This is a true story, to the best of my knowledge. I'm not always certain about the way my ancestors felt, but it's clear what they did, so I explore the possible reasons.

When the Civil War ended my great-great grandfather came back to Warren, Illinois, and was offered a job as literary editor of a newspaper. Warren is in the far northwest corner of the state, not far from Galena, which was the county seat of Jo Daviess County. Galena was larger, was on the river, and was considered more metropolitan. Warren was new; it had sprung up because of some local mines (across the border in Wisconsin), the possibility of a railroad coming through, and a rapid influx of settlers.

From the point of view of the newspaper, it was called The Independent, but James Walker (Leverett), my great-great grandfather, and the editor, Herst Gann, changed it to The Sentinel immediately. It is hard to glean through old issues to find the reason but perhaps it could be found with better searching. Given my guesses, I would say that the county was predominantly Republican (pro-Lincoln), not independent; the war was over and moving forward in a congregationalist spirit, it was more important to them to have the image of calling out than the image of straddling a fence.

Herst Gann was a journalist from way back. In those days that meant having every word paid for by somebody. One could make money in journalism if one could sell lots of papers and if a paper was widely distributed and demonstrably well-read. He was fine with having a literary editor but anything literary had to be well read as well. Of course one could clearly see that people were more interested in reading about local murders than reading fine poetry. Only one out of a hundred will read a poem or care about it even today; back then, in a frontier mining town like Warren the proportion wasn't much better.

That fundamental tension ran all the way through journalism in 1866 and even went straight back to Europe. On the one hand, typesetting and the printing press made it possible to make a newspaper and distribute it to hundreds, if not thousands. People bought them up and took them home and read them, soaking up the local news and opinions about national events so that they would be better informed when discussing them. They were proud of their literacy and conscious that literacy was the foundation of their democracy. Being informed voters was important to them.

As literary editor James Walker was able to both bring fine literature (written by others) to the people of the raucus mining town of Warren, and try his hand at it himself. The editor did not always sign every piece, but noticed whether people talked about it, or whether it had any effect. Herst Gann, his partner, was most shrewd at this. Both were tasked with keeping the advertising revenue coming in; they didn't rely so much on classifieds in those days, but rather went straight to the local businesses and held extended conversations in which they touted their literary goals (what service did they provide for the community?) and explained why that business would want to be associated with them. Gann was an expert at this as well. Literary is fine, he would say, as long as it fits in with our overall strategy for growth and financial survival.

Alcohol was a huge issue in the post-Civil War frontier towns. Now that there was peace, and life was getting back to normal, people were able to focus on the enormous damage alcohol had done to fronntier families, especially the women, as it ran rampant in the mining camps and frontier farms. A prohibition movement began to take shape. James Walker's older friend, an ardent teetotaller named Joel Webster Parker, was familiar with the mining camps of southwest Wisconsin, having sold supplies up there for years. He said the hops industry was moving west into southwest Wisconsin and should be stopped in its tracks, since the making of breweries would be the downfall of civilization. Those who know Wisconsin today will agree that he had a point. At the time, though, it was just an argument unfolding in the Warren Sentinel and other local newspapers.

James Walker enjoyed going to Galena, hobnobbing with local important people, getting to know business people in both Warren and Galena. He watched as his literary attempts for the most part went underappreciated or unappreciated; it was, after all, a mining town. This job would be week after week of hoping someone somewhere would read and enjoy something he wrote. Someone besides his wife and kids.

The literary argument against the newspapers was that the newspapers were prostitutes, writing more and more about what people wanted to read, caring less and less about fine literature. One might as well write one's own book, if one wanted fine literature, and stay away from the brothel newspapers. In a world where someone owns everything you say, how can you call that fine literature? Newspapers were becoming commonplace; the United States was entering the era of newspapers; more and more people were reading them. But what was happening to fine literature? It was moving to the bottom, or to the back, not fully paid for, barely read, not holding a candle to news about the local murder. Get used to being undervalued, even squeezed out when column inches are in short supply. Who reads poetry anyway? Every day you're the bastard stepchild that doesn't really belong here, but gets squeezed in on slow days when there's nothing else to say, As things. heat up there are fewer and fewer of those days. If you write poetry or literature, you're better off publishing it yourself and then nobody will buy it, and you'll starve.

James Walker gave up journalism and moved to southwest Wisconsin with Joel Webster Parker, who was able to start a merchandise store in the town of Hillsboro and employ him running teams and supplying it. Up there a brewery moved in and burned down within two years; this caused James Walker to decide that the town had unwholesome influences for his kids, and to move them up to a farm in the center of the state near Black River Falls. He would farm up there for about ten years, isolated. He would never write again, as far as I know.

The Sentinel is still around today, but newspapers are in a way different form than they were in in the late 1800's. They are like advertising inserts; most people just use them for their paper value, as for example checking their oil. Back then, if one didn't read them, one used them in the outhouse. Nowadays, we rarely even use them to check the oil.

Today all the social media titans, Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos, sit at the president's side. They own the information associated with your shadow; when you click "shoe" they send a signal to each other and each of your accounts is inundated with shoe advertisements. This information has combined to make them the richest men in the world, capable of buying TikTok or determining what kind of information TikTok is able to give the Chinese. What can you do besides say "no thanks?" We rely on social media to keep track of family and old friends, to tell them what we're up to, to "check in," as it were, so that they know we're still alive and thinking. I have all my books on Amazon; there is no other game in town. But I feel like my great-great grandfather, like moving to a farm out in the middle of nowhere, and living out my days free of everything except minimal contact with the outside world. Not sure that would be possible for me. Worth thinking about, though.