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Donald
W. Anderson
1900 – 1978
Inducted
June 30, 1984
Don Anderson negotiated the purchase by Lee Enterprises of
the Anaconda Company newspapers in 1959, heralding a rebirth
of honest,
responsible journalism in a large segment of the state. That
transaction ended a disgraceful era of Montana journalism
during which most
of the state’s larger dailies were choked by the “copper
collar.”
But more than negotiating the purchase of the newspapers, Anderson
encouraged and inspired his Montana editors and publishers
to exercise their new freedom with complete and fair news coverage,
hard-hitting
editorial positions on the issues and reader access to newspaper
columns with letters to the editors, things unheard of in the
Anaconda days.
While maintaining his duties as publisher of the Wisconsin
State Journal in Madison, Anderson served as the first president
of the
Lee Newspapers in Montana, a position that later was eliminated
as the Montana properties became fully integrated into the
Lee Enterprises structure.
The newspapers included The Billings Gazette, The Missoulian,
The Montana Standard of Butte, the Helena Independent Record
and the
Livingston Enterprise, the last of which was later resold.
It was the nation’s largest one-deal newspaper purchase up
to that time.
A native of Bozeman, Anderson had an abiding love for the Gallatin
country and was a frequent visitor to his summer cabin along
the river in the Gallatin Canyon.
Anderson attended Montana State University (then Montana State
College) for two years, then joined the army in 1918. After
the armistice, he went to Madison to enter the University of
Wisconsin
School of Journalism. His entire career was with the Wisconsin
State Journal in Madison.
He joined that newspaper in 1923 as a humor columnist at $15
a week, but “ran out of humor the first week” and
was shifted to another job within two weeks. He became city
editor in 1925, Sunday editor in 1926, managing editor a few
months
later,
business manager and assistant publisher in 1933. He became
publisher in 1942 and remained in that position for 26 years
until his
retirement in 1968.
Anderson died April 26, 1978, in Madison, of Lou Gehrig’s
disease
.
During his successful career, Anderson received many accolades,
awards and honors. As his obituary in The Gazette stated, he
was “tall,
immaculately groomed . . . like a New Yorker’s concept of
a ‘man of distinction.’ But his speech, manner and
friendliness were strictly of the West from which he originated.
He was at home on horseback, in a trout stream, a Mexican village
or a drawing room.”
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