Sweet Home Newspaper History

Intermountain Tribune 1913 - 1914 Weekly	In 1913 T. L. Dugger moved the physical plant and newspaper operations of the Lebanon Tribune to Sweet Home and began the Intermountain Tribune. Dugger's newspaper fared little better in Sweet Home and in 1914 he moved to plant to Scio. During Dugger's brief stay in Sweet Home the town gained a reputation for being an "oasis" in "dry" Linn County. In early 1914 the city granted the town's only saloon license to Vance Blodgett. The saloon didn't last much longer than the Tribune.

New Era 1929 - current Weekly	The Sweet Home New Era, successor of several newspaper ventures in this field, was started in September 1929 by G. H. Crusen as a 6-column 4-page paper, for which the subscriber was charged $1.50 a year. It was here that the late Mrs. O. Feigum, wide-eyed country correspondent, always interested and often astonished, did her picturesque work—this lover of nature and chronicler of the first robins, trilliums, etc., who was made famous by Ben Hur Lampman and Ed Miller of the Oregonian through editorial recognition and special interviews. Mrs. Feigum told Sunday Editor Miller that she got her tips by listening in on the rural party lines. The next publisher of the New Era was John T. Russell, who fought to keep his town from being drowned out of existence by one of the proposed great dams of the Willamette valley project. Russell was a colorful journalist, having been a newspaper publisher in Ohio before coming to Oregon in 1909. In 1936 Dave MacMillian joined Russell as a partner. MacMillian briefly assumed ownership of the paper in 1939,then turned it back to Russell in 1940. The Russells continued publication of the New Era until the fall of 1946. Subsequent publishers were William L. Dudley and A. E. Macoubrie, 1946-1970, John & Jack Nelson, Connie Johnson, and David O. Cooper.