Color snapshot of two men identified as Ray Baldwin Jr. & Wilbur Peterson, co-owners of the News Messenger, Daily Messenger, and Messenger, 1927-1947.

The following excerpt is from a bound book, “I Remember: Decade by Decade” by World War I veteran and one-time editor of the Marshall Messenger, Wilbur Peterson. Peterson was born in Marshall in 1898 and passed away in Nevada in 1988. Peterson also published his stories and letters from his service in the Army during World War I in books titled, “I Went to War” and “Solider WWI.”

I jumped into editing the Marshall Messenger with a lot of energy and initiative. For four years I had studied and read New York City papers, generally then considered the best papers in the country, and for two years I had been thoroughly imbued with the style of the New York Times. It seemed natural, therefore, to produce a miniature Times in Marshall, and as far as appearance and makeup went, that’s what I did as much as I could with the equipment and types that were available. From mostly small one-line headlines I went to a modified Times started an intensive personal coverage of the regular news sources in the town. This produced a much greater number of major local news stories than had appeared before I took over. I also started a personal column, called “How About It,” that ran on the editorial page, and adopted a policy of at least three-locally written editorials a week. Though we published only once a week then, it still was a rather ambitious policy. But I was full of work, and enjoyed it.

Before the 1920s ended four of us owned and interest in the newspaper. Ray Baldwin Jr. had finished at Oregon State University, and came in as business manager, his father was superintendent of the printing plant. As business was reasonably good, we decided to change our publication frequency to twice a week. That increased my part of the work considerably, though the amount of weekly coverage was about the same. Some sources though had to be covered twice a week, I had to do two personal columns, twice as many editorials, and write twice as many headlines. As before, I handled the main news stories, all the editing and headlines; one of the two girls in the office did the society news, the locals, and the obituaries.

The photograph featured this week from the Lyon County Museum’s collection shows Ray Baldwin Jr. and Wilbur Peterson. They owned the News Messenger, Marshall Messenger, and Daily Messenger from 1927 to 1947.

The Lyon County Historical Society (LCHS) is a nonprofit, member-supported organization. LCHS operates the Lyon County Museum at 301 West Lyon Street in Marshall. The Lyon County Museum is open year-round to visitors. To contact us, visit our website: www.lyoncomuseum.org, call: 507-537-6580, email: director@lyoncomuseum.org, or on our Facebook page.