in behalf of the Southern Pacific, sent Evans there to write a series of articles on that interesting region. Evans remained and got his journalistic vision.
His building, planned by newspaper experts, was such an architectural triumph for newspaper purposes that 24 years later the Evening Herald moved in and occupied it, in the summer of 1936. It was hailed as the best thing of the kind between Sacramento and Portland. The total investment was estimated at close to $300,000. Evans was in supreme control.
The paper was sensational in makeup and content, forcing the more conservative Evening Herald for a time out of its quiet and dignity. It was a seven-column, four-page paper, with six pages on big advertising days and even eight on occasion. To print this paper Evans installed four linotypes and a perfecting press, requiring stereotyped plates. The circulation, claimed at 1400, never really exceeded half that figure.
The whole period of the Evans regime was marked by sensational warfare with the Herald and the police department, and frenzied news and editorials in general. The Herald sometimes would meet Evans head-on; at other times it would be whimsically sarcastic. "Gee, it must be great to be crazy, Sam," the Herald would say. Or, referring to his liquor-dealing backers in California, "For get expense," says Sam, "as long as the whiskey business is good."
Evans was as lavish in his personal expenses as in his publication outlay. He was generous to his friends. But the balance wheel was lacking. Finally the plant was attached for debt, Evans left town, and the Herald was alone in the field. The tortoise had beaten the hare.
The eccentricity of the Northwestern apparently is to be laid entirely at the door of the young publisher. He really had a pretty competent staff. Among those who assisted him on the morning daily were Vance Hutchins, experienced newspaperman, who made good on several other newspapers, large and small; Fred Fleet, later a most competent city editor on other Klamath papers; and Philip Sinnott, a good young reporter who later became Pacific Coast chief of NEA, national feature and pictures syndicate.
Sinnott, incidentally, moved over to the Herald before the Northwestern suspended. He contrasts the extravagance of the Northwestern with the conservatism of W. O. Smith's Herald, and describes oddities of the Northwestern's last days (157):
. . . with two dailies against him, and a boycott on top of that, Smith and his small crew "sawed wood." They cut corners, doubled in each others' jobs where it would help and despite a fine plant and a larger staff at the Northwestern, kept working away. In time the boycott was forgotten. Both
