By Erik Sietsema
From 1915 to 1916, the community of Big Sandy had two newspapers operating at the same time. Then one of them went out of business and, more or less, disappeared from the community's collective memory.
I stumbled across the partial online archive of the Big Sandy Sentinel a few months ago while researching another story. Despite my best efforts, I have been unable to uncover much about the paper beyond what can be found in its own pages. A few weeks ago, the Mountaineer ran a brief overview of the history of the paper.
One of the more entertaining aspects of the Sentinel's short-lived publishing run was its tendency toward what might be described as yellow journalism.
Yellow journalism was a popular trend in newspapering in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It was characterized by sensationalism, exaggerated claims, unabashed partisanship, personal attacks, attempts to provoke moral outrage, and attention-grabbing headlines. The Sentinel appears to have embraced at least some of those characteristics enthusiastically.
For the Sentinel, its moral and ideological enemy was the Mountaineer. Front-page articles with over-the-top headlines frequently attacked the Mountaineer and accused its editors of all manner of moral corruption.
Much of the conflict revolved around the Sentinel's political positions. The paper was founded as an explicitly Democratic political publication, and its editorial and political pages make that very clear. Among the positions it advocated was prohibition, although opposition to the sale of alcohol was not a position held exclusively by either political party.
The Sentinel routinely ran articles attacking the sale of alcohol in Big Sandy and accusing the editor of the Mountaineer of corruption associated with local vice. One particularly virulent article, published on the front page of the March 31, 1916, edition, was entitled "SHALL THE MORALS OF BIG SANDY CONTINUE TO BE CONTAMINATED?"
The paper began by asking:
"The editor of The Sentinel would like to know who constituted and appointed our esteemed contemporary, the editor of The Mountaineer, as the adviser and guide to tell the voters of Big Sandy how to vote in their elections?"
The article went on:
"Never in the history of Big Sandy has that paper contained a word in condemnation of any vice or corruption in city, county, state or nation."
It then launched into a lengthy attack over what it described as a "house of ill fame" that local authorities had supposedly permitted to remain open. The Sentinel accused the Mountaineer of remaining silent while young men and minors frequented the establishment, describing the situation as "an insult to virtue, chastity and morality."
The editorial became even more personal when it declared:
"The filth of The Mountaineer editor's mind is heaped on the candidates endorsed by this newspaper for NO reason at all..."
The article went on to accuse the Mountaineer editor of attempting to damage the political prospects of the Sentinel'scandidates and referred to him as a "numb-skull" and the greatest enemy of the local social order.
Unlike the Sentinel, the Mountaineer did not generally respond with full-length articles devoted to the attacks. Its responses were typically brief-sometimes buried deep within the paper or tucked into other articles. This stands in sharp contrast to the Sentinel, which was willing to make its attacks lead stories on the front page.
The Mountaineer's relatively brief responses, however, apparently did little to settle the dispute.
The April 21 issue of the Sentinel featured another response, this time attacking the Mountaineer's answer to an earlier article concerning the city election. The Sentinel described the Mountaineer as having published:
"another so-called 'space filler,' printorially speaking, last week, in an attempt to answer The Sentinel's article on the city election."
The paper then dismissed its rival's journalistic abilities altogether:
"The journalistic efforts of the Mountaineer editor are void of any serious consideration and his conception of what a newspaper ought to be, is sadly missing."
Later issues of the Sentinel featured poems about the Mountaineer. The paper also published an article implying that the Mountaineer editor was involved in questionable business dealings connected with Big Sandy's red-light district.
Taken together, these articles reveal a surprisingly personal newspaper feud taking place in a very small Montana community. The Sentinel was not merely disagreeing with the Mountaineer over politics. It was attacking the character, morality, and journalistic competence of its rival-and doing so in language that would be difficult to mistake for anything other than open hostility.
The irony is that the brief run of the Sentinel featured relatively little actual local news. Much of its content consisted of material republished from other sources, along with political commentary and editorials. The local attacks on the Mountaineer, therefore, stand out as some of the most distinctive-and entertaining-material in the surviving issues.
For a newspaper that existed in Big Sandy for only a short time, the Sentinel certainly managed to make its feelings about its competitor known.
A future article will look at what happened to the Sentinel and at the chapter of Montana history that I believe helps explain its disappearance from the local historical record.
