Rural folks informed thanks to the media
By Tom Pantera
The Forum - 08/01/1999

In the late 1990s, it's become a truism that information is power.

But a century or so ago, when people came out to the prairie to settle, information was more like a lifeline.

Newspapers sprang up along with all the other businesses necessary in small towns.

And in the days before wire services, North Dakota reporters got in on some big stories.

One of them, Bismarck Tribune correspondent Mark Kellogg, covered perhaps the biggest story of his life at the very end of his life. He was among those killed at the Battle of Little Big Horn, to which he road with George Custer's Seventh Cavalry.

In the 20th century, North Dakota's three largest newspapers all have won the largest prize in journalism - the Pulitzer.

The first newspaper in the state to win it was the Bismarck Tribune.

The Tribune got the nod in 1937 for "most disinterested and meritorious public service rendered by a newspaper." The paper won for a series of editorials and news articles on "Self Help in the Dust Bowl." The series was aimed at restoring the confidence of North Dakota's drought victims.

A pressman puts plates on the old letterpress. The newspaper was printed off plates containing raised letters and photographs prepared in an etching process.

The Forum's old composing room used banks of linotypes. The machines were so noisy that at one time, newspapers were the leading employer of the deaf.

The Forum's press now uses state-of-the-art technology and is entirely computer-controlled.

The Forum won its Pulitzer in for what is still the most horrifying disaster in the city's history, the June 20, 1957, tornado.

The twister hit the Golden Ridge area in north Fargo at 7:35 p.m., touching down near 29th Street and Seventh Avenue North. It sped diagonally across the north side, hitting the south edge of the North Dakota State University campus and Shanley High School before becoming airborne again near the Red River. It dropped again in the Glyndon, Dale and Lake Park, Minn., areas.

The tornado cut a swath of almost unbelievable destruction, killing 13 - including six children in one family.

At the Forum building at 101 5th Street North, editors, reporters and photographers converged after making sure their own families were safe. Many saw the twister approach from the roof of the building.

Twenty-one news department staff members won the 1958 Pulitzer for local reporting under deadline pressure.

The latest Pulitzer won in North Dakota went in 1998 to the Grand Forks Herald for its coverage of the 1997 flood - coverage that required nearly superhuman effort by a staff that had been burned out of its offices.

The Red River began running through the streets of Grand Forks at 1:30 a.m. April 19. That day's edition was being printed at the time, but Herald staff had to evacuate. When fire swept through downtown Grand Forks, it gutted the Herald's building.

The staff eventually moved temporarily to the elementary school in Manvel, N.D., 10 miles north. The newsroom staff worked out of there for two months before moving back to temporary office space in the city in July 1997.

During the aftermath of the flood, the Herald became an important way to keep the scattered community tied together.

In a different but more wide-ranging way, North Dakota's three biggest newspapers have tied the entire world together with that newest medium, the Internet.

All three papers have versions on the World Wide Web, distributing local news to anyone anywhere in the world who has a computer.

The Forum's version, In-Forum, debuted Jan. 13, 1997. It was a fortuitous year; during flooding that spring, in one six-day period the Web site got 911,000 hits from people wondering about the situation here.

Catching the airwaves

The first radio station in Fargo-Moorhead, WDAY, was founded by Earl C. Reinke.

The Illinois native came to Fargo as a boy, when he loved to tinker with tiny radio sets. He built Fargo's first radio transmitter in 1907.

WDAY received its license on May 22, 1922. It operated out of buildings on Broadway in its early years.

Following World War I, Reinke installed his first broadcasting transmitter in the tower of the Cass County Courthouse. Fifteen years later, he obtained this first commercial radio license and WDAY began life as a 50-watt station.

In 1935, the station increased its power to 5,000 watts.

Television came to the Red River Valley in 1953, when WDAY-TV went on the air.

It started as an NBC affiliate, but it also received shows from CBS and the now-defunct DuMont Television Network.

WDAY first went on the air with a test pattern on May 28, 1953. Real programming began four days later with the broadcast of a printed card that read, "Monday, June 1, 6:45 p.m. WDAY-TV is on the air!" That first day's programming included a statement from Tom Barnes, the station's manager; his lips onscreen lagged behind the soundtrack. Senators and governors from North Dakota and surrounding states delivered their congratulations, either on film or in person.

The first regularly scheduled program was the RCA Victor First Nighter Review. It was emceed by Ken Kennedy, who would become a well-known broadcast figure in Fargo, and featured most of the station's staff singers and instrumental performers.

The first broadcast drew clusters of people to hardware and appliance stores and bars - a common occurrence before television sets became common in homes.

The Red River Valley would eventually become home to all three broadcast networks. WDAY became the ABC affiliate, KVLY (originally KTHI) carried NBC programming, KXJB carried CBS and Prairie Public Television (KFME) carried PBS.

While public television in the Red River Valley has often had to beg for money - just as it has nationally - at the end of the millennium it's on the cutting edge of the newest television technology, digital broadcasting.

Under the old system, in use here since the dawn of WDAY, television has operated on an analog signal, or broadcasts of electromagnetic waves.

With digital TV, the signal will be converted and broadcast as discreet bits of electronic data. The TV will receive those and convert them to pictures and sound.

The result is a television picture of different shape, more like a movie screen, and vastly better quality. Digital broadcasting also enables television stations to multicast, packing more programming onto the same bandwidth.