Home Town News: William Allen White and the Emporia Gazette

In 1895, a 27-year-old journalist named William Allen White returned to his home town of Emporia, Kansas, to edit a little down-at-the-heels newspaper he had just purchased for $3,000. "The new editor," he wrote in his first editorial, "hopes to live here until he is the old editor, until some of the visions which rise before him as he dreams shall have come true." White did become "the old editor," remaining with the Emporia Gazette until his death 50 years later. During his long tenu…