The Sentinel of the Sound
A citizen’s poetic tribute to the indispensable role of the press in the frontier life of 1880s Seattle.
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.
To the Post-Intelligencer: What a blessing to this country newspapers seem to be. They guard us like a sentry on posts from sea to sea. They bring to view our kindred scattered far and wide, by other nations hindered, there, resistless as the tide. Freedom of thought and action, given by power of press; depress crime to a fraction, on social ways no stress. Truth brings forth the vilest slander—Newspaper men all know—but with no time to ponder, expose the high and low. On state affairs so vital, they watch with jealous eye, remote from care of title, and where bribers do underlie. That our press will always flourish, until nought remains to be found, I wish I'll always cherish, while here on Puget Sound.
“They guard us like a sentry on posts from sea to sea.”
In 1882, a local reader captured the optimism of an era that saw the newspaper as a moral watchdog for a booming, isolated frontier town. Today, while the platforms have shifted from ink to pixels, the civic anxiety over 'bribers' and the search for objective truth in an increasingly loud information landscape remains a strikingly modern struggle for Seattle’s public discourse.
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