About The Charles Mix new era. (Wagner, Charles Mix County, S.D.) 1???-1911
Wagner, Charles Mix County, S.D. (1???-1911)

The Charles Mix New Era, The New Era-Leader, The Wagner post, and The Wagner Leader

Launched in 1900, The Charles Mix New Era was a Friday paper published in Wagner, the seat of Charles Mix County in South Dakota. The circulation was 1,000 copies per week. The paper consisted of eight six-column pages with four pages each of home and ready prints. The home prints included content from local schools and churches, commissioners' proceedings, legal notices, reports from a full range of correspondents across the area, and a number of sensational advertisements for the local drug store. The ready prints included state and national news, farmers' advice, women's and children's columns, jokes, and short and serial stories. The New Era advertised itself as the "only official county paper on the [Sioux] reservation" and was the only paper to carry the official Indian lands list. The New Era also offered subscription bundles with popular national newspapers and advertised them as "cheap reading" for the long winter nights. Its audience was predominantly local farmers and businessmen and their wives and children but the paper maintained a large "foreign" subscription base by offering news from correspondents around the state. It also used subscription contests to add to revenue during slow years and described itself as the "paper that made the Gate City famous."

The New Era was affiliated with the Republican Party and printed stories in favor of Prohibition, womens' suffrage, and the labor movement. It was a member of the South Dakota Press Association and often featured strike news from the South Dakota newspaper union. The paper demonstrated some animosity toward the local Democratic newspaper, The Wagner Leader, and its editor Jacob W. Eggers but otherwise enjoyed cordial relations with other newspapers. In 1908, after a particularly violent election season, The Charles Mix New Era declared that it had had enough of politics and would be "non-political" from that time. Further stories against the Insurgent or Progressive party were occasionally printed, but the paper otherwise kept its promise.

Editor and local postmaster Addison H. Pease operated The Charles Mix New Era in the first permanent building in Wagner. In 1905, Pease bought a new Diamond Cylinder Press manufactured by the Challenge Machinery Company. It was the only press of its kind in South Dakota and Pease advertised it heavily as such. Businessmen George G. Johnson and Frank Ray purchased the New Era in 1906 and continued the paper in much the same format. Fourteen months later, Ray sold his portion of the company to Dale Savage, former foreman of the Armour Chronicle Tribune. Johnson and Savage continued publishing a fundamentally unchanged paper until Savage departed in 1908. This left Johnson the sole editor and proprietor until May 1909 when opera house manager E.C. George joined him as editor and Johnson took a backseat as business manager and job printer. Due to ill health, Johnson retired in November 1909, leaving E.C. George editor for the remainder of the paper's life.

On March 10, 1911, The Charles Mix New Era merged with The Wagner Leader to form The New Era-Leader. This name lasted until February 2, 1912, when E. C. George, the editor of The New Era-Leader, changed the name to The Wagner Leader again. George maintained control of the paper, leaving the format virtually unchanged, until April 4, 1912, when Democrats Lounzo E. Corey and Loren D. Blackman purchased the Leader and changed its name to The Wagner Post. The latter continues to serve the readers of Charles Mix County to the present.

Provided by: South Dakota State Historical Society – State Archives