“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” So said Mark Twain, an opinion doubtless formed by his own experience of working for one.
Twain spent the years 1861 to 1864 working for The Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, published in Virginia City, 20 miles from Reno. It was the first newspaper to be printed in Nevada and once enjoyed the highest circulation of any publication west of the Mississippi.
Twain wrote (in 1868) that the paper's adherence to the facts was less than rigorous:
“To find a petrified man, or break a stranger’s leg, or cave an imaginary mine, or discover some dead Indians in a Gold Hill tunnel, or massacre a family at Dutch Nick’s, were feats and calamities that we never hesitated about devising when the public needed matters of thrilling interest for breakfast. The seemingly tranquil Enterprise office was a ghastly factory of slaughter, mutilation and general destruction in those days.”
After the turn of the century, the paper struggled to survive and finally gave up the ghost in the 1980s. According to
The Las Vegas Review-Journal:
The Territorial Enterprise was founded in Genoa in 1858 and is the oldest printed newspaper in Nevada, following hand-written publications. Later, it was published in Virginia City during Twain’s time. The newspaper closed but was revived in 1946 and again in 1952. The last issue was printed in 1969. An attempt to revive it in the 1980s failed.
The paper has now been revived as a monthly publication and
has a website.
The revival, its third in the past century, will honor the original newspaper with a sometimes irreverent style and a tall tale in every issue, its editor said Tuesday.
“I would like to have a regular tall tale contributor,” said Elizabeth Thompson, the former editor of the Nevada News Bureau. “We sort of want to pay homage from time to time with not just tall tales but with the irreverent way the news was reported — have a light-hearted approach like the original.”
...
The first few issues will have 24 pages and include some “old-timey” ads for fun, Thompson said. The website will likely be updated daily and include links to other publications, aggregating the news of the day, she said. Information wasn’t available about the initial print run, which is still being worked out, according to Thompson.
For now, Thompson and the publisher are the only staffers with herself and freelancers contributing news articles. If things go as hoped, the publication will add staffers this summer, she said.
The magazine will be printed in Carson City, which is about 15 miles from Virginia City, and distributed widely in Northern Nevada, including in the Reno-Sparks area, according to Thompson.
At a time when newspapers are struggling to keep and expand their readership, I think this has to be welcome news and we must wish the Enterprise well. As Twain himself wrote:
“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.”