05/29/2015

Ohio’s quirkiest newspaper names

by Courtney Stanley, ONA Intern

One thing always keeps a newspaper recognizable to readers: its name.

While there are plenty of traditional names like gazette, times, journal, and herald on Ohio newsstands, a handful of papers jump out with more eye-catching names. Whether they are derived from old-fashioned traditions or forgotten histories, the following five newspapers stand out as some of the quirkiest newspapers names in Ohio.

The Toledo Blade’s name harks back to the city’s historic ties to Toledo, Spain.

According to an article written around 60 years ago by Grove Patterson, a former editor of The Blade, the Ohio city of Toledo was named after a city in Spain famous for its manufacturing of weapons.

When The Toledo Blade’s first issue was published on Dec. 19, 1835, the staff included an editorial explaining why they chose to associate themselves with the famous blade of Toledo:

“Our readers will immediately perceive that the name we have assumed was suggested by the notoriety a certain city in Old Spain obtained for a peculiar kind of manufacture… it has been and will continue to be the duty of the Toledo press to fight with that valour and ability which the justice of their cause deserves, they will not deem the selection inapt.”

The editors assured readers their name did not mean them to be “tart, smart, witty, severe, ironical, caustic, or provoking,” but said, “We assume the name because it is novel, because it is quaint, and because it contains an apt allusion to the origin of the name of our flourishing place…"

“Our blade has no elasticity – it will break before it will bend. Neither is it a mirror, wherein every passerby may see his own peculiar, and perhaps narrow whims and prejudices reflected. Neither is our blade a heavy broadsword, nor a malignant little rapier, but we intend it shall be as sturdy as a Scottish claymore – an instrument better fitted for long and enduring service than for use in brilliant exploits.”

Today, The Canton Repository is conspicuous on a list of quirky newspaper names, but it was not an uncommon name at the time of its founding in 1815. According to Gary Brown, editor-at-large of The Repository, the name was especially common in New York and Pennsylvania.

John Saxton, founder of The Repository, traveled from Pennsylvania to Ohio seeking out opportunities to build a paper in a one of the state’s new towns. He arrived in Canton in 1814 and was the first publisher in the town.

In the first issue of The Canton Repository, Saxton explained the familiar name to a new Ohio audience. He wrote that men of all parties and all viewpoints were “invited to make it a Repository of their sentiments.”

According to Brown, The Canton Repository is the last surviving newspaper with the name Repository.

Take a look back at each day in Repository history with Brown’s daily historic page.

Ohio’s largest circulation daily newspaper was founded in Cleveland in 1842 and carries a name that Winston Churchill reportedly called the world’s best name for a newspaper.

The name “Plain Dealer” was chosen to represent plain and honest reporting, and it set the Cleveland daily up as an “advocate of truth.”

In their first issue, editors stated, “Our democracy and modesty suggest the only name that befits the occasion, The Plain Dealer.”

Just 30 miles east of the Plain Dealer’s territory is the Geauga County Maple Leaf, a weekly newspaper founded in 1994.

The Maple Leaf refers to a huge part of the county’s identity in a clever play on words. “Leaf refers to paper, and maple syrup is a mainstay in Geauga County,” said Cassandra Shofar, news editor of the Maple Leaf.

Shofar said Geauga County is the largest producer of maple syrup in northeast Ohio, making it Ohio’s maple syrup capital. The county’s Maple Festival holds the largest maple contest in Ohio and has been running since 1926.

James H. Odell founded The Mahoning Vindicator in 1869, a few years after the end of the Civil War. Legend has it the newspaper got its name because Odell found “vindication” in his Democratic political beliefs in Youngstown, which was unusual in the largely Republican antebellum North.

The Vindicator gained recognition from another Youngstown paper, The Register, after its first publication. The Register printed, “Received the first number of The Mahoning Vindicator today… and we are inclined to the belief The Vindicator will make things lively after a while in Mahoning County.”

The Vindicator still describes itself as “fiercely independent,” stating in the book These Hundred Years: A Chronicle of the Twentieth Century as Recorded in the Pages of The Youngstown Vindicator that today most American papers are owned by groups or chains, but The Vindicator remains among the independent daily newspapers.