With his mother’s cheese press, his father’s tool chest, and a picture of Benjamin Franklin’s printing press, Marcus Rogers intended to start a newspaper. In 1854, Rogers could not press “send”; he needed three-dimensional objects to produce hard copies.
Letterpress printing used a press with movable type or plates of type. Reversed letters on a raised surface were inked and pressed onto a sheet of paper. Rogers needed paper, ink, a printing press, and type. He had one of the items. A few years earlier, a cousin gave him a matchbox filled with battered type. It was an odd gift. The type was meant to be thrown away, instead it was given to Rogers, and it determined the course of his life.
Rogers set about collecting the other items. He found used paper—one side still clean—and some ink and commandeered his mother’s cheese press. With that amalgam, he set to work. He converted the cheese press into a printing press and started his village newspaper. He named the paper The Rising Sun.
It was for and about Mill River. When the print was dried on his newspapers, he folded them and delivered door to door. Rogers was careful to have something in The Sun for every family member, old and young. Rogers was also careful to have nothing in the newspaper offensive to any family member, old or young. In the tiny village of Mill River, only a corner of New Marlborough, the circulation grew to 200 subscribers. The (comparatively) meteoric rise of The Sun was attributed to something quite new: local news.
In the mid-19th century, news was national and international. The only local events worthy of ink were catastrophes and deaths, with the occasional marriage or birth. Perhaps following the adage “write about what you know,” Marcus Rogers of Mill River discovered the key to a successful newspaper: local news.
The importance of local news
Rogers realized the importance of local news as he watched the ink be rubbed off the post office copy of The Rising Sun. So many hands reached for it, so many fingers of so many readers ran down the page as they read the same local story that the letters disappeared.
This was the story: A young man, Jonas Cone, recently married, took his wife for a boat ride down the Mill River. Meaning to frighten her, he approached the falls. He miscalculated, and they went over. Wet but unharmed—that was the end of the story. It taught Rogers the secret to popular reporting: It is about us. The Rising Sun, a local newspaper, was a success.
A year after starting The Sun, Rogers printed the last copy and called it “The Setting Sun.” He went to Pittsburgh to work in a big-city newspaper. They didn’t want to hire the kid from the sticks. So, Rogers wrote a story, printed it on his own press, folded it, and delivered it to the editor. He was hired on the spot.
He returned home in 1862 as editor of The Berkshire Courier. The paper had 888 subscribers and no net income. Rogers raised the subscription to over 2,200, made a profit, and bought the paper. How? Local news!
Here is a sample from 1875:
The Temperance Society continues to flourish having about 70 members. They did withstand a severe blow. [At their first meeting they inadvertently hired a speaker who arrived drunk.] Such a thing would be discouraging but the members of this Society did not flinch.
Rogers made a fortune from a successful local newspaper and from an invention: a machine to fold newspapers. In 1878, he sold The Courier and realized his lifelong dream of travel. By 1887, he was back and bought The Berkshire County Eagle. In those days, The Eagle was a weekly. Rogers doubled the circulation and suggested it become a daily, but he sold it in 1889 and returned to traveling. He submitted travel articles and the occasional verse to one or both of his former Berkshire newspapers. Apparently contemplating his beginnings, he wrote:
A long story grew from a handful of type
Used by a boy with a new kind of work
He reported news from village and town
All because Jonas Cone went overboard and did not drown.
Marcus Rogers, born circa 1835, began as owner and sole proprietor—also sole employee—of The Mill River Rising Sun and inventor of the cheese press cum printing press in his late teens. He ended as inventor of a machine for folding newspapers and owner of The Mill River Rising Sun, The Berkshire Courier, and The Berkshire Eagle in his 70s.
One thing though: How big was that match box? They preserved the cheese press in the Mill River Library, but where is that match box? How many letters fit into it, and which ones? Was he given all 26 letters? Did he have doubles? With the letters he had, how many words could Rogers spell out and which ones were they? Could he write the words zigzag, fellow, follow, or willow? Writers are limited by many things: imagination, vocabulary, syntax, even context. Rogers may have been limited only by the size of a match box.
If I do say so myself
Reporting local news is a noble calling. This year my local newspaper, Stockbridge Updates, is six years old. These are hard times. Even as national news seeps ever deeper into local politics; even when we are under the combined pressures of a public hearing in Stockbridge tonight on the permitting of 35–37 Interlaken (formerly the DeSisto School), Town Meeting on May 19 where the disposition of a Chapter 61 property (also in Interlaken) will be advanced or squashed, and a contested election for a seat on the Select Board on May 20, let’s remain kind and composed. Granted, Stockbridge is all a dither; still, let nothing more weighty than the size of a match box and the number of letters it could hold limit local news reporting in these tense times. No threats; no dictums about what can and cannot be reported; no attacks on the sole employee, chief cook, and bottle washer; no name-calling of citizens as disruptors or rabble rousers.
In its first issue, six years ago, Stockbridge Updates said it was founded to inform the residents of Stockbridge, and because that included information and commentary, Stockbridge Updates would include both. Because it recognized the difference, each would be carefully identified. All opinions were welcome, but only facts—no alternative facts.
I wrote a column for the first issue of The Berkshire Edge, and I know it was founded with the same promises. I have written for The Berkshire Eagle for 25 years, and know they mean to uphold the same principles. Hooray for local news—it is indispensable, if I do say so myself.
