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THE UTAH NEWSPAPER HALL OF FAME use of choice expletives and the day's slang - reflect a skill perhaps not born of textbooks, yet not far removed from the more highly trained practitioners of modern day journalism. Before his 19th birthday, Huish had moved from his home community to Eureka, then a bustling, rather wide open mining town in the center of what would become one of the world's largest silver-producing areas. That he was attracted there solely by prospects of a journalistic career is unlikely. More probably he was lured to an area where employment opportunities were greater than in the farming oriented, less prosperous communities along the Wasatch mountain front. Through a friendship he developed with the Fitch family, one of the Tintic district's more prosperous mining groups, Huish was able to lease promising tracts of land, which he hired miners to work for him. While none proved to be a bonanza, he helped finance his initial newspapering efforts from their profits. In that time, before the turn of the century, there were three Eureka newspapers. One was the Tintic Miner, established in 1891 and operated during the following decade by four successive owners. Competitors were the Eureka Democrat and the Juab County Republican, both founded in 1894. In the opinion of J. Cecil Alter, an analyst of early Utah journalism, both were produced in the same plant and by the same staff. That wasn't unique in a day when political feelings ran high and the party in power frequently controlled at least one of an area's newspapers. Huish pulled Eureka's journalistic fortunes together on November 1, 1900, when the Eureka Weekly Reporter was born. The three predecessor papers disappeared and the Reporter became the community's voice. Eighty years later, it continues to be. Although the 1900 masthead indicates Huish was the secretary and three other Eureka citizens held offices in the publishing corporation, Mr. Alter wryly observes, "The real editor, publisher and proprietor, Mr. Huish, only hoisted these names to the masthead temporarily for political and business 557 |
