{"id":2156,"date":"2012-04-09T09:26:53","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T13:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=2156"},"modified":"2015-05-26T09:29:32","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T13:29:32","slug":"never-a-dull-moment-the-rough-and-tumble-history-of-philadelphia-newspaper-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2012\/04\/never-a-dull-moment-the-rough-and-tumble-history-of-philadelphia-newspaper-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Never a Dull Moment: The Rough and Tumble History of Philadelphia Newspaper Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
\n\"Purchase <\/a> \"View <\/a>The Evening Telegraph at the Lincoln Building on Broad Street, South of City Hall. Photograph by
\nN.M. Rolston, October 4, 1916.<\/span><\/div>\n

When Philadelphia boomed so did its newspapers. The city\u2019s population, about 81,000 in 1800, expanded fifteen-fold over the next century to 1.3 million. This did wonderful things to make Philadelphia a robust newspaper reading and publishing town.<\/p>\n

No less than a dozen dailies started up in Philadelphia between 1836 and 1880. During the Civil War, Charles Edward Warburton and James Barclay Harding thought afternoon readers could be better served and launched The Evening Telegraph<\/a><\/em>, a newspaper with a name that actually meant something. Utilizing the telegraph, editors transmitted news from the first national political convention after the Civil War held at \u201cThe Philadelphia Wigwam<\/a>\u201d directly to their offices. The Evening Telegraph<\/em> compiled and ran editorials from newspapers across the United States and Europe. It commissioned translations and serialized Jules Verne\u2019s novels, including his popular Tour of the World in Eighty Days<\/em>.<\/p>\n

By the mid-1890s, then run by the second generation of leadership, The Evening Telegraph<\/em> built a promising \u00a0future. While conducting research for his book American Journalism From The Practical Side<\/a><\/em>, Charles Austen Bates toured the paper\u2019s new quarters at 704 Chestnut Street and sat down the owner\/publisher, the thirty-year old Barclay Harding Warburton. Bates came away impressed, finding The Evening Telegraph<\/em> \u201cin every respect a model newspaper\u2019s home.\u201d He recognized that the young Warburton needed to maintain the paper\u2019s appeal \u201cto the millionaires, solid business people, and the society people\u201d but he also needed to broaden the paper\u2019s popularity. This Warburton accomplished with an array of new features including a woman\u2019s page, \u201can amateur sporting page,\u201d pages devoted to art, literature, theater, \u201cthe secret and colonial societies,\u201d and, on Saturdays, a \u201cministerial page.\u201d The Evening Telegraph<\/em>, Bates noted, \u201cseems to appeal very strongly to both the classes and the masses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Broad Street Station and the Reading Terminal,\u201d wrote Bates, \u201cmore copies of The Evening Telegraph<\/em> are sold than of probably all other papers put together.\u201d Warburton had increased circulation by 300%. He had increased advertising by 60%, selling to every last one of Philadelphia\u2019s 44 banks, 28 trust companies, as well as getting \u201call the legal business there is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Evening Telegraph at the Lincoln Building on Broad Street, South of City Hall, 1916, detail. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Evening Telegraph<\/em>\u00a0thrived on Chestnut Street in a remarkable district<\/a>, a complex, competitive, journalistic community. By the late 19th-century, eleven of the city\u2019s dailies could be found between 6th and 12th Streets, Chestnut and Market Streets. To Bates, the neighborhood appeared to be thriving; he\u00a0couldn’t\u00a0quite imagine how fragile the state of Philadelphia journalism really<\/em> was. In the first decade of the 20th century, three newspapers would fold. By the Great Depression, ten\u00a0were gone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1911, perhaps sensing the seachange, Warburton sold out to Rodman Wanamaker, his wealthy, dilettantish brother-in-law. Wanamaker may have bought The Evening Telegraph<\/em> as a plaything, or possibly as an investment. To run the operation, he installed John T. Windrim<\/a>, an architect with no experience in journalism or publishing. The paper left its 7th and Chestnut Street office for the high-priced, ostentatious Betz Building, a stone\u2019s throw from both City Hall and Wanamaker\u2019s Department Store. Many things were different on Broad Street, but a few remained the same. Journalists at The Evening Telegraph<\/em> continued their longtime practice of \u201ctransmitting\u201d the latest news by scribbling it on blackboards hung at street level. On October 4, 1916, this was the latest bloodletting from the front lines of World War I (the Battle of the Somme) and the score from the last baseball game (Phillies lost to the Boston Braves, 1-6).<\/p>\n

Two years after Wanamaker’s bet on The Evening Telegraph<\/em>, Cyrus Curtis, an even wealthier Philadelphian, started on an ambitious newspaper acquisition and consolidation spree. Between 1913 and 1930, Curtis, who had been hugely successful as a publisher of magazines, purchased five Philadelphia dailies, three of which he would fold. Curtis\u2019s second target, The Evening Telegraph<\/em>, acquired for its wire services, was bought and closed on June 28, 1918\u2014after 54 years of publication.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, Curtis\u2019s publishing acumen\u00a0didn’t\u00a0quite translate to the world of daily journalism. His last acquisition, a $10.5 million purchase of the Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em> in 1930, was meant as a savvy final stroke in Curtis’s plan. It was final, but not terribly savvy. After Curtis died in 1933 his company was forced to sell the Inquirer<\/em> at a loss.<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be the last time such a thing could happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Evening Telegraph at the Lincoln Building on Broad Street, South of City Hall. Photograph by N.M. Rolston, October 4, 1916. When Philadelphia boomed so did its newspapers. The city\u2019s population, about 81,000 in 1800, expanded fifteen-fold over the next century to 1.3 million. This did wonderful things to make Philadelphia a robust newspaper reading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}