Grit and Ink

‘Grit and Ink’: A detailed history of EO Media

“Grit and Ink,” by historian William F. Willingham, is about the Aldrich-Forrester-Brown family’s devotion to community journalism.

The book focuses on the East Oregonian Publishing Co. (now the EO Media Group), taking readers from the rugged early years of Oregon newspapering to the present — from the dusty frontier to the digital frontier, from riverine Astoria to agrarian Pendleton.

The book’s subtitle is “An Oregon Family’s Adventures in Newspapering, 1908–2018,” but Willingham opens with the EO’s founding in 1875, a rough, risk-laden period in the state’s history.

“Along with schools and churches, a newspaper provided an important measure of civilization and order,” he writes. Having a newspaper “was a way of proclaiming that a town was real and here to stay.”

Willingham explains how small-town papers survived uncertain early years, how they weathered crises — such as the 1922 Astoria Fire and the Great Depression — why some papers succeeded and others folded, and why they aggressively promoted the development of their towns. “If the paper’s going to thrive, the community has to thrive, and vice versa,” he said.

The book is available on Amazon and from various EO Media outlets.