Dave Wood

I’d like to toss my cookies whenever I see that a venerable institution has changed its name so it could be more “with it,” more hip.

An early example occurred years ago when Cities Service Oil changed its name to CITGO ZOOM! All it served to do for me was remind me of all the bicycle innertubes that Oscar Paulson vulcanized for me at his old green and white station, not to mention how much I enjoyed the concerts played over the radio every week by the Cities Service Band of America. Needless to say, I never heard a concert performed by the CITGO ZOOM! Band of America.

And the beat goes on. The Minneapolis Tribune which I delivered as a boy, then wrote into for four decades got purchased by a Minnesota billionaire who promised that its editorial policy would never change and then immediately turned to the right and changed its name to “The MINNESOTA Star Tribune: the Heart and Mind of the Northwest.” If the new owner wanted to describe his new publication, he could have subtitled it the HEARTLESS of the Northwest.

Newspaper names fascinate me because journalism is such a volatile industry that tends to reimagine itself in whatever direction the wind blows. Years back two little Minnesota hamlets had four newspapers, The Advance, The Standard, The Welcome and The Times. The last time I looked, the press barons in that neighborhood have merged it into one banner-crunching topographers’ nightmare: THE ADVANCE STANDARD AND WELCOME TIMES. Whew! 

Changing the name of The Republican in Red Wing, and the Democratic-leaning Eagle just across the street resulted in a famous editorial barb by the editor of Red Wing’s OTHER paper, known for its Non-Partisan League bias:

“If one removed the brain of The Republican and rolled it into a ball and then removed the brain of The Eagle and did the same, after which one inserted the resultant balls into the bladder of a mosquito, they would rattle around like beans in a boxcar.”

Speaking of the Non-Partisan League, North Dakota leftists had their own name for the architecturally rightist Fargo Forum: THE FARGO FOOL‘EM. Whatever possessed the geniuses (borrowed from Sid Hartman) down in steamy New Orleans to slap the label Picayune on their leading journals before checking Noah Webster?

Picayune: adj. “of little or account. Small or trifling, petty, carping, or prejudiced.”

Thanks, Noah! But those swamp rats down there went ahead and called their newspaper The Times-Picayune, which recently ceased publication seven days a week. The reason? Perhaps readers recognized it contained too little of the Times and too much Picayune. As another book warns, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

The fourth estate up north in North Baltimore, Ohio, was much more sensitive to the nuances of our language than their compatriots down south. In North Baltimore the folks hoped for an oil boom that other Ohio towns were enjoying and so a more modest citizenry cautioned folks not to expect a miracle and renamed the town’s weekly “The Unique Derrick,” of which only one was built before the oil boom went bust.

How about it, Noah?

UNIQUE- adj. Existing as the only sole example; single, solitary in type or characteristics.