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"LET MUNSEY KILL IT!": THE BIRTH OF THE NEWSPAPER CHAIN

A Businessman's Vision

In 1890 New York had fifteen English-language daily newspapers. By 1932 it had half that number. The twentieth-century trend toward newspaper consolidation began in earnest during the century's first decade. Frank A. Munsey did as much as any other person to bring this about. His own rags-to-riches tale began when he started a children's magazine, the Golden Argosy, and proceeded to build a publishing empire with Munsey's, an illustrated general-interest weekly that had a circulation of 650,000 in 1900. A shrewd businessman with no sentimentality toward the traditions of newspaper publishing, Munsey saw chaos and disorder in an industry that he believed had 60 percent too many products. He dreamed of a chain of five hundred newspapers. In addition to creating vast economies of scale, this enterprise would employ the greatest minds in every field, dispensing wisdom from a central facility, with local coverage left up to each outlet. "The combined genius of the men in control would be the most uplifting force the world has ever known," he exclaimed.

Munsey Fails

Munsey became known as the Grand High Executioner, and the slogan "Let Munsey Kill It!" was a familiar refrain around flagging papers, as he bought and consolidated property after property. In the first two decades of the century, Munsey bought and sold at least fifteen newspapers in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., but only a few remained profitable. Saturday Evening Post publisher Cyrus H. K. Curtis attempted consolidation of Philadelphia's industry, and Herman Kohlstaat of Chicago made similar moves. Newspapermen blamed these businessmen for ruining a noble profession with crude commercial interests. When Munsey died in 1925, William Allen White of the Emporia Gazette commented: "Frank A. Munsey contributed to the journalism of his day the talent of a meatpacker, the morals of a money-changer and the manners of an undertaker. He and his kind have about succeeded in transforming a once-noble profession into an eight percent security. May he rest in trust!"

Scripps Starts Small

Other entrepreneurs, away from the vast urban centers of the East, found greater success with chain journalism. Edward W. Scripps started the first successful chain when he launched the Cleveland Penny Press in 1878. Scripps seldom bought established properties. He looked for growing industrial cities in the Midwest and created new papers. If they showed a profit in the first ten years, he gave 49 percent of their stock to their editor and business manager. If not, he closed them. In 1902 Scripps began a feature and illustration syndicate to supply his growing empire. In 1907 he organized the United Press Association as a competitor to the Associated Press wire service.

Gannett's Gradual Growth

In upstate New York Frank E. Gannett bought a partial interest in the Elmira Gazette in 1906 and then merged it with the Elmira Star. In the 1910s he bought two papers in Ithaca and combined them, and in the 1920s acquired others in Rochester, Utica, and in other northeastern states, laying the groundwork for the largest chain in the country. Munsey's vision for economies of scale and standardization of quality were fulfilled by other men, who started small and built their empires from scratch.

Steady Consolidation

In the 1900s ten chains controlled just thirty-two dailies. (In the 1990s Gannett publishes more than one hundred dailies.) Critics continue to debate the pitfalls of chain journalism: standardization, a corporate editorial slant, and lack of local control. While the growth of chains and syndicates reduced diversity in American publishing, it undeniably improved the quality of small papers in remote locales. In any case, the first decade of the twentieth century brought the techniques and practices of modern financial management to an industry that had long been run by gentlemen publishers and editors luxuriously detached from the balance sheet.