Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 232 pages
- Published by: University of Illinois Press January 1, 1999
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0252067509
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0252067501
-
Book Dimensions:
8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
- Weighs: 10.4 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
"Do not be afraid to be called a skin flint or miser. You can acquire no more valuable reputation," Edward Willis Scripps told the business manager of his San Francisco Daily News. He never tolerated "frills" for his staffers, which in his mind included toilet paper, ice in the summertime and even pencils. But his formula worked. From 1870 to 1908, Scripps built an empire of small, cheaply run newspapers that shared Scripps-based wire copy (an innovation in its time), aimed at a working-class readership and shut down in an instant when their market faltered. The effort was a struggle from the first. Scripps had to force himself on his newspaper-executive brothers to get a shot at the businessAand then he outdid them at their own game. He fought off efforts by such rival publishers as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, who had just as much moxie as he did. And he strived to buildAof all thingsAnewspapers that were not beholden to advertisers. None of it was easy, and despite the newly available resource of Scripps's business correspondence, it isn't any easier getting a sense of Scripps as a flesh-and-blood print mogul here. Baldasty paints readers a nice profile of his subject at the book's start; later chapters, however, are all thesis and supporting point, with little in the way of punchy anecdote. Still, the E.W. Scripps Co. thrives today, and is currently involved in a real down-and-dirty newspaper war in Colorado. If Baldasty too baldly lays out the nuts-and-bolts business plan that got the company there, Scripps for one would appreciate his economy.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Today, the daily newspaper that most Americans read is owned by a corporate chain. Since
World War II, the shift has been from eighty percent independently owned to eighty percent corporately controlled. E.W. Scripps is credited with establishing the first national newspaper chain at the turn of the century, and his business practices transformed the newspaper industry. Baldasty, a professor of communications at the University of Washington and author of The Commercialization of the News (Univ. of Wisconsin, 1992), draws upon Scripps's business correspondence to detail the development of his newspaper chain. Scripps targeted working-class readers and developed a centralized system of distributing news and managing individual papers. This book offers a specialized examination of Scripps's business practices and assumes a basic background in newspaper history. A welcome addition to academic journalism collections.?Judy Solberg, George Washington Univ., Takoma Park, MD
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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