Dale Alison, The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa –
There’s a newspaper in Illinois that includes on its masthead its slogan, to “Fear God, print the truth and make money.”
It’s a sentiment most papers share, though not so boldly. For without solid financial underpinnings, the paper would be unable to print the news, as the New York Times used to state “without fear or favor.”
Today, The Hawk Eye is a successful business that’s been doing business longer than Iowa has been a state. In fact, it was established before Iowa was a territory.
On a more noble plane, however, one could say The Hawk Eye seeks to steer public opinion along in search of progress and justice. It’s not always a pretty sight. The truth is never cut and dry, black and white and laying there to pick up. Though we try to do it as politely as possible, to achieve our goal, we are perceived by some as arrogant, belligerent and not very nice.
Still, people come to depend upon us. We live to tell stories. Life stories. We chronicle births. We tell about weddings. Pass along funeral information, tax information, sports scores and the comics.
At The Hawk Eye, it’s a tradition that’s 175 years old today. At the top of today’s paper it states we’re beginning our 176th year of publication.
The Hawk Eye traces its roots to The Wisconsin Territorial Gazette and Burlington Advertiser — that’s one name. It later was called the Iowa Daily State Gazette and still later, just The Burlington Gazette. That first edition was published July 10, 1837, by James Clarke and Cyrus Jacobs.
The pair moved their printing business to Burlington from Belmont, Wis., because it was the new territorial capitol for Wisconsin. Burlington, after all, being on the Mississippi River, was easier to reach. And compared to Belmont, it had splendid weather — particularly in the winter when the Legislature would meet.
Some 18 months later, James Edwards moved his press to Burlington from Montrose and started publishing the rival Patriot. On Sept. 5, 1839, he changed the name to The Hawk-Eye as part of a campaign to convince Iowans to bestow themselves a nickname before someone did it for them, something that didn’t happened in Illinois and Indiana, and residents were tagged as Suckers and Hoosiers. Edwards suggested Hawkeyes and it stuck.
A local attorney, David Rorer, offered the name to Edwards. Under a pseudonym, Rorer wrote letters to other papers, suggesting the nickname.
He also found himself in the middle of a news story not particularly of his liking.
Rorer and Jacobs got into a political argument in the middle of the street one day, and the newspaper publisher started whacking Rorer with a cane. Rorer pulled a gun and shot him. Dead. That settled the argument.
Rorer successfully pled self defense, but it pretty much ended what up to that point was a blossoming political career. Rorer helped write the Iowa Constitution and the city’s charter.
Anyway, for the next 100 years, the Gazette and The Hawk Eye remained staunch rivals. There were other papers, but they came and went. The Gazette and The Hawk Eye were Burlington’s principle newspapers. In an era when newspapers were closely allied with the political parties, The Gazette loved Democrats. The Hawk Eye, on the other hand, hated liquor and embraced the cause of the Whigs and their successors, the Republicans.
At various times, one newspaper was more innovative than the other. In 1848, for example, The Hawk Eye was the first to get its news by telegraph.
A bank panic in 1857 killed the Gazette, and it suspended publication until 1862.
Both supported the Union cause during the Civil War.
In 1873, Robert Burdette joined The Hawk Eye and started the wildly popular Hawk Eyetems column. It kept track of the common man’s daily experiences in a humorous way and by 1877 it had such a following that Burdette started a national lecture tour. By 1880, he had outgrown Burlington and moved on.
By 1895, The Hawk Eye and The Gazette were next-door neighbors on Main Street. In fact, The Hawk Eye printed The Gazette on its press. In 1904, however, The Gazette tired of that relationship and bought its own press capable of printing 25,000 copies an hour — even though it had but 3,800 subscribers.
Both papers supported U.S. intervention in World War I. And after the war as the city began to prosper, each paper editorialized for better roads to handle the half million cars Iowans owned.
The Roaring 20s were good to Burlington and both of its papers. By 1929, The Gazette had about 12,000 subscribers; The Hawk-Eye only slightly fewer. But both felt enormously confident of the future. Within months of one another, both papers erected new office buildings. The Hawk Eye — a morning paper — published on Fourth Street, and The Gazette circulated in the afternoons just around the corner on Washington Street.
Unfortunately, the debt both papers incurred strained their overhead and nearly did in both papers when the economy tanked in October of that year.
Galesburg, Ill., banker Omer Custer rescued the papers from insolvency and merged them, keeping The Gazette’s quarters and selling off The Hawk Eye building.
(Prugh’s Funeral Chapel, next to the Congregational Church in downtown Burlington, now operates from the old Hawk Eye building.)
The newly named Hawk-eye Gazette worked out of the Gazette building until the mid-1950s, when it moved to its present location at 800 S. Main St. The old Gazette building was torn down to make way for a parking lot at the savings and loan at Third and Washington streets.
Custer kept the combined papers just over eight years until he sold it to Jack and Sidney Harris of Kansas on July 21, 1941. Descendants of the Harris brothers still own the paper.
About this time, newspapers began separating their news columns from their opinion columns. News columns became more detached and increasingly objective. But on the editorial page, the paper would continue to let its readers know how it thought the world should be.
The Harrises installed Clarence Moody as editor. He maintained the Republican philosophy Custer instilled until he retired in 1957.
Moody perhaps crystalized the news philosophy that has driven The Hawk Eye since: “Tell the public how its tax money is used.”
When he retired, Moody was replaced by Stuart Awbrey, who was known as a gifted writer.
As publisher, Awbrey shortened The Burlington Hawk-Eye Gazette’s name to The Burlington Hawk-Eye. He moved the paper to its current quarters and started a Sunday edition.
Awbrey moderated The Hawk Eye’s politics. In fact, the paper endorsed John Kennedy for president in 1960. Still, the paper’s editorial policies were more Republican than not.
That changed and changed dramatically in 1965 when John McCormally came to town. Fresh off winning a Pulitzer Prize in Hutchinson, Kan., where he championed the one-man, one-vote philosophy, “Mac” was considered a wild-eyed and radical Democrat. In fact, then-Congressman Bob Dole referred to The Hutchinson News as the “Prairie Pravda.”
For 14 years, McCormally angered, amused and entertained subscribers of The Hawk Eye. Under his editorship, The Hawk Eye was the first paper to endorse Jimmy Carter for president.
Mac also shortened The Hawk Eye’s name further, dropping both Burlington and the hyphen from its name. McCormally also introduced offset printing and color photography to the newspaper.
Twice during the 1970s, The Hawk Eye was named the best paper in Iowa by the Daily Press Association.
In 1979, McCormally resigned and became a roving columnist for the Harris papers. Awbrey returned to Burlington until 1985, when he was replaced by Bill Mertens, who started his reporting career when the paper was collecting those awards in the early ’70s. In 1995, The Hawk Eye launced thehawkeye.com, one of the first online news sites in the state.
Mertens died of cancer in 2004 and was replaced by another former reporter at the paper, Steve Delaney. Delaney remains as The Hawk Eye’s editor and publisher.
As The Hawk Eye launches yet another year of publication, it knows no other newspaper in Iowa has been doing it as long.
