the family, got along with all of them. We had some very pleasant visits in Benson with Joe and Mary and their family. My stepmother Elizabeth and Mary enjoyed each other very much.

There was one matter on which my father disagreed with Joe. That was the matter of the county printing. The law states that each year the county commissioners must call bids for the printing of county legal notices and proceedings of meetings for the year. These bids are supposed to be competitive but in many cases the publishers of the county get together and take turns. The one who is to get the bid will submit the low bid while the other papers will submit higher bids. This may not be totally legal but the commissioners know what is going on and they like to see the work spread around.

There are four newspapers in Swift county, the Appleton Press, the Swift County Monitor and the Swift County News at Benson and the Kerkhoven Banner. My Dad claimed there may be four newspapers but only three offices. Therefore he felt there should be only three in the rotation. Joe said there are four papers and he claimed two of the turns to publish. My Dad never convinced Joe to agree and they finally agreed to disagree.

By 1950 Joe's heart was acting up and he decided to sell out and retire. He sold to Harry Davey who worked for Walter Barnes at Sleepy Eye. Barnes was the man who eventually acted as a broker in my purchase of the Blue Earth Post. Joe went on to Tucson, AZ., where he enrolled in the University of Arizona with his daughter, Mary Jo. Again Joe was a success. He concluded his studies by writing a paper on the long staple cotton industry of Arizona, which became sort of the Bible for the industry.

Harry was a fine man and a good newspaper man. He had a sense of humor and put out fine papers. The only problem with us was that he was a Republican but he was a moderate one. There was no intra-county rivalry and we all got along well.

Harry had a quirk that when he became nervous he would pluck his eyebrows. One day he came to see me and I could tell he was nervous because he was plucking his eyebrows. He said he understood a radio station was going to start operating in Benson and he was concerned what effect this might have on his business, particularly in sales of advertising. I tried to console him and said that if he continued to put out a good paper he would do all right. That proved to be the case.

By 1960 Harry was considering a move up to a larger paper. He had his eye on the International Falls Daily Journal, a five day daily. I asked Harry that if he was going to sell the Benson operation that he give me a chance to buy.

I began to arrange financing for a purchase of the Benson operation where the price was $100,000. I went to Esko Ranta, my attorney, and asked if he had any suggestions. He said that one of the large banks in the Twin Cities had created a new department for loaning money for small business ventures.

I went to see the man in charge who turned out to be an older man, possibly near retirement, who was given this job as something to do. He was in a small, bare office and I laid out my proposal. Either this banker liked me since he seemed to want to help me. However, the terms were rather steep, payments of $2,000 per month at a rather high rate of interest for those days. I was eager to make the deal and it was made. I became publisher of the Benson papers in October, 1960.

This happened just before the 1960 general election. The editorial policy of the Monitor changed overnight and I endorsed John F. Kennedy for president.

I didn't take a salary from the Monitor and News. I put all the income into paying for the papers. I tried to play a part in laying out the front page but with a paper in Appleton and a family there my time was spread quite thin. I did win some awards for typography and layout for the Monitor, apparently the first such awards received by the paper. There was no evidence of such awards displayed when I arrived. I also joined the Kiwanis club in Benson and tried to attend their meetings. This caused some ruffled feathers at Appleton where I was also a Kiwanis member. The two clubs joshed about where my membership belonged. I was spread more thinly during the 1961 legislative session. I could barely touch bases on a weekend at both Appleton and Benson and trust on great staff members to perform their duties-which they did.

I finally decided to attend a newspaper conference at Northern Illinois University where sessions were offered on newspaper finances. There I met Bob Shaw, who became a good friend and later manager of the Minnesota Newspaper Association. At the conference I was advised I was spread too thin and what I was doing was not feasible and not viable economically. So I had to make some decisions. Should I sell Appleton and move to Benson to concentrate my efforts there? My aim had always been to acquire a larger county seat paper. But to leave Appleton, my home town, would be wrenching.

I wrote to Joe in Tucson to ask if he would consider renegotiating the balance of the contract. He wrote back a very sharp letter telling me he would not consider it and berating me for even asking. I wrote back saying that a simple no would suffice and I didn't expect to get chewed out for asking.

The matter was settled for me when Ron Anfinson, my editor there, said he had to move on to a better job. I asked if he would like to buy the Benson papers.

He sounded interested and he got together with Jim Kinney, who had been an editor for both Joe and Harry, but who had bought the Glenwood paper. We made a deal whereby I sold it to them in 1962 for what I paid for it. I made a bit on the deal based on what I had paid off in two years. I returned to my legislative duties and the Appleton Press, until I sold that paper in 1965.

There are a couple postscripts to all this. One is that the Anfinson merged the News into the Monitor to make one weekly paper. This made sense if the tabloid News wasn't paying its way. The same thing happened in Blue Earth after I left there. The subsequent owner merged the Winnebago and Elmore papers into the Blue Earth paper. This also made sense to save on paper, printing cost and postage and still cover the same area.

The other postscript related to Harry. After he retired from the International Falls paper he moved to Brainerd to live with his second wife. He was writing a column in the Lake Country Echo in Pequot Lakes when we arrived there. Harry's memory went bad and he had to stop writing. At about that time I began writing county board news and news of two area communities in the Echo.

When the Pequot Lakes barber called me one night to tell me not to darken his door again because of what I wrote in the Echo about gun control, I asked Harry about a barber. He recommended the one he went to in Brainerd. Later this barber told me that one time Harry started to drive to his shop and forgot the way. He had to go home and start over.

As Harry's memory faded he went into a nursing home. I visited him there in a dark room alone. I took his hand and he recognized me but we didn't visit long. It was a sad parting.

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