Lincoln to El Greco

In 1858 the publisher of a little, twelve-year-old Illinois newspaper asked his friend Abe Lincoln for an autobiographical sketch.* Publisher Jesse Fell didn't intend to use it in his own Bloomington Pantograph, because everyone in those parts knew all about Abe. He wanted to forward copies of it to eastern papers, to get them interested in Lincoln for President. The Lincoln manuscript has never left the family's possession; neither has the newspaper. Last week the Pantagraph celebrated its 100th anniversary with an ad-fat, 156-page issue.

The Pantagraph's present publisher, six-foot Loring "Bud" Merwin, is a fourth generation descendant of old Jesse Fell. Many newsmen consider his prairie daily one of the best-run small papers (circ. 32,000) in the U.S. For its wealthy rural readers, the Pantagraph runs more farm news than Prairie Farmer, backs its "clean and consistent record of internationalism" with full coverage of world affairs. (Adlai Stevenson, another Fell descendant and minority stockholder of the Pantagraph, is a U.S. Alternate Delegate to U.N.) Politically the Pantagraph has never hesitated to shuck its normal Republicanism when a Democrat looked better.

Harvardman Merwin knows the value of gossip for a farmland paper (two-thirds of the Pantagraph's circulation is outside of Bloomington--pop. 34,000), keeps 95 reporters, mostly women, feeding it in from as many Illinois small towns. But his local reporting doesn't stop with box socials and births. He once used the Pantagraph to promote one of the best art shows ever held in the Midwest, proved that Illinois farmers by the thousand would pay two bits to see an El Greco.

*He got it. Excerpt: "If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and gray eyes."

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