THE PRESS AND RADIO
Whether or not the first printing press in North Dakota, brought to St. Joseph (Walhalla) by Rev. Alonzo Barnard in 1848, was ever used in the State is a matter of conjecture. When Mr. Barnard, a Presbyterian minister, was transferred to Dakota, he took his press—a gift from students at Oberlin College—overland from the Cass Lake (Minnesota) Reservation to Red Lake, by canoe across the lake and down the Red Lake and Red Rivers to Pembina, then by oxcart to St. Joe. Here he may have used it, as he did in Minnesota, to publish news letters and pamphlets for his parishioners, but nothing printed on it in North Dakota has been preserved.
The first North Dakota publication was probably the Frontier Scout, a short-lived four-page, three-column sheet which made its appearance at Fort Union in July 1864. In the following year its successor, the Pioneer Scout, was issued at Fort Rice and, according to its editors, "published weekly by the First U. S. V. Infantry for the edification of the people of Dacotah, both civilized and savage; and as 'green' spots and 'green' backs are so few, we will not mention terms, but bid it, like the grace of God, go free." The editors further declared that "every article in this paper is original and sees the light of day for the first time."
Journalistic activity lapsed subsequent to these military literary efforts, and was not revived until the railroad and the resultant influx of settlers in 1872 brought the new Territory to the attention of Minnesota editors. Col. Clement A. Lounsberry, sent by the Minneapolis Tribune to cover colonization in the Fargo area, went on to Bismarck where, on July 11, 1873, the first number of his own paper, the Bismarck Tribune, appeared. First a weekly and later a daily, it has been published continuously since that time, missing only one edition, and on that occasion newsboys distributed hastily printed handbills containing formal notice that the Tribune plant had been destroyed by fire (see Bismarck).
Early journalism in the Fargo area was stimulated by the offer of the Wells-Fargo Express Company to give a cash bonus for a paper appearing under the name of the Fargo Express. First and unsuccessful bidder for the bonus was a sheet bearing the correct name, but printed at Glyndon, Minn. The prize was awarded in 1874 to a Fargo-printed publication. Between 1874 and 1891 several other papers were issued, to be merged finally in the Fargo Forum in 1891.
In 1874 the Grand Forks Plaindealer was founded; five years later the Herald was also in the field, and eventually absorbed the Plaindealer (see Grand Forks).
With the beginning of settlement newspapers sprang up quickly in the other new towns of Dakota, so that when North Dakota was admitted to the Union in 1889, it had 125 periodicals. Many so-called newspapers were nothing more than a final proof-sheet, printed in order that settlers might comply with the homesteading law which required publication of notice of final claim. The cost of establishing such a paper was slight. Official notices, an occasional advertisement, and a few local news items were all it contained. If the editor could win the favor of the United States Land Office registrar, who usually designated the official paper, he might obtain one hundred or more notices an issue; these at $5 each made his income quite substantial. Often the paper was short-lived, but the editor usually remained in the State, setting up his type cases and presses in some promising small town and starting an actual weekly paper. Many villages had two or more rival papers for a time, and the number of publications increased rapidly; in 1904 there were 265 in the State, and in 1919 a high of 336 was reached. The weekly papers were widely read and often had great political influence.
Improved transportation facilities, however, led to the retreat of the weeklies before the increasing circulation of the daily papers. North Dakota now has 196 publications including 11 dailies and 4 trade journals.