Bee-News

Publisher William Randolph Hearst, splash-patriot, named newspaper after newspaper The (Boston, New York, Chicago, Baltimore) American.

If he had been less patriotic, more cosmic, he might have chosen Sun, World, Globe, Star, Comet, Meteor.

Didactic, self-righteous, he could have named his papers Citizen, Tribune, Sentinel, Monitor, Leader, Pilot.

Or, more humbly, he might have been content to watch, listen, report. Reportorial newspaper labels: Observer, Recorder, Review, Eye, Optic, Chronicle, Argus, Register, Messenger, Gazette, Herald, Telegram, Journal, Expositor, Reporter, Truth, Echo, Outlook, Spectator, Ledger, Bulletin, Mirror, News, Press.

It probably never occurred to him to name a newspaper The Bee.

In 1871, Henry Justin Allen was three years old. But 1,000 miles or so west of Warren County, Pa., where Baby Henry was learning to talk, a young telegraph operator named Edward Rosewater was finding life unusually busy. Within a few months he became 30 years old, a father and a newspaper owner. The baby he named Victor. The newspaper he called the Omaha Bee.

Neither choice was extraordinary. Victor was a good name for a child born in the Omaha of 1871. Greatness seemed to hang over the young city, chartered only 14 years and already connected by telegraph with Chicago, St. Louis, even with distant San Francisco. Three years earlier, Telegrapher Rosewater had watched the spectacular, noisy entry of the railroads, the great Rock Island, Burlington and North Western systems. Across the Missouri river lay Iowa and prosperous Council Bluffs. The birth of Victor and of the Omaha Bee coincided almost exactly with the birth of the meat-packing industry in the city. Omaha seemed clearly destined to be an imperial, or at least victorious, city.

But industry was necessary, and the bee is the symbol of industry. For a newspaper, omnipresence was obviously desirable, and Telegrapher Rosewater saw bees everywhere, hiving, buzzing, hurrying, stinging. Actually, it was a printing house employe who suggested the name. But Telegrapher Rosewater always thought it a happy choice. Similar reasons, later, influenced publishers in Bellefourche, South Dakota; Owanka, South Dakota; Braymer, Mo.; Barnard, Kan.

No quoting Literary Digest existed in 1871 to extract the first strong utterances of the Omaha Bee. Staunchly Republican, the Omaha Bee fought many a battle with its senior, the Democratic Omaha World-Herald. Most fast, most furious, were the wars of 1894-96, when a silver-tongued Boy Orator sat in the editor's chair at the World-Herald offices. William Jennings Bryan was no mean antagonist. His personality still dominates the World-Herald. Such battles tested, strengthened the Omaha Bee, so that its name became a Literary Digest perennial.

William Randolph Hearst kept on naming his newspapers the American. Henry Justin Allen learned to talk, became editor and publisher of the Wichita (Kan.) Beacon, governor of Kansas (1919-23), publicityman for Nominee Hoover (1928). Victor Rosewater succeeded his father, sold the Bee to a grain merchant named Nelson B. Updike, who merged it with the evening Omaha Daily News. Mr. Updike bought the Bee because he had an idea, stillborn, that he could send John Joseph Pershing to the White House. Another idea, successful, was to import Arthur Brisbane's daily chitchat. The

Bee-News prospered, moved into a $650,000 plant.

Last week, Publisher Updike announced the sale of the Omaha Bee-News to Publisher Hearst. For the Bee-News, his 25th newspaper, Publisher Hearst paid between $1,500,000 and $2,000,000, and persuaded Henry Justin Allen to come up from Kansas to edit it.