George Washington Read Here

The night before his death in 1799, George Washington sent one of his slaves from Mount Vernon to fetch the latest copy of his favorite daily newspaper--the Alexandria (Va.) Gazette. When he died, the Gazette ran black, reversed-ruled borders on its columns and a poem which began: "What means the solemn dirge that strikes my ear?" "Light Horse Harry" Lee subscribed to the Gazette; his son Robert E. Lee, was reared on it, and Henry Clay wrote for it.

Down through the years, from the Constitutional Convention to the Dixiecrat revolt, the Gazette has told the news with a Southern accent. Last week, in a 132-page anniversary issue, the oldest U.S. daily newspaper marked Alexandria's 200th birthday and looked back over its own 166 years.

Underground. Though it has changed ownership only once since 1800, the Gazette (circ. 9,200) has had eight different names and has suffered more violent changes. Gazette Founder Samuel Snowden and son Edgar pursued a, conservative editorial way until the Civil War. When Federal occupation troops arrested an Alexandria minister in church for refusing to pray for Abraham Lincoln, the Gazette cried out at the indignity. Angry Unionists burned the offices down, and the paper had to publish underground. When it finally made peace with the Unionists and emerged, the Gazette was still unreconstructed.

It remained staunchly Democratic after Congressman Charles Creighton Carlin Sr., of Alexandria, who had worked briefly as a reporter on the Gazette, bought it in 1911 from the Snowden heirs. Now Editor C. C. Carlin Jr., 49, the courtly, conservative son of the late Congressman, runs the Gazette in the same unreconstructed way. He proudly displays the Stars & Bars alongside an autographed photograph of Robert E. Lee in his tiny, cluttered office, just as proudly boasts that the Gazette was the first and northernmost newspaper to raise a rebel yell in the Dixiecrats' cause.

Profitable Lode. The moneymaking Gazette, which once got most of its outside news by printing the letters of traveling readers as "foreign correspondence" now has U.P. and A.P. service and a list of national columnists (Winchell, Bob Hope, E. V. Durling). But it also keeps its smalltown flavor and emphasis on local affairs, and as Alexandria's only daily, mines a profitable lode of local advertising. It makes little attempt to compete with nearby Washington papers.

The Gazette pays its easygoing, underpaid staff a top of only $50 a week. In the tiny newsroom, up a cobwebby staircase in the Gazette's old building, there are not enough typewriters to go around so the staff takes turns writing stories. It leans heavily on loyal volunteer correspondents for breaking news. Bragged one staffer: "There is not a police department or a fire department within a hundred miles that would not telephone us the news at any time of the day or night." But when the occasion demands, the sleepy Gazette wakes up with a bang. It hit the streets with news of D-day in Europe only 18 minutes after the A.P. flash.

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