The "Scoop" on Cucamonga Times

I often wonder what life would be like if I covered this town back in the heyday of newspapers. I mean, look at this guy, Leslie L. "Scoop" Foster, editor and publisher of the Cucamonga Times. He's setting type with a pipe in his mouth. How cool is that?

While writing an article about the Kaiser Steel Museum published in last Sunday's paper, a wonderful profile of Foster from the July 5, 1964 Daily Report landed in my inbox. Thanks to Kelly Zackman of the Ontario Library for digging it up.

Sweeten Hall, the planned site of the Kaiser Steel Museum, is an old school house named after Ray Sweeten, who owned Cucamonga Times from 1917 until he died in 1952. The community paper was established 100 years ago.

Foster purchased the weekly from the Sweeten estate and wrote a front-page column that would start off, "The finest thing about Cucamonga is all the nice folks who live here."

In this 1964 Daily Report piece, the Cucamonga Times is already 55 years old. Here is Foster talking about the paper back in the day, when one editor was practically run out of town:

Foster explained that one of the downtown merchants took exception to one of the early-day editor's editorials.

"He advanced upon the editor with a shotgun," Foster said, "with a wicked gleam in his eye." The life of the editor was saved by the quick intervention of the printer's devil, a young man employed to help out around the shop. But the editor decided that the climate was not suitable to his particular mood and he left town."

Foster allowed: "We don't write those kind of editorials anymore."

Click below to read the full article.

Scoops relief pitch_05JUL1964.pdf