Executive editor of the centennial issue of this newsletter describes how journalism at Iowa State "began, so the story goes, with an idea 'born in the warmth of an open fireplace' in the Stockyards Inn at Chicago."
Author describes the role of John Clay, head of a livestock commission firm in Chicago, in stimulating the inauguration in the fall of 1905 of an agricultural writing class at Iowa State College, "perhaps the first formal course in technical journalism in the United States."
