The birth, demise and rebirth of Albert Lea’s daily newspaper

By Ed Shannon

When the Tribune published its first issue on Oct. 15, 1897, Albert Lea already had three other newspapers. They were the Freeborn County Standard, Freeborn County Times and the Albert Lea Enterprise. However, those three earlier publications were weekly newspapers. The Albert Lea Tribune had a different concept. It was a daily newspaper.

The first four-page issue of the Tribune was printed on a press hauled to Albert Lea from Ottumwa, Iowa. In its early period the subscription rate was 12 cents a week.

In late 1897 or early 1898 a second publication was created to somehow compete with those three weekly papers. This was the Albert Lea Semi-Weekly Tribune.

Yet, there were basic financial problems, and the original Tribune firm ceased operations on Feb. 11, 1898.

One aspect of the local reaction to the demise of the daily Tribune came in an article in the Freeborn County Standard. Roger Lonning found this commentary in the Feb. 18, 1898, issue of this weekly newspaper:

&8220;The expected and the inevitable has happened &045; the daily Tribune is busted and is no more; the doors are locked and W. A. Morin who has the mortgage on the outfit, to secure his rent, holds fast the key. It was started with a great flourish of trumpets and with a stock of assurances two or three hundred percent greater than its capital, but assurance in the course of time failed to pass current in paying bills, the sensation of having a daily faded out, advertisers shunned its solicitors on account of its feeble circulation, its first of bona fide subscriptions soon diminished to scarcely more than a hundred, and last Friday, after about four months existence it unceremoniously gave up the ghost.

&8220;And yet on its merits it deserved a better fate, for it gave all the local news and was better than most country dailies of the state; it represented the expenditure of a large amount of energy and hard work, and it will be a long time ere Albert Lea possesses a daily that will surpass it. And yet, it lived a month longer than we predicted &045; that is, the assurance back of it kept it painfully alive that much longer, but its fate was sealed before it came into being. And the reason for its demise are evident to every sensible man, and especially to every man of newspaper experience. In the first place, this field was fully covered and most of the business men of Albert Lea considered the attempt to establish another newspaper in this city unwise, indiscreet, and an added burden to support, an imposition which they would not endure and an evident injustice to those here already engaged in the newspaper business. There are some that would like the benefit of a local daily, but not sufficiently so to contribute enough to maintain one, and the great majority openly declared that the time had not come for a daily; while others objected to the auspices under which it started.

&8220;Another important difficulty was the thoroughness with which the field was already covered and the vigilant competition with which the enterprise had to contend. … In truth, it was a most ill-advised and foolish project and its disastrous outcome will make much harder an undertaking in the future to establish a daily paper in Albert Lea when the conditions will make one really needed. … Albert Lea lives and moves on as though nothing has happened.&8221;

Despite the somewhat negative commentary in the Standard, the Tribune was soon revived under new ownership. The second version of this daily newspaper came with the issue of Aug. 8, 1898. Since that date the Tribune has been an important part of area journalism.

In 1905 the Freeborn County Times was merged with the Albert Lea Enterprise to create a newspaper called the Times-Enterprise. Five years later, this weekly publication became a part of the Tribune’s operations as a semi-weekly paper. The Times-Enterprise publications concluded in 1922 and the Tribune continued on as a daily newspaper.

Albert Lea folks then had a choice of a daily or weekly newspaper for another decade or so until the Freeborn County Standard ceased publishing in May 1931.

(Ed Shannon’s column has been appearing in the Tribune every Friday since December 1984.)