Edward Wyllis Scripps

American publisher

• Born: June 18, 1854
• Birthplace: Near Rushville, Illinois
• Died: March 12, 1926
• Place of death: At sea, off the coast of Monrovia, Liberia

Through delegating responsibility but maintaining control of his holdings, Scripps established a publishing empire that eventually included newspapers, the United Press Association, Acme Newsphotos, and the United Feature Syndicate. Late in life he cofounded the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems, and the Science News Service.

Early Life

Edward Wyllis Scripps was born on an Illinois farm, the son of James Mogg Scripps and Julia Osborne Scripps. He was the youngest of the thirteen children of his father’s three wives. In a sense, Scripps was destined for a publishing career because his ancestors had been active in the field: William Armiger Scripps, his grandfather, had been the publisher of the True Briton and part owner of the London Literary Gazette in England, and his father had been a bookbinder in London, England, before he emigrated to the United States in 1844.

Because his mother, who was forty when he was born, disciplined him harshly and criticized him, Scripps became bitter toward her and turned to his half sister Ellen, who was eighteen years older than he, for affection, acceptance, and guidance. She became a surrogate mother and lifelong confidant, financial backer, and supporter. Her aversion to publicity, love of solitude, sense of responsibility, freedom from tradition and dogma, and range of intellectual interests all influenced Scripps. A loner and relative failure at school, he was, with Ellen’s encouragement, a voracious early reader of the many books in his father’s extensive library.

Scripps’s half brother George, fifteen years his senior, was another ally who, despite the prevailing family notion that Scripps would amount to nothing, defended him. When George later joined Scripps and his brother James in the newspaper business, he usually sided with Scripps against James. James’s relationship with Scripps was ambivalent. Although he recognized his half brother’s talent, he was also jealous, more conservative than Scripps, and fearful of losing control. Squabbles, which sometimes became legal battles, were common in the Scripps family.

Before he joined James in Detroit, Michigan, in 1872, Scripps worked on his father’s farm. Although he was a sickly child, he became quite healthy, probably because of the physical labor on the farm; however, he never liked the work and enjoyed his reputation as the “laziest boy in the county.” Scripps was not really lazy. He hired boys his own age, rather than adults, to work on the farm, thereby saving money, and then increased their efficiency by encouraging them to race each other. This ability to seize an opportunity and get others to work efficiently for him also characterized his career in publishing and explained his willingness to hire good editors and then give them responsibility and incentives. Scripps did not believe in doing anything he could get someone else to do.

In 1872, when he was eighteen, Scripps had to decide what to do with his life. Because he had read so widely, he was drawn to a literary career, but the family newspaper tradition also attracted him. Because James was editor of the Detroit Tribune, he should have been assured of a place on his paper, but James, who remembered him as a sickly, argumentative youngster, refused to hire him. The only other career option for him was teaching, but when he met some of his pupils, a tough-looking group, he gave up his teaching plans.

Life’s Work

Scripps’s publishing career began in Detroit, where he was supposed to take a job in a drugstore that was being opened by one of his cousins. Scripps, however, went directly to the Detroit Tribune, where his half brother William, foreman of the job shop, employed him as an office boy in the counting room. When James and William left the Detroit Tribune and started a job-printing plant, Scripps went with them and gradually learned the printing business. When the Detroit Tribune burned to the ground, Scripps salvaged the lead from the type and earned about one thousand dollars.

Shortly afterward, James decided to found an old dream of his, a small, cheap (two cents), condensed newspaper rather than the large, conventional five-cent papers. The Detroit Evening News succeeded despite widespread predictions of failure. Instead of being a reporter, a job he was not qualified for, Scripps was a carrier boy, initially selling papers but quickly hiring others to do his job at less money until he had two thousand subscribers. He used a similar strategy, picking the right people as carrier boys, when he was put in charge of increasing circulation in outlying areas.

Not content with the business part of publishing, Scripps turned to writing. Because his brother would not give him a reporter’s job, he had to offer his services for no pay. Through hard work and persistence he gradually, by rewriting other reporters’ stories, honed his writing skills and became city editor. In this position he stressed “personal journalism,” or exposé writing. When libel suits ensued, the family incorporated the paper in 1877, and Scripps used his one stock share (out of the fifty issued) to borrow money from family members to start other newspapers, which produced the stock to fund still more papers.

In 1879 Scripps traveled to Europe with George, and the trip became a pivotal point in Scripps’s life. While abroad he decided that he would become wealthy, that environment and circumstances determined one’s fate, and that he would establish his own paper in Cleveland, Ohio. While in the Colosseum in Rome, he also decided to create his own journalistic empire. Over James’s protests, he became editor of the Cleveland Penny Press, a position from which he controlled the business manager, ostensibly equal in power. (In the future, Scripps editors would control the newspapers, while business managers sold advertising and subscriptions.) Despite some financial problems, the Cleveland Penny Press was as successful as the Detroit Evening News. With the Cleveland Penny Press Scripps established a policy that applied to all of his later papers: Report all the news and support the workers and the underdogs.

In Cleveland he defeated another giant in American newspaper publishing, Edwin Cowles, but when he started the St. Louis Chronicle in 1880, he was not as successful with Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. When Scripps returned to Cleveland, he was accused of libel but won a “not guilty” verdict. Shaken by recent events, he went to Europe with Ellen and again resolved to take charge of his life, which had been marked by heavy drinking and womanizing. Upon his return to the United States in 1883, he focused his energies on the Cincinnati Penny Post , which became a voice against the corruption in Cincinnati, Ohio. By 1884 the Cincinnati Penny Post was in the black, and by 1885 its circulation exceeded that of the Detroit Evening News.

Following his secret marriage to Nackie Holtsinger on October 7, 1885, Scripps overcame the faults that had plagued him in the past. At this point he had also achieved his European resolutions of 1883. He was worth about $250,000 and had an annual income of $20,000. From his country home in West Chester, Ohio, he began to practice remote-control management. In 1887, during James’s absence, Scripps was caught in a power struggle with John Sweeney, a favorite of James. Scripps won with the backing of George and a reluctant James and assumed, at the age of thirty-five, control of the four Scripps papers that became the Scripps League.

Scripps also established the New York Advertising Bureau to obtain national advertising for all four newspapers and the New York News Bureau to get news coverage in Washington, D.C., and abroad. However, once again there was trouble between James and Scripps, who lost the battle when George sided with James. Scripps was left with only the Cincinnati Penny Post and the St. Louis Chronicle under his control. Leaving Milton McRae (he called his two papers the Scripps-McRae League) in charge, he retreated to Southern California, where he built Miramar, a large estate near San Diego.

Scripps’s fortunes turned in 1892 when George switched sides and added his Cleveland Penny Press to the Scripps-McRae League. When George died in 1900, James contested the will, which gave Scripps George’s stock. When the dispute was settled, mostly in Scripps’s favor, Scripps was able to expand the Scripps-McRae League and two other chains Scripps controlled. When he retired in 1908, his newspaper holdings included about two dozen papers. In addition, in 1907 he had created the United Press, which provided an alternative source of news to the Associated Press.

During his retirement, Scripps oversaw his journalistic empire, though he left the day-to-day operations to his editors and to McRae. By 1907, however, a growing rift between Scripps and McRae led to McRae’s removal from the business. Scripps’s son Jim subsequently became the business manager of the firm and served in that capacity until he, too, became the target of Scripps’s displeasure and was removed from power in 1919, when Scripps came out of retirement. In 1922 Scripps put his son Robert and Roy Howard in charge of a new newspaper conglomerate, Scripps-Howard, which added still more newspapers. Scripps then retired again and retreated to the Ohio, his yacht, on which he died on March 12, 1926.

Significance

Scripps was one of the giants of the newspaper industry. Like William Randolph Hearst, Pulitzer, and Cowles, he established a journalistic empire that endured. With his “penny” newspapers he helped bring all the news to the lower classes, and his papers were independent rather than public relations organs for political parties. Despite his own capitalistic success, his sympathies were with the workers, the underdogs, and the forces that opposed political corruption. He believed in the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively, even though his own profit margins were diminished by such activities . In fact, Scripps was more than willing, especially after 1908, to disclose his values and beliefs; in his “disquisitions” and letters, usually dictated, he commented on a wide range of topics, including biographical anecdotes (although not always reliable) and newspaper policies.

It was these policies that accounted for his success. From the beginning, he was an idea person who started things, found able people and gave them the freedom to finish what he had started, and then moved on to new projects. That is why his editors rather than his business managers ran the papers. If their papers, which were owned by Scripps, were successful, the editors could acquire stock in them, thus providing them with real financial incentives. Scripps always insisted on keeping at least 51 percent of each paper, however, and thereby retained control of the entire chain. It was this desire for autocratic rule, even if exercised by remote control from Miramar or one of his yachts, that brought him into conflict with members of his family, especially James and Jim, and with his trusted associates when their ideas clashed with his. Seldom has a man so indelibly put his stamp on a business enterprise he founded.

Bibliography

Baldasty, Gerald J. E. W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Biography focusing on the development of Scripps’s newspaper chain.

Casserly, Jack. Scripps: The Divided Dynasty. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1993. After an initial chapter on Scripps, the remainder of the book is devoted to Scripps family squabbles and the life and career of Edward Scripps, Scripps’s grandson. Contains the Scripps family tree.

Cochran, Negley D. E. W. Scripps. 1933. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1961. An early appreciative biography of Scripps, including many details about the newspapers he founded.

Gilson, Gardner. Lusty Scripps: The Life of E. W. Scripps, 1854-1926. 1932. Reprint. St. Clair Shores, Mich.: 1971. Extensive early biography of Scripps, including material on Scripps’s publishing ancestors.

Knight, Oliver, ed. I Protest: Selected Disquisitions of E. W. Scripps. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966. Contains comments on the nature of the “disquisitions,” a succinct but helpful biography, and many well-edited disquisitions arranged in thematic groups, including several on journalism.

McCabe, Charles R., ed. Damned Old Crank: A Self-Portrait of E. W. Scripps Drawn from His Unpublished Writings. 1951. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971. A series of Scripps’s writings, arranged chronologically, that span his life; the essays concern his “bad habits,” business anecdotes, family quarrels, and journalistic insights. The selections were chosen by a family member.

Schaelchlin, Patricia A. The Newspaper Barons: A Biography of the Scripps Family. Foreword by Neil Morgan. San Diego, Calif.: San Diego Historical Society, 2003. Biography of the Scripps family, tracing the history of the family’s newspaper empire.

Trimble, Vance H. The Astonishing Mr. Scripps: The Turbulent Life of America’s Penny Press Lord. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1992. The most complete biography of Scripps. Trimble had access to Scripps’s voluminous correspondence and his disquisitions; consequently, much of the biography is in Scripps’s own words.