Bold Honoring Lovejoy

Colby College has honored the memory of its alumnus Elijah Parish Lovejoy this year in a particularly appropriate manner. Mr. Lovejoy, who graduated in 1826 from Colby (then called Waterville College), was an early-day martyr for freedom of the press. He campaigned against slavery and slave owners in the columns of his weekly religious newspaper, first in St. Louis and then in Elsah, Illinois. Pro-slavery mobs destroyed his printing press three times and finally in 1837 burned his shop and shot him dead. Each year, the college honors Mr. Lovejoy by awarding an honorary doctorate for journalistic courage.

This year, instead of selecting a big-city publisher or editor or a nationally-known columnist, Colby chose the mom-and-pop publishers of a small-town weekly in the coal country of eastern Kentucky. Tom and Pat Gish bought the weekly Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Ky., in 1957 and have been running it ever since, living up to the classic admonition to journalists by Finley Peter Dunne’s fictional character Mr. Dooley: “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

The Gishes gave their newspaper the motto, “It Screams,” and it has been screaming for nearly half a century for fairness and justice and better schools for the poor people of Appalachia and against hazardous working conditions in the coal mines, home-loan gouging by local banks, corruption of union leaders, and secrecy in local government. Angry merchants reacted by pulling out their advertising, but the Gishes found new advertisers among small businesses.

In 1974, in the midst of a dispute over heavy coal trucks on the mountain roads and the Gishes’ coverage of excessive use of force by police, a mob burned down the Mountain Eagle’s office. They rebuilt the plant and went right on. Circulation now is 7,000.

In an era when many small newspapers are being bought up by national corporations, the Gishes told a Colby convocation about the satisfactions as well as the hazards of local ownership. When another fine Kentucky weekly was recently sold to an out-of-state chain, the new management sent a memo ordering no further coverage of school affairs. It said criticism brought community unhappiness, which was bad for business.

None of that for the Gishes. They go right on screaming, about education and everything else that needs fixing. And when a questioner asked if they made a good living at it. Mrs. Gish paused, said they got along all right, and then added: “And it’s fun.”