1897 Question: Do Typewriters Lower the Literary Grade of Work Done by Reporters?

 

Chicago Daily News stenographer at her typewriter in 1922.
Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum, Library of Congress

Journalism historian W. Joseph Campbell noted that among the issues to be discussed at the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association annual meeting in New York in February 1897 was: Do typewriters lower the literary grade of work done by reporters?

By that year, typewriter models had become easier to use and were gaining favor with reporters. But not everyone welcomed the new technology.

“Just as some journalists expressed skepticism about the Internet,” wrote Campbell, “some veteran reporters in 1890s resented the noisy, intrusive typewriter.” They still preferred to write their stories by longhand.

One Mobile Register reporter, George Jeremiah Flournoy, looked on the typewriter as his mortal enemy.

At age 13, Flournoy, who had been given the nickname of “Gummy” because of his fondness for chewing gum, was a scorekeeper for the Mobile’s amateur baseball games in the late 1880s. He also wrote accounts of the games for the city’s newspapers.

Although his formal schooling ended at the third grade, Flournoy landed a job as a copy reader for The Mobile Item. He worked until 2 a.m. each morning, caught a couple of hours of sleep in the press room and then carried newspapers to subscribers. With a bit of hustling he could earn about $23 a week.

In the 1890s, Flournoy went to work as a police and society reporter for The Mobile Daily News. By 1897, he had switched over to gathering news for The Mobile Herald. Flournoy worked again for the Item after it was acquired by the Register in 1916.

Fellow newspapermen called Flournoy “the best leg man in the business,” a term applied to reporters who used the telephone to call in their stories to the “rewrite man.” The rewrite man actually wrote the story from the notes the reporter gave over the telephone.

Flournoy never mastered the use of a typewriter, or the English language for that matter. He either phoned in or handed most of his material to the rewrite man. He let the copy desk worry about grammar, style and punctuation while he turned out the news.

Newsies of Mobile Deserve to Have Their Story Told

Each New Year newspaper carriers presented their subscribers with a "memorial" souvenir booklet of well-wishes for the year ahead. The purpose, of course, was to get a tip.

In the above photo, carriers of The Mobile Daily Item and their supervisor pose for a photo to go on the front of their memorial. In 1916, Mobile Register owner Frederick I. Thompson bought the Item and kept it as separate afternoon paper to complement the morning Register.

Compare these well-dressed newsies to those in a previous post photographed by socialist photographer Lewis Hine who visited Mobile in 1914. One of the newsboys in the Hine's photos is selling the Item.

What do you think accounts for the difference in the way the newsies are dressed in the different photos? Did the boys in the Hine photos simply have on their working clothes? Did the boys in the above photo have to turn in these dress clothes after the photo was snapped?

We don't know much about the history of newsboys in Mobile and they deserve to have their story told.

Koenigsberg had a Tremendous Influence on Course of Newspapers

Troops break down their camp near Three Mile Creek in western Mobile, Ala.

Discovering the many fascinating characters who passed through the offices of The Mobile Press Register is what makes researching the newspaper’s history fun.

One such character was Moses Koenigsberg. Not many people know his name today, but Koenigsberg had a tremendous influence on the course of newspapers of his time.

Moses Koenigsberg

Born of Polish parents in New Orleans in 1876, Koenigsberg grew up in Texas with a desire to go into newspapering. He issued his own monthly newspaper at the age of 9. Seeking to be a war correspondent, Koenigsberg ran off to join a small band of Mexican revolutionaries who were gathering near Laredo, Texas, in 1890. An argument with one of the Mexican recruits resulted in Koenigsberg being stabbed in the leg. That ended his revolutionary adventure.

Soon after Koenigsberg began reporting for The San Antonio Times. A story exposing corruption among prosecuting attorneys, who were taking fines from prostitutes, got him sued and fired. Although the suit was dropped, Koenigsberg became a reporter with The Houston Age and then an editor of The Texas World. He left Houston to become a reporter for The New Orleans Item. Back in San Antonio, he launched The Evening Star in 1892. He was just 16 years old.

Koenigsberg job hopped seeking to move up the journalistic ladder. In the late 1890s, he was operating a news service for The New York Sun in St. Louis. As relations between the United States and Spain reached the breaking point in April 1898, Koenigsberg looked for a reporting job that would get him to the Cuban war front.

Koenigsberg thought he’d worked out an agreement with The St. Louis Globe-Democrat for a reporting stunt in which he’d take a message of encouragement from the U.S. government to insurrection leader Gen. Calixto Garcia in Cuba. When the U.S. Army objected, the Globe-Democrat backed out and left Koenigsberg stranded in Tampa.

With the goal of joining a Gulf Coast military outfit headed for Cuba, Koenigsberg hopped a train to Mobile, where troops were gathering. His first stop would be the offices of The Mobile Register.

At the Register, Koenigsberg learned that some of the newspaper’s reporters had enlisted in the Army to fight the Spaniards. Other reporters became war correspondents and joined the soldiers who began arriving in Mobile for encampment in April.

The demand for war news also had caused the Register to put out a Monday morning edition. The long tradition of giving the paper’s workers most of Sunday off had dictated that no Monday morning edition be published. But the demand for war news overcame that tradition.

Register Editor Erwin Craighead hired Koenigsberg to provide coverage of Alabama troops as they moved on to Miami and Cuba. Craighead told Koenigsberg that the surest way of getting to Cuba with the troops would be to join the Gulf City Guards, commanded by Capt. John D. Hagan, a close friend of Craighead’s and an ardent admirer of the Register.

Koenigsberg made his way to the western suburb of Crichton where Alabama troops were encamped along Three Mile Creek. Dressed in a tan derby, pleated shirt and suede-topped shoes, Koenigsberg became a point of sport among the “hillbillies, wharf rats and city dudes” who made up the Guards.

A general free-for-all developed as the troops attempted to relieve the reporter of his clothes. Officers broke up the fight and confined Koenigsberg to his quarters. The troops shipped out to Miami in June 1898 and Koenigsberg went with them. But Miami was as close to Cuba as he would come.

The war ended before the Register’s ability to cover it could be tested.

In 1903, the 27-year-old Koenigsberg became managing editor of William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago American and began a long association with Hearst. Five years later, Hearst named him publisher of The Boston American.

In 1913, Koenigsberg founded the Newspaper Feature Service, Inc., the first syndicate to supply a complete budget of features and comics seven days a week. It was Koenigsberg who conceived of the idea of a daily comic strip.

Two years later, Koenigsberg consolidated all of Hearst’s syndicates under the name King Features. The “Koenig” in Koenigsberg is German for king.

Koenigsberg also promoted innovation. In 1925, he sponsored the talkies and two years later a television demonstration.

In 1927, Koenigsberg, then president of International News Service and Universal Service, negotiated a deal with Benito Mussolini in Italy to write for the Hearst wire services. On Oct. 15, 1927, Editor and Publisher magazine published a photo of Koenigsberg standing beside Il Duce. Well into the 1930s, Mussolini was a paid feature writer for the Hearst newspapers.

In 1928, Koenigsberg had a falling out with Hearst and a year later he purchased The Havana Post and Telegram. In 1930 he became general manager of The Denver Post and the following year became executive director of the Song Writers Protective Association.

Koenigsberg died of a heart attack at his home in New York in 1945.