A Newspaper Evolves

Saturday, June 29, 2019

The Bend Bulletin (and its Redmond version) has been sold to a Rhode Island investor group (a subsidiary of a Canadian newspaper). Here’s hoping the Bulletin lives on and becomes a better, more rounded newspaper. My interest in it stems from having followed the early Bulletin’s beginnings, in Bend’s “baby 1900s”, when a very young entrepreneur George Putnam purchased the newspaper. Putnam was an adventurer and writer who later became Bend’s mayor. His newspaper columns described the struggles, needs, and the growth of that vigorously developing community.

Putnam arrived in Bend in the early 1900s. The home he designed and built near Drake Park still stands. It’s one of this city’s earliest dwellings and was a short walk to his Bulletin office. Putnam in history seems almost a bigger-than-life character–tall, brawny, outdoorsy. In the approximately 10 years it took to build a railroad track from the Hood River to Bend, he personally walked the entire distance of track during its construction, writing about his experiences. It’s an amazing story of track-building, involved two railroads competing to build the Hood River to Bend track, in a race that involved desperation and gun fights.

Putnam’s foresight and courage documented much of Bend’s early history. But just before 1920, he had to leave Bend and assume responsibility for his family’s major publishing business in New York. Always a colorful character, he eventually married Amelia Earhart and subsidized and publicized her air flights.

After Putnam and over many years, the Bulletin evolved into a conservative publication. These days in a changing Bend culture, the newspaper couldn’t keep up with modern perspectives. Indeed, this city is a “new Bend”. It’s filling with incoming retirees, many bringing a more liberal perspective that surprises and confounds long-time residents. These changing times and a new out-of-town publisher might reinvigorate today’s rather dull Bulletin.

Dear Friends, Bend’s early history is an exciting wild-west story, worth exploring. Diana