of April 20, 1866, occurs a brief account of an attack by A. M. Burns, master of the steamship Orizaba, on "D. C. Ireland, Esq., local reporter of the Oregonian, on Couch's wharf." An item the next day in the same paper told of a fine of $50 and costs paid by the reporter's assailant, who had resented some uncomplimentary personal references in the paper.
Another Oregonian printer who furnished items for the paper in addition to "sticking type" at the case was John F. Damon, wellread, highly educated, who had set up the works of Emerson and other writers of the Concord group in a New England publishing house. Mr. Himes says nothing of the quality of the news turned in by Damon but recalls him as one of the best printers he ever saw at work. Damon, who later moved to Seattle and became more widely known as "the marrying parson" than he had ever been in journalism, used to set four columns of the old 9-point in which much of the news was set, without making a single error. This 9-point was known as Bourgeois (pronounced Burjoice, not Boor-zhwa.)
An editor under whom Ireland worked while reporting-though in those days reporters were pretty much self-starters and "city editing" was not well developed-was Amory Holbrook. When Holbrook quit in 1864, Damon asked and received permission to do some of the editorial writing.[1]
Getting back to reporters, the next newsgatherer on the Oregonian after Ireland was C. P. Crandall, who had been doing some special writing on the Oregon Statesman for Asahel Bush. Bush had printed the Oregon Archives, which L. F. Grover had been appointed by the legislature to prepare for publication, but the main body of this work was done by Mr. Crandall, who had come to Oregon in 1852.
Another Oregonian reporter of the mid-sixties was U. E. Hicks, one of two Oregon men (the other was D. V. Craig) who taught the young Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) to set type in a Hannibal (Mo.) newspaper office.
Neither Crandall nor Hicks left any particular impress on the Oregonian. Crandall is better known in connection with Salem papers.
By 1869 the name of John M. Baltimore appeared in the Portland city directory as local editor of the Evening Commercial—which means, probably, that he was on that job in '68. After a year spent as a partner in West & Co., a firm of collectors and real estate agents Baltimore, in 1872, went to the Oregonian as a reporter. For the next eight years he was in charge of what local reporting was done on the Oregonian. He could be called "city editor."[2]
On returning to Portland from San Francisco after two years, he became city editor of the Telegram, a position he held for three or four years. For a time he was dramatic critic on the Oregonian and the Telegram.
