entirely under the influence and control of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, then known as "Amalgamated Copper Company" or, in a nod to its incredible clout in Montana politics and journalism, simply "The Company". The Missoulian was not a "Company paper"; according to Jerre Murphy, a former Amalgamated employee turned muckracker, it was the only major newspaper in Montana that was not. After his election defeat, Dixon turned the Missoulian against Amalgamated with scathing editorials and "objectionable" news. With Dixon refusing to sell the paper, the Company chose bribery, by offering Dixon the Missoula Sentinel that Dixon felt was splitting the city's advertising dollars. Dixon accepted, but only on the condition that he would be "fair" to Amalgamated in the press. Pressure on advertisers for new anti-Dixon competition and Amalgamated itself pulling its advertising dollars, as well as having the Milwaukee Road cancel complimentary papers that it had given to passengers, however, forced Dixon to sell. Two newspapermen from the Chicago Journal, Martin Hutchens and Lester L. Jones, purchased the Missoulian and were soon part of the "copper press" (i.e. a "Company paper" known for using its pages to promote the Company's views and for suppressing news it didn't want reported) and would remain as such, until Anaconda Copper sold all its Montana newspapers to Lee Enterprises, in 1959. Lee Enterprises By the late 1950s, the Anaconda Company's newspaper model of toeing the company line and avoiding controversy had left the company's papers self-conscious and defensive to the point that Don Anderson commented in its appraisal of the newspapers that "They even refused to take a stand on the weather." When the papers were finally sold in 1959, only the Billings Gazette and Missoulian were profitable and in growing markets. Ultimately, the financial difficulties of the company's papers around the state may have helped Lee Enterprises, who faced competition from much larger organizations, such as the Cowles Media Company and the Ridder Corporation, purchase the newspaper block. Larger publishers were only interested in the two profitable papers, while the Anaconda Company insisted on selling the papers as a block, with an implicit guarantee that individual papers not be sold off to recoup losses. Also in Lee Enterprises' favor was that Don Anderson, publisher of the Wisconsin State Journal and later, president of Lee Newspapers in Montana, who in 2007 would have the new University of Montana School of Journalism building