As told by Jerry Robinson

Back in 1945 Vance Orchard, a young graduate of Highline High School with natural artistic skills and a way with word weaving decided his growing community needed a newspaper so he started one. He called it the Glendale-Highline Gazette and he had little money but he had ambition and a friendly banker.

He wrote all the stories and sold the ads to a tiny group of merchants. When I first met him he was selling ads for the Valley Publishing Company in Kent having sold his struggling paper to John Muller. I was selling ads for the valley papers and Vance was the adman in Auburn.

Mr. Muller, a friendly ex-banker from Valdez, Alaska came down here and became a developer. He had gotten a taste of the newspaper biz when his bank in Alaska foreclosed on the Valdez weekly and he ended up operating it.

In 1948 Mr. Muller, then about 55 years old, came to see me where I was selling ads for the Kent News rournal.

Over a cup of coffee he asked if I would-want to run his newly purchased White Center News. I accepted his offer. Shortly thereafter Mr. Muller hired Al Sneed, a former P38 fighter pilot and top adman from the Renton News Record to come up and run The Highline Times.

Sneed and I clicked, so shortly thereafter, he and I joined with Mr. Muller to buy the first offset newspaper printing press in the state. It was brand new technology at the time, designed to print with far greater clarity than the standard letterpress most papers nationwide were then using.

Our first press was very small. We were able to shoehorn it into the old Highline Times building. Eventually Mr. Muller sold his interest to Al and me and we grew out of the Burien location.

We built a new building in White Center, added many more units and began printing other papers to keep our presses busy.

In 1975 we moved again, taking our Rotary Offset Printing division to Tukwila, just south of the mall. In the middle 70s Al Sneed sold me his shares in The Highline Times and the printing plant.

In 1989, after nearly 40 years in business, we sold our papers and presses to a group of investors from the east coast headed by Joe Blaha. The operation went into bankruptcy in less than two years.

The Seattle Times then came forward, bought the Blaha company out of Chapter 11, and offered to return the West Seattle Herald to me as partial compensation. They operated the remaining papers, in Highline and Federal Way, for nearly six years. In February 1998 they suddenly ceased publication.

By adding some staff and equipment at the Herald, we instantly picked up the pieces, sold a few ads, and had a paper out the following week for the readers we had served all those years in Burien, Normandy Park, Des Moines, Federal Way, and SeaTac.

We found coming back to the newspaper world involved high risk, trying to survive where two other big outfits couldn't kept us awake many a night. But it was energizing for us to put a team together overnight and to keep producing weekly papers that now serve five suburban communities.

It was a tribute to a dedicated staff and a real lifesaver for me and Elsbeth. In my semi-retirement, I found that having something significant to do everyday is a lot more fulfilling than chasing golf balls. Nothing beats being useful to your family and your community.

But the market we serve had changed dramatically. Some years ago, The Seattle Times had forged a joint operating agreement with the Seattle P-I, which preserved a daily monopoly.

After they quit the weekly business in South King County, they kept our press division in Kent valley and we had to have a place to print our papers and chose to open a small new printing plant in Seattle near Safeco Field.

Further, the ever-expanding airport had shut down a couple of schools and emptied hundreds of local homes. The major mercantile growth shifted east to Tukwila and the few remaining independent grocers were bought by the chains.

All of the small dress shops, men's shops, shoe stores, and small hardware stores went out of business. The Highline Times which once published three times a week shrunk to a once-a-week tabloid.

We are smaller than we once were but we are lively, well edited, full of color, and revered by thousands, we are the only paper that cares about the past, present, and future of our communities. Plus we are growing and the future looks exciting.

So it's time I said thanks to my old pal, Vance Orchard, for coming up with a big idea 60 years ago. We are having the time of our lives here, still publishing your local paper Vance.

We are very proud of the job our people are doing and the feedback we get has been very positive. Big things keep happening here, so if the sun shines and the well does not run dry, we will be here another 60 years.

Thank you dear Highline Times readers for the faith you have shown in us.

Jerry and Elsbeth Robinson

temp_date_for_import: 08/23/2005 12:00pm Author(s): GuestAugust 23, 2005