A True (and Truly Good) Tale of Newsprint and Murder

WAR OF WORDS: A True Tale of Newsprint and Murder
By Simon Read
(Union Square Press, $24.95)

You think the newspaper business is tough now? Competing newspapers in mid-19th-century San Francisco sometimes fought each other—literally—for circulation and advertising supremacy in a rough-and-tumble city fueled by Gold Rush money, whiskey and gambling and ruled by corruption, vigilantes, violence and scandal. Publishers were beaten or murdered. Editors sometimes faced off with dueling pistols. Mobs angry at articles or editorials surged into newspaper offices and destroyed everything in sight. And, notes author Simon Read in War of Words, “Reporters roamed the streets like rival gang members, many with the reassuring weight of a sidearm against the hip.”

At times, a half dozen or more newspapers battled each other for readers, and there was plenty to write about—or gossip about—in mid-19th-century San Francisco.

“Murder was the news industry’s bread and butter in those early days,” the author writes. “A tale of killing always received priority coverage and was seldom cut or held to make room for copy of a less dramatic nature….In the 1800s, much like today, sex and violence sold newspapers.”

Right in the middle of this newsprint melee, the famed (and recently financially imperiled) San Francisco Chronicle was born “as a throwaway vehicle for theater advertisements and drama critiques” known as the Daily Dramatic Chronicle. It was founded by two brothers, Charles and Michael de Young, members of “a family with an obscure history draped in sordid rumor.”

The de Youngs, however, proved to be adept and lucky businessmen, Simon Read points out in this engaging, entertaining and enlightening historical portrait of San Francisco journalism and the controversial personalities behind it. The de Young brothers paid back their publication’s startup loan just one week after their debut issue on Jan. 16, 1865. They also kept costs low by doing all of the newsgathering, typesetting and publishing themselves. They even gathered up and recycled old issues in clever ways that brought in a little extra money and helped build up their publication’s reputation.

The Daily Dramatic Chronicle soon became a magnet for writers such as Mark Twain, Bret Harte and others who later would become famous. It also got an unexpected circulation boost from a tragic event in Washington, D.C., when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The brothers’ newspaper normally went to press after the city’s morning papers had published and long before the afternoon papers appeared. The Daily Dramatic Chronicle was able to hit the streets with fresh headlines and quickly follow up with extra editions as stunned people scrambled to get the latest news about Lincoln’s death. Meanwhile, mobs attacked and destroyed some of San Francisco’s newspapers that had taken pro-Southern or anti-Lincoln stances.

After these dramatic events, and now with fewer competitors, the newspaper kept growing and later was renamed the San Francisco Chronicleon Aug. 16, 1869.

But new troubles and controversies were just beginning for what would become San Francisco’s premiere daily newspaper. Simon Read’s new book takes the reader deep inside the turmoil of the San Francisco Chronicle’s early history as a war of words spirals out of control between Charles de Young and Isaac Kalloch, a mayoral candidate and well-known “hellfire preacher” with a scandalous reputation. One man soon would shoot and almost kill the other, and a son of the survivor later would retaliate by shooting and killing his father’s assailant.

The author, a former Bay Area reporter who has written three other books, has done an excellent job of mining colorful quotes and details from newspaper articles, periodicals, magazine articles, and court transcripts from “the time in question.”

WAR OF WORDS: A True Tale of Newsprint and Murder definitely lives up to its title and subtitle.

-- Si Dunn

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Fixing Washington -- Two Modest Proposals

Can Congress and the White House get any more unpopular in 2008? Well, yeah, but their 2007 popularity (or lack of popularity) ratings have been plenty ugly enough. Indeed, they were, as many Texans like to say, downright double-ugly as the year ended.

Modest Proposal #1: To end Washington, D.C.’s “inside the Beltway” fixation on running—and ruining--America, why not move the nation’s capitol to a city near the geographical center of the United States? Yep, Wichita, Kansas, should become the next vortex sutra of American politics. Our leaders should have to rule from the very heart of the heartland. And those poor, left-behind K Street lobbyists? They will just have to buy plane tickets, bus tickets and train tickets if they wish to bring their bags of cash into the new center of influence.

Modest Proposal #2: We can keep electing presidents, vice presidents and governors. But everyone else over the age of 40 should have to register for the political draft and, if selected, be required to serve a four-year term as a U.S. or state senator or representative. There will be no more campaigns and no more cash donations for these offices. All political draftees will attend eight weeks of special boot camp, where they will re-learn American history and appropriate state history. They also will study the contents of key historical documents and learn how to work together as teams willing to honor, protect, defend and serve their states and nation. It will be government of the people, by the people, for the people, in a much truer sense.

Religions (or no religion), handicaps, birthplace, and income levels should be no impediment to holding office, as long as one is a native or naturalized citizen. Someone living on Social Security, Medicare and Republican rip-off drug plans could be drafted and suddenly find themselves drawing a U.S. Senator’s salary, with full benefits.

Anyone claiming to be “too stupid” or “too crooked” to serve will not be allowed to dodge the political draft. America has survived many episodes of these two qualities already, at all levels of government.

Moving the capitol to the heartland and letting America’s “real” people rule will not destroy our nation. Indeed, it couldn’t make us any worse than what we have already become: a dollar-ocracy where everything, including loyalty and patriotism, gets sold to the highest bidder.

These two changes might even help us become the kind of nation we were taught to believe in—and often did believe in—when we were young: America the Beautiful; esteemed leader of the free world; open to all, friend to all; the land of opportunity—not opportunism.

Wichita vortex America!

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