Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 116, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1909 — John Bowie—A Mighty Busy Editor [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

John Bowie —A Mighty Busy Editor

The single town editor is or ought to be a mighty busy man, and if success even in a moderate way is to mark his efforts he must not let any grass grow beneath his Trilbies. But when it comes to representing some twenty-five towns and making them occasional visits, and going to from six to a dozen towns every w'eek, and editing and publishing two newspapers, and soliciting and delivering job work in all of these tbwns, a fellow' has to not only hustle and keep husting, but he must couple with it a careful system and give to his business much clear-headed thought. There are not many men who would undertake it who would make a success of it. There is only one that w ; e have in mind, and that is the subject of this sketch and the original of the halftone picture presented in connection with it. This editor is John Bowie, Mr. Eowie has never been a believer in the policy of “everything comes to those who wait.” He believes that nothing comes to the djone but disappointment, and that the fellow who gets anything out of this life must go right out it. Mr. Bowie puts his logic into practice and chases the delinquent subscriber and the elusive dollar from early Monday morning to late Saturday night, gets a good rest and rejuvinates his spiritual nature over Sunday and starts out on the same program Monday morning again. Mr. Bowie was a railroad man for several years and out of that grew his editorial tendencies. He was the editor for some time of Brotherhood of Railway Trackman’s Journal, the official organ of the Brootherhood of Railway Trackmen. He liked editorial work and decided to embark in business for himself, and he was attracted to the club house district of the Kankakee, and earned to Thayer and established the Thayer-Shelby News. The first issue of this paper was published April 26, 1902. In July of the same year he bought the Roselawn Review and combined the two papers, gave them the hyphenated name of the News-Review. On July 1, 1904, he included Wheatfield among his towns and gave his papers the name of the Kankakee Valley Review. Business had now outgrown the single newspaper and Mr. Bowie found it advisable to publish two papers, one for Wheatfield and the other for Roselawn. Two publication days were chosen, the Wheatfield paper being published on Thursday and the RoselawA, paper on Friday. Both were given the same name, “The Kankakee Valley Review,”

which caused some people to believe that they were one and the same paper. But they are entirely different, containing an altogether * different make-up and having entirely distinctive mailing lists. The papers were then both printed under contract by the Rensselaer Journal, and when the Journal and the Republican combined the contract with Mr. Bowie was continued and the papers are printed now by the Republican. Mr. Bowie is systematic. He gets his copy in regularly, he makes each town in his district regularly, he is a good collector and a good paymaster and since the Republican has been doing his printing he has written a check each week to cover his printing bill of that week. Odd as it may seem, he is a democrat in politics. He is a Mason of many years and one of the best posted men in northern Indiana on Masonry. He is alsq an actjve man in the affairs cf the Indiana Association of Weekly Newspapers, and at the state meeting of that association at Indianapolis two weeks ago he addressed the meeting and received favorable mention in the Indianapolis News, while the American Press, a weekly journal for newspaper men, commented as follows on his speech: “At the meeting on the evening of Oct. 15 J. Bowie, publisher of the Kankakee Valley Review at Wheatfield and Roselawn, gave a~few pointers about the state law in regard to publication of incorporated town acts. He stated that all such laws must be printed in a town paper as paid advertising. “In speaking of ready print matter Mr. Bowie said: “ ‘lt makes me sore to print an item which I have clipped from some paper and later see it. copied and printed by a paper in the adjoining county and then get it again in our ‘ready print’ paper the next week.’ “Mr. Bowie stated that he owes his success in managing country weeklies to the fact that people pay for the advertising they get and that he refuses to take turnips and pumpkins in payment for the paper. When money ceases to come in the subscription terminals. He also suggested the matter of uniform job work rates to prevent the cut-throat competition among neighboring newspaper meg.” John Bowie belongs to the class of people who “get there” and his newspapers haffT'a circulation over the entire Kankakee Valley in Jasper, Lake, Porter and Newton counties and persons desiring to reach the buyers of that section cannot afford to exclude his papers as an advertising medium.