Pictures, a Park, and a Pulitzer
Mel Ruder and the Hungry Horse News
by Tom Lawrence
photography by Mel Ruder
published by Farcountry Press
- A weekly newspaper filled with local photographs was unheard of when Mel Ruder founded the Hungry Horse News in 1946 in a small Montana town just west of Glacier National Park. In his first issue, Ruder announced that he would emphasize positive news and publish plenty of photographs. The thirty-one-year-old Navy veteran marveled at this "promised land," reminding readers that "More than 200,000 Americans from all of the 48 states save their money for eleven-and-a-half months of the year in order to live two weeks where we live all the year...."
When a vast flood filled the area in 1964, Ruder photographed, interviewed, thumbed rides on small planes to get aerial views, printed the photos, and wrote the stories. His and his staff's efforts won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished General Local Reporting in 1965—the first Pulitzer given to a Montana newspaper.
This volume brings together a generous sampling of Mel Ruder's photography, a taste of his editorials, and the biography of the man behind the Hungry Horse News during its first thirty-two years of operation.
200 pages, 9 1/2'' x 11 3/4'', 254 b/w photos, 9 illustrations, 1 map(s), 20 softcovers per case, Smythe-sewn
softcover
ISBN 10: 1560371617
ISBN 13: 9781560371618
$9.95
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| Pictures, a Park, and a Pulitzer
Mel Ruder and the Hungry Horse News |
| When admirers of the Hungry Horse News picture Mel Ruder, it's with a camera slung over his shoulder as he heads to Glacier National Park, or with a camera pressed to his face as he takes pictures in Columbia Falls. But forgetting about Ruder the editor, the editorial writer, the newsman, is a major oversight. Mel Ruder was a talented writer who used his own special style to draw readers to a good story.
"Bikini had nothing on us, for Columbia Falls unknowingly anticipated the atomic bomb by 54 years when it named its main street Nucleus," he wrote in the paper's first issue, referring to the Pacific Ocean atoll where atomic tests were being performed at the time. "First winter climb to the top of Mt. Cleveland in the history of Glacier NAtional Park was completed early this week," he wrote in a front-page story on February 10, 1977. Ruder often disdained the use of pronouns and articles, and favored short, sharp sentences. "We had to save space in the paper," recalled reporter Gladys Shay. He also told the news straight out. If a school board member was engaging in finincial shenanigans, it was on the front page. If a teacher was trying to collect unemployment benefits he didn't deserve, it was on the front page. If Glacier tourists were endangered by bear management policies he didn't feel were proper, it was in the paper. And Ruder didn't just cover the news—he commented on it. "Every paper should have a local editorial every week," he advised a younger editor in the 1990s. From the first chapter, "Mel Ruder" |
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Tom Lawrence first met Mel Ruder in the summer of 1997, when the retired Hungry Horse News editor was gracious in his assistance to the paper's new managing editor. Lawrence is a native of Brookings, South Dakota, and has worked for newspapers in South Dakota, Texas, Oregon, and Montana, and won writing awards in all four states. He is the editor of Montana's Whitefish Pilot weekly newspaper. |