The Edmonds Tribune-Review: Seventy Years Covering Edmonds And Its People

The Edmonds Tribune-Review was more than a newspaper.

Established in 1907 by Will H. Taylor, the Edmonds Tribune provided the first competition to the Edmonds Review, published sporadically since the early 1890s. But Taylor sold it less than a year later to Edmonds merchant and banker William Schumacher.

During Schumacher’s tenure, the Tribune merged with the existing Edmonds Review, which was at that time run by the redoubtable Missouri T. B. Hanna, the “mother of journalism” in Washington. Hanna, a prominent Edmonds citizen, political activist and subject of an upcoming Patch article, sold the paper to devote her time and energy to the women’s suffrage movement.

Rechristened the Edmonds Tribune-Review, the paper changed hands several times over the next decade, finally being bought by Ray and Fanny Cloud in 1921. For more than 30 years the Clouds ran the paper as a mom-and-pop operation, personally seeing every edition to press. So they could live near their work, they added a second floor to the newpaper's Main Street office and furnished it as an apartment.

Throughout these years, the Clouds were strong supporters of the community and its people. During World War II, the Clouds arranged to have the paper mailed directly to local service men and women overseas. During his years as publisher, Ray Cloud served as Chamber of Commerce president, first president of both the Edmonds Lions Club and the Edmonds Area Community Chest, president of the Washington Newspaper Publisher’s Association, and president and secretary of the Edmonds Kiwanis Club.

In addition, the Clouds actively supported public education and local schools. Within a year of purchasing the Tribune-Review, they arranged to have the Edmonds High School paper, The Wireless, included as a page in an expanded Tribune-Review. This practice continued until 1946. Starting in 1929 and on several subsequent occasions, the Clouds turned over publication of a complete issue of the Tribune-Review to a high school journalism class.

When the Clouds retired in 1952, the Edmonds Chamber of Commerce  presented the couple with a Certificate of Merit recognizing their years of service to the community. At the presentation it was noted that after 31 years as publishers, the Clouds had taken only one vacation, a two-week motor trip to California.

For several years prior to retiring, Ray Cloud had been writing what would become the definitive history of Edmonds, Edmonds: The Gem of Puget Sound. First published in hard cover in 1953, the book was reprinted in soft cover in 1983 and is available for purchase in the .

Ray Cloud died at the age of 80 in 1974.

The Tribune-Review went through several changes in ownership over the next several years. In 1965, it was acquired by the Enterprise, a relative newcomer to the local news scene. The Tribune-Review continued as an adjunct to the Enterprise for a number of years, but closed permanently in the mid-1970s.

Long after its demise, the Tribune-Review remains the principal source of information about life in the community between 1910 and 1980.