The Tribune Pans a Play—and a Rival Paper Pans Back
A traveling dramatic company bombed in Olympia, and the fight over who said so turned into a newspaper war over puffery, honest criticism, and who was cheating amusement-seekers.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Olympia Standard criticises The Tribune for telling the truth about a cheap dramatic company which appeared at the Olympia theater last Saturday night, and quotes favorable comments about the same company from the columns of the Oregonian, Post-Intelligencer and Dramatic Star. Perhaps the chronic favorable comments are what kept people away from the theater last Saturday night. They are growing tired of having a good-for-nothing play lauded as a first-class performance, as is generally done by the papers mentioned above, and when amusement seekers get to the theater they frequently find themselves imposed upon. The Tribune will continue to criticise fairly, and is not in the least troubled with the mercenary remarks of the Standard. It is pleasing to know that good plays are always greeted in Olympia with better houses than miserable "fakes."
“They are growing tired of having a good-for-nothing play lauded as a first-class performance.”
Newspaper arts coverage in 1891 was already a tug-of-war between boosterism and honest pans. The spat shows how a single bad night at a small-city theater could become a public argument about credibility—and reminds us that "everyone's a critic" is not a digital-age invention.
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