Future Governor Founded Longview's First Paper
By Van Craddock
James Stephen Hogg was a pretty ambitious fellow.
Of course, anybody named Hogg who'd name his daughter Ima probably had a pretty good sense of humor. But more than anything else, Hogg was ambitious.
Jim Hogg was only 20 years old when he came to Longview in 1871 and set up the new little town's first newspaper.
Young Hogg had gotten printer's ink in his blood several years earlier, setting type for the publisher of the Texas Observer in his hometown of Rusk. Later he worked as an apprentice at Cleburne, Quitman and the old Tyler Democrat.
However, Hogg wanted his own newspaper, and in 1871 his family urged him to establish one in Longview since the town had no paper of its own. His widowed sister, Martha, came up from Rusk to help him set up the equipment for what Hogg decided to call the Longview News.
From his tiny office opposite the railroad depot, Hogg put out his two-page, tri-weekly (Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays) on notebook-sized paper. Subscription cost was $5 annually, $2.75 for six months.
The Longview News was a success from the first issue in October 1871. The folks around town liked his views. Hogg went to work attacking the radical Reconstruction administration of Gov. Davis, lambasted railroad subsidies, promoted education and urged residents to work to bring new investment into town.
"Let us encourage those who come among us with a view to manufacturing, it matters not how insignificant the article they propose to manufacture, (just) so it has utility," Hogg wrote in an early issue. "This is the age of energy, progress and vigor … Longview must continue to grow more rapidly than it has ever done, and will astonish in its strides to greatness even its best friends."
The little paper collected more and more readers, and even advertising from as far away as Galveston. But only a couple of months after the first issue rolled off the press, a group of citizens from Quitman came to Longview for a visit.
They liked what they'd heard about him, they told Hogg. They wanted him to pick up lock, stock and barrel and move to Wood County. Besides, they said, Quitman had a lot brighter future than Longview ever would.
So Hogg did indeed move. On Christmas morning of 1871, he loaded his press on a borrowed wagon and headed west.
Once again, Longview was without a newspaper to call its own. That changed pretty soon, however, with establishment of the Longview New Era in 1872. The News Item followed in 1873, and there would be others - the Texas New Era, Longview Cycle, Longview Surprise, the Longview Daily News, Gregg County News, Longview Clarion, the Times-Clarion, the Longview Leader.
Hogg stayed in the newspaper business only a couple of years after leaving Longview. He became a lawyer (just as his late father, a Confederate general, had been) and got himself elected justice of the peace in Wood County in 1873.
From there, as they say, the rest is history.
By the age of 35, Jim Hogg was attorney general of the state of Texas, continuing to wage war on the railroads, big business and insurance companies. He became a hero to the state's farmers. Folks either loved him or hated him. As author/historian T.R. Fehrenbach once put it, "There will always be some controversy whether Hogg was a statesman, Democrat or demagogue."
Hogg was elected governor in 1890, becoming the first native-born Texan to do so. He strengthened the state's anti-trust laws and pushed through creation of the Texas Railroad Commission.
All these years later, Jim Hogg still is regarded as one of the most colorful people to ever hold the governor's office.