A look back at newspaper competition in San Luis Obispo

Since Aug. 7, 1869, The Tribune has been printed in San Luis Obispo.

This week an announcement was made that it will now be printed at its sister paper, The Fresno Bee, in early June.

The Tribune news and advertising staff, as well as other business functions, will remain in San Luis Obispo County and will continue their mission as the city’s oldest continuous operating business: Delivering news and information valued by county readers.

As someone who has worked as both a carrier and a photographer at various newspapers, I would like to thank pressroom crews who have matched the commitment to gathering and sharing information with the commitment to making sure it reaches print.

Power failures, balky equipment and relentless deadlines are a few obstacles press crews overcome on a daily basis.

This won’t be the first time a San Luis Obispo newspaper was printed out of the county.

The San Luis Obispo Republic was partially printed in San Francisco. It launched Jan. 15, 1883. The outside pages were pre-printed and sent via ship to San Luis Obispo where the founders E.F. O’Neil, A. Pennington and G.W. Jenkins filled the inside pages with local news and advertising.

The local pages were printed in the same building that had formerly housed The Tribune from 1873 to 1877.

In 1905 the building was moved to Santa Barbara Street from the corner of Morro and Marsh streets and is the oldest wood-framed commercial building in the city.

The Republic changed journalism in the county. Though it was the youngest of three San Luis Obispo newspapers publishing at the time (the others were The Tribune and Mirror), it was the first daily newspaper.

The Tribune responded by increasing publication from weekly to daily as well, but the business plan was not well thought out, and The Tribune was forced to retreat to weekly publication.

In October 1886, Myron Angel invested in the Daily Republic after selling his half of The Tribune to Benjamin Brooks.

The Daily Republic hung on for a few years, but by Dec. 31, 1890, Angel decided to retire and left the paper in the care of C.B. Hughston. The new editor asked “friends and fellow citizens (to) give me a chance.”

There are no further records of the Daily Republic on microfilm at the SLO County Library.

Angel made two lasting contributions to the county.

In 1883, the same year Angel joined The Tribune, he wrote the “History of San Luis Obispo County California with Illustrations” – a nearly 400-page tome. The book is a valuable collection of news from the county’s early days.

Angel’s other lasting accomplishment was originating and aggressively promoting the idea that San Luis Obispo should have an institution of higher learning.

Both Brooks and Angel endorsed the idea of a state school on the pages of competing newspapers. The sense of community was apparent; other former editors of The Tribune served on support committees including Jacob K. Tuley and George Stainford.

Brooks successfully nursed The Tribune to financial health and made it a daily again.

During roughly the same time period that Cal Poly was born, Brooks was a leader in organizing the community to bring the Southern Pacific route through San Luis Obispo.

Brooks bested all competitors until he came up against Clarence Leonard Day, who in similar fashion to Brooks, bought a failing San Luis Obispo newspaper on the brink of financial ruin and turned it around. The Telegram became the dominant newspaper in the region.

The papers combined under one owner in 1925 and merged under one hyphenated Telegram-Tribune nameplate in 1939 (one that endured until 1999 when the newspaper changed its name back to The Tribune).

Economic models change; the first newspapers in the county sold only annual subscriptions and did not sell single copies on newsstands.

Over the years there has been always been a demand for quality sources of information, but only the nimble publications have survived the test of time.

Change has been the only constant.

This story was originally published April 3, 2015 at 6:30 PM with the headline "A look back at newspaper competition in San Luis Obispo."