Breaking the Copper Collar: Press Freedom, Professionalization and the History of Montana Journalism

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, the founding of the Montana School of Journalism indicated that Montana was following national trends in the professionalization of journalism. However, the multi-national Anaconda Copper Mining Company began to dominate economic and political life in the state and, as a strategy to silence dissent, purchased most of the state's daily newspapers. From the 1920s until 1959, journalists working at the newspapers could write nothing that clashed with the company's business enterprises. Journalists were thus not all owed to develop and exercise their professional skills through their news judgment—lawyers and accountants made news judgments, not journalists—and were frozen for decades in this pre-professional model. This changed in 1959 with the purchase of the Anaconda papers by Lee Enterprises, a Midwestern newspaper group. Following its own traditions, Lee allowed the journalists to exercise their own editorial judgments. Don Anderson, a Montana native and Lee executive, led the way in this transformation of the state's journalists to professional status. Newspapers soon found themselves engaged in clashes with Anaconda over important issues and even taking more active roles in civic reform efforts. Lee has managed the papers over the years since with praise for their editorial independence but criticism of their financial frugality.