Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 9, September 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article and photos below in your research. Be sure to quote the Seattle Sun as your source.

Stan Stapp:

Journalism career spans an amazing eight decades

(Editor's note: The following is part two of a series looking back at the career of Stan Stapp, former publisher of the North Central Outlook and, for the past 18 years, a columnist for The Forum, Seattle Press, The Jet City Maven and Seattle Sun. Due to limited space, the interview with Stan, promised last month, has been delayed until the October issue.)

By CLAYTON PARK

Stan Stapp's career as a journalist was one he was born into, literally.

His first "job" as general manager of Fouress Print Shop, a business started in 1918 the same year Stan was born by his three older teenage brothers in their family home which was located at the time at 944 N. 84th St.

Fouress stood for the four Stapp brothers: Milton, the eldest, who was president; vice president Elbert, and secretary-treasurer Arthur.

In 1922, Milton, shortly after his graduation from Ballard High School, used the printing press he and his brothers owned to launch a small advertising circular initially called "Your Community Shopping News. That paper soon evolved into a full-blown community newspaper, which was rechristened as the North Central Outlook.

The Outlook would soon involve the entire Stapp family, including the patriarch, Orril V. Stapp, a piano teacher, who assumed the title of editor. The paper was published out of the basement of the family's new home at 4203 Woodlawn Ave. N.

Stan remembers landing his first real job with the paper as a grade schooler when he became a "printer's devil," or assistant, whose after-school responsibilities included emptying the waste baskets, sweeping the floor, starting the furnace fire with kindling, adding coal from the coal bin, delivering papers and tending the newspaper-folding machine.

As he got older, Stan learned how to handset type and operate the printing press and later became involved in news writing, advertising and editing.

In 1931, at age 13, he published his own newspaper, called The Magnet, which he distributed to friends and classmates at Hamilton Junior High School, which was located across the street from the family's home.

As a student at Lincoln High School, which was located just two blocks north of his home, Stan wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Totem, for two years.

He started writing a column for The Outlook, after going to work full time for the paper upon graduating from high school. In the 1940s, he was named co-publisher of the Outlook, along with his brothers, and in 1954 he became sole publisher after buying out his sibling's shares.

For the next two decades, he served as publisher, editor and columnist, and even covered breaking news as a reporter/photographer on occasion. In 1950, he was elected president of the Wallingford Commercial Club, and participated in efforts to raise funds to build a new home for the Wallingford Boys Club along North 45th Street.

Stan won numerous awards for his columns, including a first-place national award in the early 1960s. He did not shy away from controversy, either as an editor or a columnist. He editorialized against segregation, censorship and the Vietnam War and wrote articles sympathetic to the hippie movement.

Stan's wife Dorothy, whom he married in 1966, began working for the Outlook as a bookkeeper the following year and the couple continued to work together until they made the difficult decision to sell the paper in 1974, when a new citywide chain began buying up most of the smaller independent community papers in town, including the Outlook's closest competitor, the University Herald. The sale of the Outlook to the Today chain, which would end up folding within only a couple of years, ended The Outlook's remarkable 52-year run as an independent, family-owned operation.

Stan retired from newspaper publishing, but that initial retirement would soon prove to be short-lived.

More on this next month!