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"YOUNG" PAPERS THAT ACTUALLY ARE OLD ment rather unique in journalistic annals, the paper was purchased by two Kanab High School students, J. G. Spencer and Will Dobson. The ambitious young men soon became victims of their own editorial assertiveness and were forced to sell when advertising dwindled to a pittance. The buyers, a local group, chose not to continue the paper but simply stored the equipment. Six years later, in 1910, Dobson secured a small job press, some type and created The Lone Cedar. It didn't do well and the following year Charles H. Townsend bought it, changed its name to the Kane County News and soon developed a prosperous publication. His error in judgement was adoption of a strong anti-Mormon editorial policy which was squelched when William W. Seegmiller, both a Stake President and a State Senator, organized a company which bought Townsend's property. There was evidently no "non-compete" clause in the purchase agreement, for Townsend began the Kane County Independent only four months later on March 14, 1912. Two years of bitter competition ensued, with the Independent finally being sold at auction to satisfy a judgement granted Western Newspaper Union, the principal creditor. The News was high bidder and thus the survivor. It was thereafter edited by D. D. Rust, Jack Borlase, a tinderbox editorialist, and, beginning in May, 1916, by the still-ambitious Will Dobson. He presided at its burial a year later, leaving the town without a newspaper. The Kane County Standard, which later became the Southern Utah News, began June 28, 1929 with Arthur W. Francis the publisher and Rose H. Hamblin, a Kanab housewife, the editor. The publication may well hold the Utah record for number of publishers -- no less than 23 over a 64-year period. Three months after its founding, Will J. Peters acquired the paper, Mrs. Hamblin continuing as its editor. Peters owned the Garfield County News at Panguitch and produced the Kanab paper in that plant. After his death, November 11, 1929, his widow, Elnora Mae, became the publisher, finally selling on April 16, 1937 to George R. Swain, who returned 87 |
