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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The New Business Model for Newspaper Survival?

All over the U.S., newspapers are in deep trouble. Some have closed their doors; others are teetering toward collapse.

Their incomes from advertising and paid subscriptions are shrinking as more and more of us turn to online sources for news, sports, information, classified advertisements and updates on restaurants, movies, products and services.

Now there is urgent talk that newspapers may have to become mostly digital and try to sell their content online, to subscribers and to single-copy buyers (the digital equivalent of those who occasionally purchase newspapers from coin racks and news stands).

Selling digitized newspaper content already has failed several times. The New York Times and others previously have tried and abandoned it. Internet users are used to getting almost everything for free, except on music sites such as iTunes.

Some pundits already have floated this idea: Why not sell digitized newspaper content the same way music is sold on iTunes?

There's one big problem, however. Newspapers going digital with the iTunes model in mind will have to spend a lot of money on trying to make their reporters, feature writers and columnists into national and international media stars, so people will want to buy what they write.

Every journalist will have to become his or her own "brand"--You sell, you can keep working here.

The emphasis on "gotcha" journalism and scandal mongering then will just increase, as journalism "brands" battle each other for sales and marketplace dominance.

Nobody will want to cover local news--Boy Scout promotions, wedding announcements, obituaries, two-car accidents at Main and Elm--because almost nobody (except a few family members) will pay any money to read such reports, print them out and put them in scrapbooks.

Meanwhile, there will be hundreds, thousands of journalist "brands" rushing to cover President Obama, Kate Winslet and the Jonas Brothers.

Why, after all, write a story that will bring in two dollars when you can write one that might, potentially, bring in thousands for the newspaper and hundreds for your pocket?

If you sell, you can stay. If you don't sell, we'll replace you with a better "brand."

Doesn't sound like a very promising future for American journalism.

-- Si Dunn

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