History of Newspaper Publishing in Oklahoma

Newspaper publishing in Oklahoma can be separated chronologically by territorial and statehood titles. What is currently the State of Oklahoma was broken down into two territories prior to statehood in 1907: Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory. Indian Territory was an unorganized territory of the United States which served as the exclusive "Home of the Red Man" until 1889. It was during this era of tribal sovereignty and the experiment in Indian self-determination that the newspaper traditions of the future State began.

It was also during this time that the first newspaper, the Cherokee Advocate, began publication in September of 1844. This paper migrated with the Cherokee Indians from Georgia and was published as the official organ of the tribal government and a dispenser of missionary and agricultural matter. It was printed in English on two pages, with a Cherokee language version printed on the other two pages. Only three other papers appeared in Indian Territory before the Civil War, and all were organs of either mission schools or Indian tribes. By the first land opening to white settlement in 1889, twenty-eight newspapers had been published.

Oklahoma Territory was opened in 1889 to settlers, and the newspaper industry began to boom for the pioneers. Some papers were published in the backs of wagons and moved from town to town starting the day after the first land run. After towns became established, papers in numbers well out of proportion to population needs were established in scores of small towns. From 1889 to 1907, a war between towns vying for the County Seat (as the certainty of statehood drew near), encouraged the growth of newspapers. Also during this time, entire communities were established by groups from foreign countries including Germans, Czechoslovakian, and Norwegian.

When these two territories were joined by statehood in 1907, more than 1500 different newspapers had appeared in Oklahoma, all within a span of less than twenty years. Several of these early sheets endorsed minor political parties, served large ethnic populations, or were published by non-whites. Among the politically active people in the State were supporters of the Socialist Party, which in a relatively brief period of time successfully elected several local and state officials. Most communities had at least three different papers (despite the population of the town): one democratic, one republican, and one independent paper.

Cordell News in German

In 1910, three years after statehood, 36.5% of the non-Indian population of the State spoke German. Concentrated in the north-central and western portions of Oklahoma, persons of German descent formed a large and influential ethnic group which began publishing newspapers and other periodicals in German. At least ten different German papers appeared between 1893 and 1935. In addition, at least one Czechoslovakian and one Norwegian newspaper were published during this time period.

African-American newspapers were even more numerous than either Socialist or foreign language papers. African-Americans were among the earliest settlers in the region. After the Civil War, several American communities appeared with their own newspapers, often in competition with each other. Curry Ballard of Langston University has identified 78 newspapers owned and edited by African-Americans in Oklahoma between 1889 and 1930.

The variety of papers in the State was short-lived, however.Boomerism quickly gave way to the sobering economics of limited subscribers and struggling advertisers. Many of the pioneering weeklies and dailies suspended operations as rapidly as they began.

Through the years following statehood, newspapers in Oklahoma generally followed national trends in journalism. The number of papers declined significantly during World War I. Many dailies and weeklies quietly disappeared or were absorbed through consolidations. Weekly editions of dailies, already declining before the war, tended to disappear from all but the healthiest of markets. By 1926, only 51 daily and 354 weekly newspapers continued publication in Oklahoma. Only nine cities boasted more than one paper, and fifty-two reported more than one weekly paper. Fifteen years later, on the eve of another world war, the sum of newspapers had fallen from 405 to 374 papers (although the number of daily papers increased from 51 to 62).

The number of newspapers published continued to decline following World War II, with most of the loss occuring among weekly publications. This was mainly due to a population shift from rural to urban communities. By 1961, only 276 papers (including 51 dailies) continued to be published. Twenty-one years later, the total number stood at 203, only slightly more than one-half of the sum in 1926. According to the Oklahoma Press Association, 225 papers are currently being published (177 weekly, and 48 daily papers). These statistics do not include college or university newspaper.

Oklahoma Historical Society

The Oklahoma Historical Society has served as the centralized repository for records dealing with the history of Oklahoma since before statehood, and has the largest collection of newspaper titles on microfilm. The newspaper collection currently consists of about 4000 titles on approximately 30,000 reels of microfilm (of which 25,167 reels were produced in-house.) It has the oldest, largest, and most complete collection of newspapers available within the State.

According to the Constitution of the OHS as listed in Article II, "...the purpose of the Society is to conduct activities in a manner which shall serve 'to preserve and to perpetuate the history of Oklahoma and its people'...by collecting, interpreting and disseminating knowledge of Oklahoma and the Southwest...." The OHS maintains several Divisions for this purpose including the Museums and Sites Divisions, the Library Resources Division, and the Archives and Manuscripts Division.

Newspaper Preservation in Oklahoma

The newspaper collection of the Research Division of the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) ranks as the foremost repository of newspapers in Oklahoma, largely as a result of a close and long-term relationship between the OHS and newspaper publishers throughout the State. The OHS was actually formed in 1893 by members of the Oklahoma Territory Press Association for the purpose of preserving newspapers. They knew that Oklahoma would eventually become a state and that the documents being printed would allow them a rare opportunity to preserve the history from the first day of settlement.

Although the OHS became a territorial agency in 1895 and a state agency in 1907, the relationship between the Oklahoma Press Association )OPA) was continued under the guardianship of the first two curators: W.P. Campbell and Will T. Little. These former newspaper editors dominated the OHS for the first twenty or more years. As a result of their efforts and belief in preserving newspapers, by 1950 the OHS housed over 30 million pages of newsprint in their collection. In exchange for OHS publications, editors mailed issues of their newspapers to the OHS, and are continuing to do so.

In 1957, the State Legislature appropriated funds to begin microfilming the bound volumes of these newspapers. This project continued on a regular basis, and more funds were allotted by the legislature in 1982 to maintain the program. In 1985, a Noble Grant was procured, which allowed the production of 336 additional rolls of film to be added to the collection. To date, the newspaper collection of the OHS consists of 25,167 rolls of microfilm which have been produced in-house.

In 1992, the OHS was awarded funds by the National Endowment for the Humanities to begin the implementation phase of the Oklahoma Newspaper Project.This project was funded for three years (with an extension of $150,000. for an additional year) in order to locate, retrieve, microfilm, and catalog all newspapers of the State of Oklahoma. According to the planning phase, approximately 88% of all newspapers published were already preserved on microfilm. It is the goal of the Oklahoma Newspaper Project to retrieve as much of the remaining 12% as available, and to preserve them before they are lost for all time.

Bibliographic Control of Newspapers

Several attempts have been made over the years to gain some type of bibliographic control over the vast number of incoming newspapers at the Oklahoma Historical Society. Beginning in 1957, the first two weeks of each month were spent microfilming the most current papers, with the remainder of the month dedicated to microfilming the oldest newspapers. These were done on a county-by-county basis.

Inventory Cards

Master inventory cards were compiled after each roll of microfilm was completed. The information entered on the cards was taken from the daily worksheets of the microfilm operators. These worksheets indicated missing issues as well as complete volumes. Hash marks were used to indicate the beginning and ending of each roll, and dates missing were marked on each card. After comparing the cards with the actual microfilm during the inventory procedure over the last three years, approximately 50% of the cards correctly reflect the content of each reel.

Microfilm Catalog

In 1987, the Archives and Manuscripts Division of the OHS ( now the OHS Research Division) compiled a listing of the newspapers held in the collection. Because no staff member could devote full-time to the project, the work was to be completed in three stages. The first stage was to catalog the titles published before 1911. The data was first entered into a computer database (DBASE III), then sorted data was transferred to a document in WordPerfect. The catalog was divided into four categories: 1) Oklahoma newspapers by county; 2) non-Oklahoma newspapers filmed from the OHS collection; 3) Oklahoma newspapers purchased from other repositories; and 4) non-Oklahoma papers purchased from other repositories. In addition, an index was provided of non-English language papers and of Oklahoma cities. Each category was organized in alphabetical order by county, then by town, then by titles, and then arranged in chronological order by date of publication.

Since the project's purpose was to produce a microfilm catalog rather than to inventory the collection, titles were repeated in the catalog as many times as there were microfilm reels containing different periods of publication. The second stage of this project was to publish a catalog of newspapers from 1911 to 1957, and the third stage was to cover 1958 to the current year. The first stage was completed in 1988. The second and third stages are expected to be superceded by the USNP Newspaper Project.

State Listings

Although there are union lists available within the State of Oklahoma for periodicals in several formats (microfiche, hard copy, and computer access), there was no centralized attempt to produce a state-wide union list of newspapers until 1992. Most of the larger institutions have produced in-house publications of their particular holdings, including the Oklahoma Historical Society as mentioned above. In 1992, the staff of the Oklahoma Newspaper Project began cataloging newspaper titles on the OCLC database, and local data records have been input for over 1000 records.

National Listings

In addition to these in-house catalogs, there are several other newspaper listings which include Oklahoma newspapers.

• American Newspapers, 1821-1936, A Union List of Files Available in United States and Canada, compiled and edited by Winifred Gregory under the auspices of the Bibliographical Society of America (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1937)
• Newspapers in Microform: United States, 1948-1972, issued by the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C. 1973)
• Rowell's American Newspaper Directory, which covers newspapers published from 1869 to 1908
• Ayer's Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals, published from 1880 to the present
• United States Newspaper Program National Union List, Fourth Edition, January 1993.

Subject Access

In the 1930s, a Works Progress Administration project compiled a card index of selected newspapers. This card file, which is housed by the OHS, is arranged alphabetically, and include both subject and personal name entries. However, they are by no means comprehensive.

The only other type of printed index available for newspapers in Oklahoma consists of a set of annual indexes to the Daily Oklahoman from 1947 to 1972 which were compiled by the University of Oklahoma. This index is available in the Bizzell Library at the University of Oklahoma in both its original typewritten format, and on microfilm.

At one time, the OHS attemped to compile a computer based index to the Daily Oklahoman and its predecessor newspapers from 1889 to 1904. Preliminary work was done on this project, but funding ceased before it was completed.

There is a computer database available (DATATIMES) for text searching of four Oklahoma newspapers which covers 1982 to the present. Although this provides for text and subject retrieval, the entire paper is not indexed. The only other subject access to newspapers for Oklahoma is being provided by the staff of the Oklahoma Newspaper Project as each title is cataloged after review.

The Oklahoma Newspaper Project Staff included: Mary Huffman, Project Coordinator,Angie Grimes, Administrative Assistant, Francie Helm, Cataloging Assistant, Mary Logsdon, Microfilm Technician, John Frizzell, Microfilm Technician/www Administrator, and Bill Welge, Project Director. The Newspaper Project began in 1993 and concluded in 1998. 90.1% of all newspapers published in Oklahoma have been preserved.

We continue to seek additional titles of newspapers and welcome a phone call or email if you have information regarding additional newspapers. OHS ranks in the top 5% of all newspaper collections in the United States as a result of the Newspaper Project.