Harrisburg Newspaper History

Harrisburg Nucleus 1876 - 1879 Weekly	The centennial year of 1876 saw the birth of journalism in Harrisburg, when O. T. Porter started the Nucleus, a four-page Saturday weekly, Republican, 22x32, for which he charged $2.50 a year. Like a good many other newspapers of the period, the Nucleus had a mission and frankly proclaimed it. In Pettengill’s newspaper directory for 1878 the publisher, announcing a circulation of 400, and proclaiming that “it will soon . . . possibly treble its circulation,” declared that “portions of Linn, Lane, and Benton counties are destined, at no distant day, to be separated and form a new county, with Harrisburg as the county seat. The Nucleus will be THE newspaper of Nucleus county. . . . Circulation in six incorporated villages.” In Ayer’s for the same year Porter asserted that the Nucleus “circulates as the local journal of Brownsville, Halsey, Junction, and Harrisburg, none of which has a smaller population than 300, all incorporated.” The ambitious dreams of Mr. Porter failed to save his little paper. Brownsville and Junction proceeded at once to establish their own papers, and within three years the Nucleus was not.

Harrisburg Disseminator 1882 - 1884 Weekly	Then came the Disseminator. Started in Harrisburg by S. S. Train in 1882, it ran for two years when it was combined with the Albany Herald and moved to Albany.

Harrisburg Courier 1891 - 1894 Weekly	In 1891 came the Courier, a Friday weekly organ of the Farmers’ Alliance, with J. B. Morin, editor and publisher. The paper ran three years.

Linn County Review 1893 - 1897 Weekly	Next in the procession was the Linn County Review, established in 1893 as a Friday weekly. Le Masters (C. G.) & Cartwright (J.F.) were editors and the Review Publishing Co. (probably a group of local business men) publishers. The paper ran for four years, conducted by Cartwright in its last year.

Harrisburg Bulletin 1901 - 1985 Weekly	The Bulletin was started as an independent, issued Thursdays, by A. P. Bettersworth Jr. as editor and publisher, in August 1901. It was an eight-page five-column paper and sold for $1.50 a year. Six years later Ira A. Phelps, who had been publisher of the Santiam News at Scio in 1899, took charge. The next publisher, M. D. Morgan, was to remain for 17 years. He later became publisher of the Siuslaw Oar at Florence. His successor was the veteran Sloan P. Shutt, who was nearing the end of his journalistic trail. In 1927 Guy Hughes, who for several years had published the Halfway Herald, took hold and remained for seven years, being succeeded by Hugh D. Mars, formerly of Jefferson, when overtaken by ill health. Mr. Hughes died in August 1938.