The Ogden Standard-Examiner Archive

Historians have referred to Ogden, Utah, as the graveyard of western journalism because of the short life expectancy of the dozens of newspapers that sprang up there after 1869. The completion of the transcontinental railroad that year quickly transformed the sleepy agricultural town into a bustling transportation hub. Newspapers came and went, vying for the thousands of potential readers arriving on the nine rail lines with terminals in the city. Ogden's Standard bucked the trend. Founded by Frank J. Cannon, the Standard first appeared on January 1, 1888, with its front page featuring a poem entitled "A Hymn to Progress." When Cannon was elected to the U.S. Congress four years later, the paper's business manager, William Glasmann, took over day-to-day operations. He acquired the Standard outright in 1894 and quickly molded it into a promotional organ for his own political career. Glasmann served three terms as mayor.

The paper also carried world and national news. When the Spanish American War erupted in 1898, the story occupied the Standard's entire front page. Local news included articles about Utah's booming mining industry, notes from the local police blotter, and such nuggets as the Christmas Eve 1907 account of a hapless man who accidentally killed his friend in a failed attempt to shoot his cowboy hat off with a pistol.

On April 13, 1896, Glassmann announced that “With this issue the Standard will appear at least twice a day, and probably will, when occasion demands it, run off extra editions. In publishing the evening edition of the Standard, we have but one object in view; namely to maintain the morning Standard.” This marked the birth of the Evening Standard which essentially ran the same stories as the Standard. The morning-edition Standard changed its name in 1902 to the Ogden Standard.

Frank Francis, an associate editor of the Standard, started the Morning Examiner on January 1, 1904, noting: “The Examiner will not be a party organ, nor the organ of any clique.” On April 30^th of the same year, the Examiner surprised its readers with this headline: “The Examiner Sold…. In surrendering the Examiner to the Standard Publishing Company, we do so not as a matter of choice, but because we could not maintain its present excellent and complete form… No paper ever established in Ogden secured a greater number of paying subscribers in so short a time… We wish to emphatically deny the rumors that the Standard or Mr. Glasmann held any interest in the Examiner until today.”

Through its history, the Morning Examiner had other name changes, being called the Morning Standard and the Ogden Examiner. Glasmann continued to publish the Ogden Standard and Examiner separately, but in 1920 these two papers merged to become the Ogden Standard-Examiner. Today, the Standard-Examiner is the third largest daily in the state.