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| Conservation Tour of Western States, Duluth MN 9-24-63: JFKlibrary.org |
Last Saturday (Nov. 22) the News Tribune published an excellent retrospective on how some Upper Midwest newspapers covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on that date in 1963.
Emanating from Fargo, N.D., where Forum Communications is headquartered, the compendium of that newspaper company’s papers’ coverage showed how the tragedy was reported on the day the assassination occurred in Dallas, Texas. Since Forum firm did not own the Duluth newspaper at the time, the story largely featured its publications of that day. Forum now owns this paper.
Thus, how the Duluth newspapers covered the assassination was largely missing from the story. Here are some memories of how the assassination was covered by the Duluth Herald (evening) and Duluth News Tribune (morning), owned at the time by Ridder Publications.
I was a newly hired reporter on that momentous date, having worked in the newsroom on the night shift (3 p.m. to 11 p.m.) for about a month. I was at home when the news broke about 12:30 p.m., with CBS’s Walter Cronkite in shirtsleeves somberly narrating unfolding events, culminating a short time later with confirmation that the president was dead.
My first instinct was to call the paper, although I thought better of it when I realized they’d be the first to know through their wire services.
The Duluth Herald was the evening paper at the time, staffed by the “dayside” crew. Its first deadline was about 11 a.m. and the presses started rolling a short time after that. Thousands of copies had already been published when word of the assassination came through. It was the only time that I can recall that breaking news stopped the presses that abruptly.
The Herald newsroom staff — a copy desk responsible for putting the paper together and perhaps a dozen reporters and editors — immediately went about starting over with the Herald with news of the assassination. I didn’t report for work until after the Herald coverage was done and the presses were rolling again with the bold headlines above accounts of the assassination together with “wire photos” of the shooting.
When I arrived, work was beginning on the morning paper, the News Tribune, with follow-up coverage of the tragic event, including local accounts of the recent visit to Duluth by Kennedy. He had been here in September to address a “Land and People’s Conference” at UMD. He arrived the evening before — a very rainy evening — and was driven to Hotel Duluth (now Greysolon Plaza) from Duluth International Airport in the dark blue Lincoln limousine that he was murdered in two months later. The car arrived here before the president and was stored in the St. Louis County garage at Fourth Avenue West and Second Street in advance of the president’s arrival.
Much of the frantic local coverage of the breaking national event focused for the next morning’s paper on recalling the president’s recent visit. Wire services provided the copy for the unfolding events in Dallas — including the swearing in of Vice President Lyndon Johnson — and Washington.
It was the most momentous news event I ever experienced in more than 40 years of employment at this newspaper. My assignment that day was to telephone as many area mayors as I could reach to get their reactions to the assassination. I reached perhaps half a dozen and managed to get a story into the historic paper the next morning.
Late in the afternoon, chatting with the copy desk editor — called the slot man — who had been responsible for making over the Herald, I mentioned that I had watched initial coverage of the assassination on television, starting about 12:30 p.m. I mentioned that I’d considered calling the paper but thought they’d have already received the urgent news.
“I wish you’d called,” the news editor said. The news wires didn’t alert editors until perhaps 15 minutes later, an eternity at such a time.
As with the rest of the country, Duluth went into collective mourning with everything public canceled, including that evening’s Christmas City of the North Parade.
Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.
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