Celebrates 100 years The Winged M STORY BY BRAD BRANT RESEARCH BY KAREN CUMBERS V


olume 100, Issue No. 1. It’s centennial anniversary time for The Winged M.


THE EARLY YEARS What better place to begin the story of


The Winged M than the start: Volume 1, Issue No. 1. L.H. Gregory, the first editor of The Winged M Bulletin, as the club’s primary form of communication was origi- nally known, wrote:


“The purpose of this publication, The


Winged M Bulletin, of which this is Volume 1, No. 1, is to bring the Multnomah Amateur Athletic club closer in touch with its 3,000 members.


“A town of 3,000 population without a newspaper to report happenings and inter- ests would be a curiosity. Consider that a club with 3,000 membership is a pretty fair little community in itself, and the field and need for a publication devoted to the club, its members and affairs, is plain.” “The magazine continues today with


little change in its overall purpose,” says Communications Director Michole Jensen. “The Winged M’s main purpose continues to be to promote club activities and report on members’ accomplishments. The magazine serves as a record of the club and a means of creating community and fostering friend- ships,” he adds. “A significant difference today is that there is an electronic version as well as the printed one. And, the staff oversees all other communication channels,” he adds. For the record,


The Winged M Chat preceded the


Bulletin, but publication of the Chat was limited. The first known Chat, circa 1907, has several feature-length articles and full page photos. In contrast, the Bulletin, a weekly publication, is mostly composed of smaller blurbs and announcements. The issues were eight pages, each divided into


26 | The Wınged M | JANUARY 2011


The size of the Bulletin was typically 10 x 7 inches or slightly larger. It jumped to 14 x 10 in 1927, and the number of pages dropped to four. The mostly consistent masthead underwent a font and format change in 1928, with the logo becoming wider and slightly rounded. Slight revisions to the masthead continued during the next few years. Early years of the Bulletin included photos and cartoons, though their use was somewhat limited. In the late ’20s, simple but clever little cartoon elements decorated the white space of


Bulletin pages.


It seems clear in many of the articles that the club was losing members during the tough economic times of the Depression. This may explain why the size of the Bulletin shrank in the early ’30s to 9 x 6 and the red logo went back to being black. It remained at four pages with a much smaller font. The original mast-


In the early years The Winged M Bulletin masthead was very ornate and it included photos and cartoons. During the Depression the Bulletin shrank in size.


three columns. The masthead announced The Winged M Bulletin in an ornate, serif font with a slightly elongated winged logo instead of a simple “M.” It didn’t take too long for the club to add color to its publication in the form of a red logo. It’s difficult to pinpoint a precise date because archives of the earliest issues are incom- plete, but the red logo appears at least as early as 1922.


head returned in the mid-’30s, as did the red logo, which was dropped in the late ’20s. At this time the busy three-column front page took on a little more style when it switched to a single-wide column of text typically devoted to just one topic. It’s an understatement to say a lot has changed since the early decades of the 20th century, but interestingly enough, some of the articles and short updates found in the early issues of the Bulletin reflect modern- day club issues and activities. A page titled, “Multnomah Club Members You Should Know,” is remark- ably similar to the MAC Professionals page in today’s magazine. An announcement in


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