{"id":9011,"date":"2015-05-31T23:23:34","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T03:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=9011"},"modified":"2015-06-01T18:38:18","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T22:38:18","slug":"want-a-better-philadelphia-look-for-it-in-the-city-item","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2015\/05\/want-a-better-philadelphia-look-for-it-in-the-city-item\/","title":{"rendered":"Want a Better Philadelphia? “Look for it in The City Item.”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Item<\/em>, 7th and Ranstead Streets, 1889. (PhillyHistory.org\/Free Library of Philadelphia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thomas Fitzgerald<\/a>\u00a0jumped into Philly journalism and never looked back. He liked to write; loved to lead, and insisted on challenging the status quo<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The name of the \u201cracy and spicy\u201d newspaper Fitzgerald started as a weekly in 1847 and soon grew into a daily changed again and again:\u00a0The City Item<\/a>, Fitzgerald\u2019s City Item,<\/a> The Philadelphia City Item<\/a>, The Evening Item<\/a>. <\/i>Everyone always knew it as The Item\u2014<\/i>and that it\u00a0<\/i>stood for the little guy. Fitzgerald promised to be \u201cconstantly aggressive in all that relates to the equality of Man before the Law and ever striving to break down barriers of Prejudice and Caste.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a house is burnt in this city, or a store robbed, or an omnibus upset, or a fiddler hissed, or an actor applauded, look for it in The City Item<\/em>. If a poor fellow goes in two with a railroad car on Market Street, or a gentleman of aldermanic rotundity falls down in his own street in a quiet, comfortable, respectable fit of apoplexy, look for it in The City Item<\/em>. If a fair maiden is lured from the pathway of peace to the pathway of vice by a fellow with a huge pair of moustaches, look for it in The City Item<\/em>. If an elopement takes place between one man\u2019s wife and another wife\u2019s husband, look for it in The City Item<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald, who very much looked the part,<\/a> had,\u00a0demanded reforms aimed at improving the common good: removing gates from public squares, reforming the street numbering system, upgrading the police and fire departments with telegraphs, building public baths and establishing a city morgue. He fought to demolish the sheds<\/a>\u00a0that ran up the center of Market Street since the 17th<\/sup> century and to replace them with modern\u00a0market buildings<\/a>. He “ridiculed the red-brick monotony of the city\u2019s architecture\u201d and campaigned for music in the schools.<\/p>\n

In June 1869, Fitzgerald called for mixed-race baseball. \u201cSuch a game would be interesting and well patronized,\u201d he argued, asking “Who will put the ball in motion?\u201d and\u00a0signing off as \u201cA Lover of the Game.\u201d (A few months later, Fitzgerald got his wish<\/a>, serving as the umpire of the game\u2014the first of its kind– between the African-American Pythians and the Caucasian Olympics.)<\/p>\n

Circulation of The Item<\/i> grew until it hit its stride in the 1880s \u201cas a crusading penny paper with a press run that sometimes reached 200,000 copies.\u201d By 1890, nearing the age of 70, Fitzgerald retired handing the operation over to his sons. Harrington Fitzgerald became managing editor.<\/p>\n

In 1894,\u00a0Inquirer<\/i>\u00a0editor\u00a0<\/span>Charles H. Heustis\u00a0<\/span>described<\/a>\u00a0The Item<\/i> as a successful afternoon paper with a Sunday edition that \u201cespecially reaches the working classes.\u201d He observed that \u201c<\/span>Item<\/i> boys are seen in every quarter of the city, and when the <\/span>Item<\/em> wagons are drawn up in a line on Seventh Street, at the hour of publication, they form an extended procession.\u201d T<\/span>hat procession led to circulation that bypassed Heustis\u2019 own paper.<\/p>\n

As we said in an earlier post<\/a>, no less than a dozen dailies started up in the city between the mid-1830s and 1880, and all were in the same neighborhood. Next door to The Item\u00a0<\/em>was\u00a0The Call<\/em>. Just across Ranstead was The Evening Star<\/i>. Diagonally across 7th<\/sup> Street was The Daily News<\/i>. The Evening Bulletin<\/i>, The Public Ledger<\/i><\/a> and the Philadelphia Demokrat<\/i>, a German-language newspaper were found within a \u00a0block to the east.\u00a0Half a block to the south at Chestnut were The Press<\/a>, <\/i>and The North American<\/i>. (The Press<\/em> Annex<\/a>\u00a0still stands at 7th and Sansom.) Further to the west on Chestnut was The Times Printing House<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"Seventh<\/a>
Seventh and Ranstead Streets in 1970. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Competition was stiff. But by 1901, John Henry Hepp notes<\/a>, The Item<\/em> had them all beat every day of the week. The Sunday Item<\/em> surpassed The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em> by more than 17,000 copies with circulation of 184,009.<\/p>\n

But winning wasn\u2019t enough for the feisty, fastidious Harrington Fitzgerald. The following year, in a full-page advertisement<\/a> in N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual<\/em>\u00a0Fitzgerald boasted \u201cTHE ITEM LEADS; OTHERS FOLLOW\u201d and presented his own, higher circulation numbers for each day of the entire previous year. Fitzgerald challenged his competition to join in on a bet worth as much as $40,000 for the newspaper with the\u00a0highest\u00a0circulation in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

By 1911, with the bet still untouched, Fitzgerald increased the stakes<\/a> to $120,000. Still, no takers came forward.<\/p>\n

Behind the bluff, The Item<\/em> was losing ground.\u00a0After Thomas Fitzgerald’s departure, the paper gradually lost its spirit, its talent, its focus and its popularity. Circulation plummeted from 200,000 to a paltry 10,000 and\u00a0<\/span>in 1914, it\u00a0folded. Harrington Fitzgerald went from bragging in print to selling at auction. On January 12, The Item’s<\/em> two buildings, five <\/span>Hoe presses<\/a>, 12 linotype machines, its fittings and furniture\u2014all of it went to the highest bidder.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Additional sources include:\u00a0American Newspaper Journalists, 1873-1900<\/em>. Perry J. Ashley, ed. (Gale Research Co., 1983); “Executor’s Sale, Estate of Thomas Fitzgerald, Deceased,” The<\/em>\u00a0Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, January 3, 1914; “Fitzgerald Estate,” The<\/em>\u00a0Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>,\u00a0July 12, 1914.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Fitzgerald\u00a0jumped into Philly journalism and never looked back. He liked to write; loved to lead, and insisted on challenging the status quo. The name of the \u201cracy and spicy\u201d newspaper Fitzgerald started as a weekly in 1847 and soon grew into a daily changed again and again:\u00a0The City Item, Fitzgerald\u2019s City Item, The Philadelphia […]<\/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-9011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9011","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=9011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}