{"id":435,"date":"2018-08-04T20:02:17","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T03:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/?page_id=435"},"modified":"2025-07-20T22:16:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T05:16:23","slug":"elliot-marple-1999","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/elliot-marple-1999\/","title":{"rendered":"Elliot Marple (1999)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After about a year as Marine Writer at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Mike Parks offered me a job at Marple\u2019s Business Newsletter. Elliot Marple, the founder, was over 70 and wanted to retire. The newsletter was a two-man job; if I cam to work for it, Parks said, I could work my way into a 50 percent ownership, just as he had. So I quit the P-I and went to work with Elliot and Mike.<\/span><\/i><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After a while, I found the newsletter too restricting. It demanded a style shorn of all personality. No bylines. After a year, I quit and went back to the P-I.<\/span><\/i><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I always respected Elliot and Mike for what they were able to do \u2014 to make business journalism pay \u2014 and was thankful for what I had learned from them. Nineteen years later, I was able to express some of that in a review I wrote for the P-I of April 21, 1999.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Elliot Marple, now 91 and still writing, was in his heyday the best business reporter in the Pacific Northwest. He did what almost none of us do: He sold his writing directly to readers. He was reporter, editor, publisher and pencil sharpener at\u00a0Marple\u2019s Business Newsletter<\/i>. Some folks are self-publishing today with computers; Marple did it with a typewriter, a telephone and a 1903 Addressograph machine.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I remember the\u00a0ka-chunk, ka-chunk\u00a0<\/i>of that machine. I\u00a0ka-chunked\u00a0<\/i>it myself in 1980 when I was a kind of apprentice under Marple and his successor, Mike Parks. Though I decided that the newsletter life was not for me, I never forgot it.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Marple was the most precise editor I\u2019ve ever known. Never since Marple have I called a corporation a firm. When a piece of mail came in, his rule was, deal with it now. If it\u2019s something you need, file it. If it\u2019s a bill, pay it. Our accountant said we were his only client who accounted to the cent, with no petty cash.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That was Marple\u2019s way, and it made possible the independence he wanted. He has now written a book,\u00a0Man-at-a-Typewriter Journalism: 50 Years Reporting Pacific Northwest Business\u00a0<\/i>(185 pages; $12.95 at bookstores, $15 by mail from Marple\u2019s Business Newsletter, 117 W. Mercer St., Seattle 98119). The book is, of course, self-published.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Marple grew up in Seattle, attended the University of Washington and graduated from Harvard in 1929. He worked in newspapers during most of the Depression, and during World War II was press secretary at the Office of Price Administration under John Kenneth Galbraith. His adventures in price control (the subject of a separate manuscript) convinced him that \u201cthe economy is too complicated to regulate.\u201d It also inoculated him against bureaucratic jobs.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After the war, he worked in an ad agency, lost that job, gathered up his family and drove to Seattle. He was never an employee again.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In 1947, Marple set himself up as an independent correspondent for far-away trade papers such as\u00a0Business Week\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Advertising Age<\/i>. When he had no outlets for the stories he found, he started his own newsletter. It still has 3,500 subscribers, and celebrates its 50th anniversary this month.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Business newsletters typically offer inside news of one industry and charge a high fee. A newsletter about regional business in general was not nearly so promising, but Marple made it work. His rule was, \u201cAnything that had appeared in the daily papers was as dead as a fallen leaf.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In 1949, newspapers did a shockingly poor job of reporting business. The\u00a0Post-Intelligencer\u00a0<\/i>had only one business reporter, and the\u00a0Seattle Times\u00a0<\/i>had none.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With limited space, Marple had to make every word count. He wrote and rewrote. \u201cRun it through\u00a0<\/span>the meat grinder again,\u201d he\u2019d say. He also discarded\u00a0<\/span>the bone-headed Associated Press style of trying to cram the whole story into the first paragraph.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0He cared nothing for flashy stories. His idea of a coup was being the first reporter to interview Charles Pigott, chief executive of Paccar Inc. Colleagues wondered how he had done it. Paccar was notorious for thinking itself a private company years after its stock was publicly traded. Marple got the interview because he was respectful, because he stuck to business issues and because Pigott was one of his subscribers.<\/span>*<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Newspapers always try to name the person being quoted. Marple usually didn\u2019t. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t room,\u201d he says. And he didn\u2019t worry so much about reassuring readers that he wasn\u2019t making things up. \u201cI was responsible for what was in there,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He also wrote a history of the National Bank of Commerce (later Rainier Bank), which led to an odd incident recalled in his new book. Maxwell Carlson, the retired chief executive, came to Marple\u2019s Spartan office and began unloading his concerns about the bank\u2019s board of directors. The board was taking far too long to find a new CEO. It was letting its international business drift dangerously.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cHe said, \u2018I\u2019m talking to you as the bank\u2019s historian, not as a reporter,\u2019 \u201d Marple recalls. \u201cIt put me in a terrible bind.\u201d It was unusable information.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Over the years, Marple was offered corporate jobs, including a position at\u00a0Business Week\u00a0<\/i>and an assistant vice presidency at Seattle-First National Bank under economist Miner Baker. Marple\u2019s answer to them was, \u201cNo, thanks!\u201d Being independent meant \u201cworkdays that stretched into the evenings and a full day Saturday.\u201d But no staff meeting or office chitchat ate up his time. \u201cJust productive work, and the goad that when a self-employed person stops working, he pay stops and the next deadline looms larger.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Would he do it again? \u201cYes,\u201d he concludes. \u201cCertainly yes!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a9 1999 The Seattle Post-Intelligencer<\/span><\/em><\/p>

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Elliot Marple died on Dec 17, 2001, at age 93. I offered to write the obituary for the Seattle Times, but under union rules I wasn\u2019t allowed to work outside the editorial page. The business editor, Stephen Dunphy, wrote it, but he was able to quote me:<\/span><\/i><\/p>

\u201c \u2018Elliot was a master listener, able to see where the conversation was going and keep a few steps ahead,\u2019 said Bruce Ramsey, a Seattle Times editorial writer who worked with Mr. Marple for a year. \u2018He kept wonderfully detailed files. Years and years of potato prices. Wheat prices. Unemployment rates.\u2019 …Mr. Marple seemed to maintain some of the flinty nature of his parents. \u2018There was always a bit of starch in him,\u2019 Ramsey said. \u2018He came from a different generation and showed it.\u2019 \u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>

\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>

*I think I was the first newspaper reporter to get an interview with Pigott, some years later, for the business page of the Bellevue Journal-American. I had to work at it, too.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After about a year as Marine Writer at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Mike Parks offered me a job at Marple\u2019s Business Newsletter. Elliot Marple, the founder, was over 70 and wanted to retire. The newsletter was a two-man job; if I cam to work for it, Parks said, I could work my way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-435","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1602,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/435\/revisions\/1602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}