Evening Capital News Archive

The Evening Capital News, a daily paper published every afternoon and Sunday morning, was a cornerstone of life in Boise, Idaho, from 1899 to 1927. Six days a week, the masthead read Evening Capital News, while on Sundays it was the Sunday Capital News. The journal began as a modest four-page publication and grew with the city. By 1920, Boise's population had reached 30,000, and the Capital News had increased to 12 pages. The Capital News also succeeded in expanding its circulation to other states including Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois, Texas, and New Jersey.

Richard Story Sheridan was the general manager of the paper for 19 years, beginning in 1901. He broadened the paper from six to seven columns, adding pages to the evening publication and expanding the Sunday Capital News to 28 pages. The Sunday edition included a magazine section dedicated to various household, fashion, and scientific topics as well as comics and church news. The Capital News covered local events, mixed with state, regional, and global news. As with most Idaho newspapers, it included many stories on water, irrigation and canals, lumber and sawmills, mining, and railroads. It reported on the Great War, particularly a national food crisis and its effects in Idaho, which rationed food, endorsing two porkless days in addition to the standard meatless and wheatless days put in place by the U.S. Food Administration. Other noteworthy developments during these years included Prohibition, instituted in 1916 in Idaho, and the local effects of the Spanish influenza pandemic and an ensuing quarantine.

In January 1913, Richard S. Sheridan and two other employees of the Capital News, Charles O. Broxon and Alonzo R. Cruzen, were sentenced to 10 days in the Ada County jail for contempt, for publishing a piece about an ongoing state supreme court case. It was held that the newspaper overstepped the liberty of the press by publishing "deliberate falsehoods and misrepresentation." The journalists served their time while the paper continued to publish tales of support from around the nation, including a letter from Colonel Theodore Roosevelt extending "sympathy and admiration" for the jailed men.

While Boise was large enough to support multiple newspapers, the number one competitor of the Capital News was the Idaho Daily Statesman. The two papers engaged in a fierce written battle, each claiming journalistic superiority. In one instance, Sheridan compared the number of lines devoted to three big news items by the Capital News versus the number printed by the Statesman, complete with a chart to illustrate his point. For all three stories, the Capital News had printed more lines, and Sheridan pointed to this as "indisputable" proof that the Capital News provided the best and broadest news coverage in Southern Idaho. In addition, the Capital News often referred to the Statesman as "the morning paper," reminding readers that the Evening Capital News was first to circulate the news.

The Capital News continued publication until January 1927, when it changed to the Boise Capital News under new ownership.