4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL JANUARY 17, 2018
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: Helicopter crash and journalism
A few days before Christmas in 1947, a young
ex-Navy fl ier, looking to kill a little time before
dinner, invited a friend to come out for a quick
spin around a nearby golf course in his new he-
licopter.
An hour later, the two young men were both
dead in the burning wreckage of the helicopter,
and the future course of journalism in Portland
had been forever changed — and not for the bet-
ter.
At the end of the Second World War, the Port-
land Journal had never been in a better position.
Its main competitor, the Morning Oregonian, was
still technically larger; its circulation was just
over 200,000, while the Journal’s was just under
that fi gure. But the Oregonian’s infl uence was
waning and its reputation still suffered a bit from
the way it had shamelessly spun its news reports
back in the 1910s and 1920s.
Arguably the most important asset the Journal
had, though, was Associate Publisher C.S. “Sam”
Jackson II, the grandson of the newspaper’s leg-
endary founder and the newspaper’s heir appar-
ent.
Sam Jackson’s grandfather, Sam Jackson I,
founded the Journal in 1902 at a time when Ore-
gon was essentially run out of smoke-fi lled rooms
by a coalition of power brokers consisting of the
Oregonian, the lumber barons, and the Southern
Pacifi c Railroad. Everyday Oregonians, especial-
ly Democrats, had to hold their noses and read
it, because there was nothing else available. Al-
ternatively, they could read the smaller, less in-
formative Evening Telegram,
which, although owned by the
Oregonian, was staffed with an
independent newsroom housed
in a separate building and which
generally appealed to the popu-
list wing of the Republican and,
to a lesser extent, Democratic
parties.
Jackson threw a monkey
wrench into this cozy pseudo-
competitive arrangement when
he moved to Portland from Pend-
leton, where he’d published the
East Oregonian newspaper, and
took over a moribund little start-
up newspaper called The Ore-
gon Journal. Under Jackson’s
direction, the Journal became the most trusted
newspaper in the city, even among conservative
Republicans — although Republicans tended to
hate its editorial positions; Jackson was originally
from Virginia, and very much a Democrat.
Time went by and the Journal moved from
strength to strength. It was a scrappy, active pa-
per, taking bold positions against monied inter-
ests time and again — in the “pure milk crusade”
when Portland babies were dying from tainted
milk, in the fi ght to stop the timber and railroad
barons who were illegally taking over huge tracts
of public timberlands, and in the push for the Ore-
gon Initiative and Referendum system.
Sam Jackson died in 1924, and his son, Philip
Jackson, took the reins. Philip was competent and
satisfactory as a publisher, and ran the paper for
29 years. But most people agreed he didn’t have
the magic touch that his father had had.
Philip’s nephew, though — he was another
matter. Named after his grandfather, Sam Jackson
II was a graduate of Lincoln High School in Port-
land. He went on to study at Stanford and Har-
vard, and learned to fl y; then, when the war broke
out, he joined the U.S. Navy, trained Navy pilots,
and fl ew missions in the Pacifi c Theater, muster-
ing out at war’s end at the rank of lieutenant com-
mander.
Sam was more than a little reminiscent of his
grandfather. Great things were expected of him
when it came to be his turn to run the family busi-
ness.
And so matters stood in 1946, when Philip
Jackson saw an advertisement for the new Bell
helicopters.
Philip was captivated by the possibilities. Heli-
copters were a brand-new thing in 1946. The fi rst
helicopter built for civilian use, the Bell 47B, had
just come out, a tiny two-seater that looked rather
like a Fiat 500 with a tail and a rotor. They were
selling for $25,000 apiece. Wouldn’t it be neat if
the Journal were to buy one, and use it to get pho-
tographs of breaking news stories?
Sam, who by this time had about 2,000 hours of
fl ight time under his belt and was one of the best
pilots in Portland, took the idea and ran with it.
And so, in April 1947, a spindly green helicopter
with “JOURNAL” stenciled on its tail set down
for the fi rst time on the roof of the Journal’s build-
ing downtown.
The helicopter was a sensation. It was the fi rst
news helicopter in the country. All summer long,
Sam fl ew it around Portland. When news broke,
he’d run for the chopper with a photographer
and go get the story, with pictures the Oregonian
couldn’t match — usually with a little logo at the
bottom right reading “Journal Copter Photo.”
Probably the high point of the Journal’s triumph
was when a fi re broke out in the Oregonian build-
ing, and they were able to fl y over and get aerial
photographs of their rival’s building with smoke
billowing out of it.
By the end of the year, the Journal’s little egg-
beater was a familiar sight in Portland, and the
Journal had prepared a picture book full of imag-
es it had captured. They titled it “The Newsroom
Dragonfl y.”
But before it could be published, came the eve-
ning of Dec. 21, 1947.
Sam Jackson had fl own the helicopter to the
home of his friend Ambrose Cronin — who was,
ironically enough, a grandson of Henry Pittock —
where he had been invited for dinner. He arrived a
little early, so Jackson invited Cronin to come up
for a quick spin around the neighborhood.
The two of them fl ew out over a nearby golf
course while other dinner guests watched. Then,
reaching the other side, Jackson apparently tried
to turn too quickly.
The dinner guests and family members watched
in horror as the helicopter, with the scions of two
newspaper empires aboard, stalled and dove 100
feet into the ground, where it bounced once and
burst into fl ames.
What the impact of the loss of Cronin might
have been on the Oregonian isn’t clear; his main
commercial activities were outside the newspaper
business. But the effect on the Journal was disas-
trous. There was now no Jackson family member
in line to take the helm.
So when, six years later, Philip Jackson died of
heart trouble, the only surviving members of the
family were Sam Jackson I’s widow, Maria, and
Sam Jackson II’s 11-year-old son, Peter. So it was
necessary to look outside the family circle for a
publisher. William Knight, the newspaper’s attor-
ney, was tapped for the job, and the newspaper’s
ownership was put into a trust. Maria stipulated
that if it were ever necessary to sell the paper, it
must be to a local owner, preferably to the paper’s
employees, even if an out-of-towner offered more
money.
She probably was thinking of one out-of-town
owner in particular: S.I. Newhouse of New York,
who had bought The Oregonian in a distress sale
after it had fi nancially crippled itself trying to
build a big deluxe new offi ce building. Newhouse
wanted the Journal badly, and everyone knew it.
Well, the story of how Newhouse got his wish
as an effect of an extended strike by the stereo-
typers’ union has been told before in this column.
Newhouse was either very lucky, incredibly clev-
er, or both; but by 1961, Maria had been dead for
several years, and the Journal’s trustees sold out
to him for the astonishingly modest sum of $8
million, or about $67 million in modern currency.
After that, with Knight still at the helm, the
Journal basically took over the role that the Eve-
ning Telegram had fi lled four decades earlier: a
junior paper, fully owned by the Oregonian, with
a separate and competitive newsroom (but now on
a different fl oor rather than in a different build-
ing). The news departments competed with each
other, but the Oregonian got more resources with
which to compete, and the reading public wasn’t
really fooled. In most respects, Portland was now
a de-facto one-newspaper town, and everyone
knew it. And in 1982, when Newhouse made it
offi cial by fully folding the Journal into the Ore-
gonian, hardly anyone seemed to notice.
None of this would, of course, have happened
if Sam Jackson II had survived to take the helm at
the Oregon Journal.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Opinion on superintendent
According to Eugene's media in the past few days, South Lane
School superintendent Krista Parent faces an uncertain future. Fo-
rensic expert examined an anonymous, handwritten letter presented
to all of South Lane school board members concluded, that this let-
ter was " most likely " written by Krista Parent herself. In the letter
the author is praising Parent and slanders and harasses a district
employee. This forensic document examiner is James Green a long
time former Eugene PD expert. There is a report of 110 South Lane
teacher's union employees and 13 district's administrators asking
for the superintendent Parent to be placed on paid leave while an
C ottage G rove
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independent investigation is concluded. Amen to that. This Krista
Parent saga is hanging around our community's neck since the last
spring. In our view, the response from the school employees is a
vote of " No confi dence " in her leadership. As a community we
don't need this distraction and anxiety which is negatively affecting
our students and disrupting the learning environment and negative-
ly affecting our students. We need a strong leadership and common
sense from the school board members, enough is enough. Please
join us in a call for Superintendent Parent to resign.
Meanwhile, please don't rush your Latham school closure deci-
• Ballot Measure 101 Special Election on Tuesday, Jan. 23 "Healthcare Provider Assessments to fund Medicaid and
stabilize individual insurance premiums." Ballots will be mailed between January 3 and January 9. The original bill was
approved by the Oregon Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Kate Brown. Believing the tax will be passed on to
consumers, Rep. Cedric Hayden led a signature-collecting campaign to refer it to Oregon voters. Measure 101 would
temporarily tax healthcare insurers and some hospitals to stabilize Oregon’s Medicaid program and retain an
estimated $630 million to $1 billion in federal funding. (Courtesy Around the Grove).
• 9th Annual Habitat for Humanity Crab Feed to be held on Sat. Jan. 27 at 5 p.m. Social; Dinner, 5:30 p.m at the armory $25.
• Annual Chamber of Commerce Banquet on Jan. 20 beginning at 5 p.m. $50 per person, held at the armory.
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sion until the investigation is over. Latham school deserves better.
George and Susan Zajic, Cottage Grove
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