9780252071164

Introduction

xxi

1704

The Boston News-Letter reports pirates off the coast of Rhode Island

(1)

1734

John Peter Zenger tells the readers of his New York Weekly Journal about his arrest on a charge of seditious libel

(1)

1735

Nine months later, Zenger uses the pages of The New York Weekly Journal to announce a victory for the principle of freedom of the press

(1)

1755

The New York Mercury reports the massacre of British and colonial troops at Fort Duquesne, Pennsylvania

(2)

1771

Writing under the nom de plume ``Candidus,'' John Adams prods the readers of The Boston Gazette and Country Journal to throw off the yoke of the British Parliament

(1)

1773

The Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter recounts the ``Boston tea party''

(1)

1775

Isaiah Thomas' Massachusetts Spy reports on the first shots of the Revolutionary War

(3)

1776

At the nadir of the Continental Army's fortunes, the first of Thomas Paine's ``Crisis Papers'' appears in Dunlap's Pennsylvania Packet or the General Advertiser

(3)

1787

The Pennsylvania Mercury reports a local story---the final session of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia

(1)

Using the pseudonym ``Publius,'' Alexander Hamilton writes the first of The Federalist Papers in which he urges the readers, of The New York Independent Journal to support adoption of the new Constitution

(2)

1798

The co-editors of The New York Time Piece attack the passage of the Sedition Act

(2)

1803

A young Washington Irving satirizes a troupe of actors in the pages of the New York Morning Chronicle

(2)

1804

The New York Evening Post tells of the death of its publisher, Alexander Hamilton, following his duel with Aaron Burr

(2)

Five days later, the anti-Federalist New York Morning Chronicle stresses the fairness of the Hamilton-Burr confrontation

(1)

1812

Using the ship's log as its source, The Boston Gazette breaks the news of the U.S.S. Constitution's defeat of the British frigate Guerriere

(2)

1815

Andrew Jackson tells the readers of Washington, D.C.'s Daily National Intelligencer of the American victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans

(2)

1831

Serving as a clearinghouse for reports from Virginia papers on the scene, The Washington Globe describes the grisly slave rebellion led by Nat Turner

(2)

1833

The first affordable, frankly low-brow ``penny press,'' Benjamin Day's New York Sun, hits the streets of New York, bringing news to the masses

(2)

1836

The fall of the Alamo, as told nearly three week later by The San Felipe de Austin Telegraph and Texas Register

(2)

1838

Technology has shrunk the world as the first transatlantic steamship crossing is reported by The New York Morning Herald

(2)

1840

Edgar Allen Poe analyzes a murder trial for Alexander's Weekly Messenger

(2)

1844

The Baltimore Patriot and Commercial Gazette informs its readers of the ``annihilation of space'' with the first use of Samuel Morse's telegraph

(1)

1848

San Francisco's Californian breaks the news of the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill near what is now Sacramento, California

(1)

1849

Life aboard a westward-bound wagon train, as printed in The Cincinnati Argus

(1)

1855

William Lloyd Garrison, one of the leading abolitionist publishers, rails against the immorality of slavery in the pages of his newspaper, The Liberator

(3)

1857

The Washington Evening Star covers the Supreme Court's infamous decision in the Dred Scott case

(2)

1859

The Baltimore Patriot provides its readers with a first-hand look at John Brown's raid at nearby Harper's Ferry

(3)

1861

With breathless enthusiasm, The Charleston Daily Courier happily follows the opening battle of the Civil War and the shelling of Fort Sumter

(3)

The Richmond Dispatch reports on the rout of the Army of the Potomac at the First Battle of Bull Run

(3)

1863

The siege and eventual fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, as reported from within that beleaguered city by The Vicksburg Daily Citizen

(2)

The ``high tide'' of the Confederacy, the Battle of Gettysburg, is chronicled in the pages of Washington, D.C.'s National Intelligencer

(3)

The New York Tribune describes the New York draft riots, the bloodiest ever to occur in the United States

(3)

1865

The telegraph allows The San Francisco Daily Dramatic Chronicle to bring news of Abraham Lincoln's assassination to west coast readers within hours of John Wilkes Booth's shot being fired

(2)

1869

A reporter for San Francisco's Alta California paints a picture of a bucolic west doomed to oblivion by the imminent joining of the rails at Promontory, Utah

(2)

But as The Alta California editorialized after the job was done, the United States physically had become one nation, joined from coast to coast by twin ribbons of steel

(2)

1871

The New York Times exposes the corrupt practices of William M. ``Boss'' Tweed and his Tammany Ring

(3)

1876

Samuel Clemens, a former newspaperman, lampoons the long-winded writing style of his contemporaries in the Ventura Free Press

(1)

General George Armstrong Custer's ``last stand'' is reported by The Bozeman [Montana] Avant Courier and reflected upon by The St. Louis Republican

(2)

1882

The shooting of the outlaw Jesse James is reported by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

(5)

1885

The Boston Transcript covers the removal from the shelves of the Concord, Massachusetts, Public Library of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

(1)

1886

Labor unrest explodes into the Haymarket Riot as reported in the pages of Chicago's Inter-Ocean

(4)

1887

Walt Whitman recalls his news-papering days for the New Orleans Picayune

(1)

1888

The mighty Casey strikes out for the first time in the pages of The San Francisco Examiner

(3)

1889

The Pittsburgh Dispatch describes the devastation in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, following the collapse of a dam on the Conemaugh River

(4)

1890

The sponsoring New York World runs the story of Nellie Bly's successful finish to her 'round-the-world journey

(3)

1898

William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal recounts the mysterious destruction of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor

(3)

Barely noticed by the hometown Detroit Free Press, the first horseless carriage appears on the streets of the Michigan city

(1)

Hearst's east- and west-coast flagships, The New York Evening Journal and The San Francisco Examiner, describe the Battle of Caney

100

(3)

1900

The Jackson [Mississippi] Daily Clarion-Ledger recounts the train wreck which took the life of legendary Illinois Central engineer John Luther ``Casey'' Jones

103

(1)

1903

The Washington Post reports on the creation of the nation of Panama to provide a friendly ``host'' for a canal joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans

104

(2)

Man takes to the skies, as the aptly-named Norfolk Virginian-Pilot describes the adventures of the Wright brothers on the dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

106

(3)

The inferno that was Chicago's Iroquois Theatre fire is depicted by that city's Inter-Ocean

109

(5)

1904

An astonished Boston Daily Globe describes Red Sox pitcher Cy Young's perfect-game victory over the Philadelphia Athletics

114

(2)

1905

The socialist weekly, Appeal to Reason, begins serializing The Jungle, social reformer Upton Sinclair's story about the squalor and degradation faced by foreign immigrants to urban America

116

(4)

1906

In a unique show of publishing cooperation, three San Francisco dailies, under the name The Call-Chronicle-Examiner, tell a story of a city left in ruins by a massive earthquake and fire

120

(4)

1909

The New York Times breaks the story of Robert E. Peary's discovery of the North Pole

124

(4)

1910

Writing in The New York Herald, Jack London describes the defeat of ``The Great White Hope,'' Jim Jeffries, at the hands of black boxer Jack Johnson

128

(3)

1911

In covering the Supreme Court's decision in the Standard Oil case, The New York Tribune reported on the dawn of legislation by the judiciary

131

(3)

1912

The anti-labor Boston Daily Globe shows its bias in describing the bloody workers' strike called against the American Woolen Mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts

134

(4)

1913

The New York Times reviews the ``Armory Show,'' a glittering event which forever altered the attitudes of Americans toward the world of art

138

(7)

1914

The Detroit News reflects the astonishment of local workers over Henry Ford's intention to double the wages of his employees to $5 per day

145

(2)

1915

A German U-boat sinks the R.M.S. Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, as told in the pages of The New York Tribune

147

(6)

The mob-lynching of Leo Frank is reported by The Atlanta Journal

153

(5)

1918

The Washington Post covers Woodrow Wilson's famed ``fourteen points,'' as the President informs Congress of American aims in ``the war to end all wars''

158

(4)

Cub reporter Ernest Hemingway contrasts gaiety and gloom at a soldiers' dance for the Kansas City Star

162

(2)

War correspondent Wilbur Forrest of The New York Tribune covers the carnage of the Battle of Chateau Thierry on France's River Marne

164

(1)

With Germany finally defeated, the terms of the Armistice ending the First World War are announced by William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Evening Herald

165

(2)

1919

Chicago Daily News reporter Carl Sandburg reflects on the causes of the previous day's race riot

167

(2)

1920

The Washington Post carries the Associated Press' roundup of suspected ``reds'' following the ``Palmer Raids.''

169

(4)

The Knoxville Journal and Tribune announces the vote of the Tennessee Legislature that elevates the suffrage rights of American women to constitutional stature

173

(2)

The ``Black Sox Scandal'' is reported by the hometown Chicago Daily News

175

(5)

1924

The most famous opening paragraph in American sports reporting was penned by Grantland Rice of The New York Herald-Tribune following Notre Dame's defeat of Army at the Polo Grounds

180

(3)

1925

The ``Monkey Trial,'' matching skilled orator William Jennings Bryan against master litigator Clarence Darrow is reported by The Chattanooga Daily Times

183

(3)

Ring Lardner offers his views on horses in a sly, slangy letter to the editor of the New York World

186

(2)

1926

The Baltimore Sun's H. L. Mencken analyzes the importance of Rudolph Valentino, a week after the silent film star's death

188

(2)

1927

No matter that few could receive its flickering image, The New York Times covers the dawning of the age of television

190

(3)

Damon Runyon covers the Ruth Snyder-Henry Judd Gray murder trial for the New York American

193

(5)

Edwin L. James of The New York Times is on hand at Le Bourget airfield outside of Paris when Charles Lindbergh's ``Spirit of St. Louis'' lands

198

(4)

The Boston Daily Globe reports on the electrocutions of professed anarchists and convicted murderers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

202

(5)

Babe Ruth's record-setting 60th home run is recorded by The New York Times

207

(3)

1929

The epitome of prohibition-era gangland violence, ``The St. Valentine's Day Massacre,'' is described by The Chicago Herald Examiner

210

(4)

Oscar's first night, the inaugural presentation of the awards ceremony of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is reported by The Los Angeles Times

214

(1)

The Wall Street Journal reassures its readers that the worst is over following the stock market collapse of ``Black Tuesday''

215

(2)

1931

A New York Times reporter shares his thoughts while standing atop the Empire State Building, shortly after its opening

217

(2)

1932

Columnist Walter Lippmann renders a spectacularly wrong assessment of a presidential candidate

219

(3)

Seventy-two days after the kidnaping, The New York Herald-Tribune announces that the body of the son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh has been found

222

(5)

1935

The Los Angeles Illustrated News reports on the air crash that took the life of America's cowboy philosopher, Will Rogers

227

(2)

The Christian Science Monitor covers the signing into law of the Social Security Act, the keystone of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ``New Deal.''

229

(5)

Legendary New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson attends the opening of ``Porgy and Bess,'' George Gershwin's farewell to Broadway

234

(2)

1936

John Steinbeck, freelancing for The San Francisco News, chronicles the plight of migrant farm laborers in California

236

(4)

1938

Irving Kolodin of The New York Sun is present when jazz comes of age at the Carnegie Hall concert of the Benny Goodman Quintet

240

(2)

The one-round mauling of Max Schmeling by ``The Brown Bomber,'' Joe Louis, is reported by The New York Journal and American's Jimmy Cannon

242

(2)

The San Francisco Chronicle tells of the hysteria that followed the prank broadcast of Orson Welles' ``War of the Worlds''

244

(3)

1939

``Building the World of Tomorrow,'' the opening of the New York World's Fair is reported by The New York Daily News

247

(4)

Walter Winchell of The New York Daily Mirror describes the surrender to him of public enemy Louis ``Lepke'' Buchalter

251

(1)

The Atlanta Constitution depicts the excitement in its home town as Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind premieres

252

(4)

1941

Stanley Frank of The New York Post marks the passing of ``The Iron Horse,'' baseball great Lou Gehrig

256

(2)

Gordon Cobbledick of The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports on the end of the greatest of all baseball records, Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak

258

(1)

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin covers ``The Day of Infamy,'' as Japanese warplanes bomb Hawaii

259

(4)

1942

The Japanese American Citizen League's Pacific Citizen describes the relocation of Japanese-Americans to concentration camps during World War II

263

(2)

The turning point in the war in the Pacific, the Battle of Midway, is reported by The San Diego Tribune-Sun, hometown paper of the Pacific Fleet

265

(2)

1943

The opening of Oklahoma!, the first Broadway musical to integrate successfully book, music, lyric and dance, is reviewed by The New York Herald-Tribune's Howard Barnes

267

(1)

1944

Columnist Ernest Taylor ``Ernie'' Pyle's most famous piece, chronicling the death of Army Captain Henry T. Waskow, is released by the Scripps-Howard syndicate

268

(2)

A report on D-Day, the long-promised Allied landings in Normandy, appears in Stars and Stripes, the American military's own newspaper

270

(3)

The rise of one of America's first ``pop'' heroes, Frank Sinatra, is recounted in this review of the crooner's Paramount Theater concert by The New York Daily News

273

(2)

1945

Before the American flag was firmly planted on Iwo Jima, there was much bloody fighting below, as reported by Pulitzer Prize winner Homer Bigart of The New York Herald-Tribune

275

(2)

Quietly elegant in its simplicity, this New York Post obituary of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appeared among the troops of whom he was the Commander-in-Chief

277

(1)

A month after 60 percent of the Japanese city of Hiroshima was destroyed by a single American atomic bomb, New York Times correspondent W.H. Lawrence describes the devastation

278

(4)

1947

The Baltimore Afro-American looks at Jackie Robinson as he becomes the first black major league baseball player

282

(3)

1950

The Wheeling Intelligencer reports on Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy's attempts to foment a ``red scare''

285

(1)

1953

Developed by a University of Pittsburgh research team led by Dr. Jonas Salk, the announcement of the first polio vaccine made page one news in The Pittsburgh Press

286

(2)

1954

Gossip columnist Louella Parsons, writing in The San Francisco Examiner, gushes over the marriage of movie star Marilyn Monroe and baseball idol Joe DiMaggio

288

(3)

The Topeka Capital Daily explains that the Supreme Court's landmark desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education will have ``Little Effect On Topeka''

291

(2)

1955

Jerry Hulse of The Los Angeles Times reports on the opening of ``The Happiest Place on Earth,'' Disneyland

293

(2)

1957

Associated Press reporter Relman Morin's Pulitzer Prize--winning story on the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas' Central High School, as it appeared in The Los Angeles Times

295

(3)

1960

The regional news page of The Charlotte Observer tells of attempts by student protests to integrate a Greensboro, North Carolina, lunch counter

298

(1)

The Washington Post covers the admission by the American government that it lied about the flight of Gary Powers's U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union

299

(4)

Almost alone among American newspapers, The New York Times ran a small story about the Food and Drug Administration's approval of a drug called ``Enovid,'' the first birth control pill

303

(1)

1962

During the height of the Cuban missile crisis, Anthony Lewis of The New York Times covers President John F. Kennedy's announcement about an American arms blockade of that Caribbean nation

304

(3)

1963

``The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,'' which attracted 200,000 civil rights demonstrators to the capital's Mall, is described by The Washington Post

307

(4)

United Press International reporter Merriman Smith's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy conveys the fast-breaking nature of news

311

(10)

1964

Tongue in cheek, The Christian Science Monitor warns of a new British invasion, the coming of the Beatles

321

(2)

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, marking the point of no return for American military involvement in Southeast Asia, is chronicled by Tom Wicker of The New York Times

323

(2)

1965

The Montgomery Advertiser reports on the arrival of a civil rights march from Selma, Alabama, led

325

(3)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

1967

The Green Bay Packers show who's boss in Los Angeles Times sports editor Paul Zimmerman's coverage of the Super Bowl

328

(1)

1968

Following the Tet Offensive, The Des Moines Register revealed to its readers that despite repeated promises of ``light at the end of the tunnel,'' no part of South Vietnam was immune from enemy attack

329

(4)

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by a sniper's bullet is described by The Memphis Commercial Appeal

333

(3)

1969

Moon-walker Neil Armstrong's ``one giant leap for mankind'' reported by The Orlando Sentinel

336

(3)

Alfred G. Aronowitz of The New York Post tries to put the Wood-stock rock concert into perspective

339

(2)

1971

The New York Times explains why the Supreme Court ruled in its favor in ``The Pentagon Papers'' case

341

(5)

1972

Watergate, the ``third-rate burglary'' that eventually would lead to the downfall of a presidency, was covered by veteran Washington Post police reporter Alfred E. Lewis

346

(2)

1974

Twenty-seven months after the Watergate burglary, Carroll Kilpatrick of The Washington Post describes the final moments of the administration of the first president to resign from office

348

(3)

1978

San Francisco Chronicle correspondent Keith Power tells of the horror following the mass suicide at Jonestown, Guyana

351

(3)

1979

The Philadelphia Inquirer, which was to earn a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the incident, prints its first story about the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island

354

(3)

1982

Prior to the word ``AIDS'' entering the language, Randy Shilts of The San Francisco Chronicle writes the first story of illnesses collectively called ``GRID''---gay-related immuno-deficiency diseases

357

(3)

The Salt Lake City Tribune covers the implantation of the first mechanical heart into a living human being

360

(4)

1984

The Democrats make history by picking Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro of New York as their vice-presidential candidate, an event reported in her hometown Long Island paper, Newsday

364

(2)

1986

The Santa Fe New Mexican appraises the contribution of Georgia O'Keeffe to American art

366

(3)

1989

In the frigid waters of Alaska's Prince William Sound, the ecological disaster that couldn't happen did, as The Anchorage Daily News reported in its coverage of the Valdez oil spill

369

(4)

New York Times correspondent Serge Schmemann captures something of the emotional as well as the epochal in his account of the fall of the Berlin Wall. For decades the symbol of tyranny and repression, the wall's demise signaled the end of a once-escalating high-stakes conflict. Perhaps, finally, the cold war and its nuclear fears of superpowers annihilating one another could be consigned to the pages of history

373

(2)

1990

Obscene and pornographic was the judgment of a grand jury playing art critic in weighing several of Robert Mapple-thorpe's photographs on view at Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center. The Cincinnati Enquirer's Jane Prendergast reports the grand jury's indictment, a legal finding that would help trigger a ``culture war'' between government officials and edgy artists invoking such passionate issues as free speech and federal funding of the arts

375

(2)

1991

In a heartfelt obituary, San Diego Union-Tribune staff writers John Wilkens and Robert P. Laurence look back on the colorful life of Theodor Geisel, better known to millions of young readers as Dr. Seuss

377

(3)

1995

The so-called trial of the century ended with a verdict of ``not guilty.'' After more than 15 months of sensationalistic journalism and an avidly watched televised trial that sometimes seemed more crime fiction than serious legal inquiry, football great O. J. Simpson was free. However, the proceedings had polarized the country, the charge of a racist Los Angeles Police Department a key component in Simpson's winning defense. Jim Newton of the Los Angeles Times examines the verdict in the wake of the long, divisive trial

380

(2)

1997

Though more than a few sports pundits predicted that 21-year-old Tiger Woods would buckle under the pressures of competing in golf's classic Masters tournament, Woods proved them wrong. He became the first person of African American descent to capture the Masters, doing it with style and grace. Glenn Sheeley of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution looks at Woods's historic win

382

(2)

1998

The battle between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to beat Roger Maris's 37-year-old single-season home run record of 61 took on epic proportions from April through September in 1998. Rich Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recounts the outcome of this intense yet gentlemanly battle, announcing which man has triumphed as the modern ``Sultan of Swat.''

384

(1)

1999

Controversy was nothing new to the presidency of Bill Clinton. However, his private and personal affairs, fueled by charges of insider trading and extramarital hanky-panky, reached Promethean proportions when he was impeached. Peter Baker and Helen Dewar of the Washington Post report the outcome of President Clinton's trial by the U.S. Senate

385

(2)

2000

It was a political cliff-hanger that seemingly would not end, the post-Election Day battle between the Democratic candidate, Vice President Al Gore, and the Republican standard-bearer, Texas governor George W. Bush. The battleground was Florida, its 25 electoral votes defiantly claimed by both candidates. In the weeks after the polls closed, Americans would become familiar with such formerly arcane terms as ``butterfly ballot'' and ``pregnant chad.'' Finally, after more than a month without a president-elect, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively handed the victory to Bush

387

(4)

Newspapers and syndicates represented in this volume

391

(6)

Acknowledgments

397

(4)

Index

401