 |
Evelyn Doyle, the wife of the Mobile Item’s circulation manager, Lionel
Doyle,
wears a dress and hat designed to promote the afternoon newspaper
in this 1905 Erik
Overbey photograph, The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book
and Manuscript Library, University
of South Alabama. |
The Mobile Item
is a largely forgotten part of the Port City’s newspaper history today. But it
once vigorously challenged the Mobile Register for market power and very
nearly won out. In fact, the Item’s success may have been the reason it
merged with the Register in 1916.
John Franklin
Cothran, a 47-year-old Confederate veteran, founded the Mobile Weekly Item
with his 14-year-old son, Lockiel, in December 1881. Sixteen years later, John
and Lockiel formed the Item Publishing Co. with John’s other son, 24-year-old
William, and Guy C. Sibley, to issue the Item daily.
Sibley may have
been the major investor. He appears to have been the same Sibley who was
president of National Collecting Company of Louisville, Kentucky. Charles S.
Sibley, probably a relative, owned a wholesale lumber company in Mobile and was
one of the stockholders of National Collecting.[1]
The birth of the Item was part of the
remarkable increase in U.S. newspapers that had begun in the 1870s and
continued unabated through the 1880s. In Mobile during the 20 years before
1900, there were five dailies, seven white-owned weeklies, five black-owned
weeklies, and six specialized newspapers. Most of the papers were short-lived,
but competed with the Item and the Register for ad revenue and
subscribers.
The growth of afternoon newspapers such as the Item
was a national trend more marked in cities the size of Mobile than in larger
cities. It resulted from the increased demand for late telegraphic news and
changing social patterns. People going shopping or headed home after work
wanted the ads, reading matter, and entertainment material offered by afternoon
publications. Theater patrons found it convenient to buy afternoon papers.
Electric lighting made it easier to read newspapers’ fine print at night.
Women liked afternoon newspapers because they had
more leisure time in the afternoons to read and shop. Department stores aimed
their ads at these women readers. Daily afternoon newspapers and department
stores sort of matured together through the late 1800s. From their beginnings during
that time, Mobile’s department stores advertised heavily in the city’s daily
newspapers, mainly the afternoon journals.
While afternoon papers grew, the morning Register
struggled with continuing financial problems. To provide needed cash, publisher
John L. Rapier persuaded the city’s leading businessmen and financiers to form
a new stock company in 1889, the Register Co., to replace the John L. Rapier
& Co.
Saddled with a considerable floating debt, heavy
interest payments, and a lack of sufficient working capital, the Register
nearly went under in the Panic of 1893. The owners almost sold the newspaper to
pay its debts, but saved it through bankruptcy reorganization.
The Item
also gained in readers over the Register. In 1910, the Item
reported to N. W. Ayer & Son’s Newspaper Annual and Directory, the
industry authority on circulation and advertising, that it had 11,080 daily and
Sunday readers. The Register reported just 7,000 daily and 9,000 Sunday.
That meant the Item could garner more advertising and greater income
than the Register.
In a separate
advertisement, the Item “Guaranteed circulation over 11,500 daily. Largest
circulation of any Mobile paper. Dominates its field—best advertising
medium—absolutely necessary to a successful Mobile campaign.” The Item
intended the ad to catch the eyes of national advertisers who were promoting
brand names more and more.
A year later, the Item
claimed in Edward P. Remington’s Annual Newspaper Directory that it was
reaching 12,100 Sunday readers while the Register’s circulation remained
unchanged at 9,000. If the trend continued, then the Register would have
to give up the field. [4]
This happy
situation for the Item was about to change. In April 1910, Frederick
Ingate Thompson bought the Register. When Thompson took control of the Register,
he was a rising media baron who very nearly established a Southern newspaper
empire.
He provided the Register
a much-needed infusion of cash. Thompson would make the newspaper attractive to
a wider audience and take it into the age of big business. Under Thompson, the Register
would become a profitable powerhouse of advocacy, progressive muckraking, and
sensationalism, as well as serious news gathering, rebuilding some of its
political influence in the region and the nation.
Thompson’s strengthened
morning Register and the Cothrans’ growing afternoon Item soon
clashed.
Progressive reformers in Alabama and
across the nation had been working to sweep away old aldermanic forms of city
government. Reformers associated mayors and councils with political rings, ward
healers, spoils, cronyism, and corruption, of which there was plenty in Mobile.
Progressives in Mobile, which
included Thompson, sought to replace the mayor and board of aldermen with what
they considered a more business-like, three-member commission. The three
members would rotate terms as mayor and divide up duties of city
administration.
Current elected city officials,
staff, and those who benefited from the existing system opposed the change. The
Item early on supported a commission government. But when the campaign
for the commission began in earnest, the Item switched sides and
supported the aldermanic forces.
That put the Item at odds
with the Register, which supported the measure. Thompson, worked with
the city’s Progressive Association, a coalition of businessmen and
professionals, to lead the fight for the commission.
The two sides fought bitterly. Old
political alliances and friendships broke. The two newspapers’ advertisers
undoubtedly pressured the publishers to support their sides of the issue.
On June 5, 1911, Mobilians turned
out in large numbers to approve the commission government, 2,227 to 1,401. It
was the largest turnout of voters in some time.
The Birmingham News gave much
of the credit for the success of plan to the Register. “Too much cannot
be said in praise of The Mobile Register for the splendid fight it made
in behalf of Commission Government,” the News opined. “The victory of
the good government forces would have been impossible but for the clean,
intelligent and fearless campaign of this journal.” [5]
 |
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 Item
and their supervisor pose for a photo
to go on the front of their memorial.
|
In August 1911,
the Item cut it subscription price in its circulation war with the Register.
That meant that subscription route carriers and street sellers also would earn
less. On the afternoon of August 21, apparently encouraged by outsiders, more
than 150 carriers struck the Item. To get public support for their
strike, the newsboys handed out flyers explaining their demands and paraded in
the streets.
To deliver papers
to subscribers, the Item turned to loading them in cars and having the
drivers drop the papers off. The striking newsboys put out pickets who attacked
anyone attempting to deliver the paper and destroyed any copies they could. The
newspaper got police officers to ride with its drivers and immediately sought
an injunction against the newsboys. Police also arrested several of the Item’s
striking carriers. [6]
It also began to
appear that the Register had a hand in the newsboys’ strike. Police
arrested several Register employees for taking copies of the Item
from carriers and tossing them in the trash. Among those arrested from the Register:
John Oliver Milton Stuardi, the former Item circulation manager who had
switched to the Register circulation department, his younger brother Norman
E. Stuardi, Leslie Stevens, E. C. D’Olive, and John Allman.[7]
The newspaper’s advertisers may have
begun asking about credits for their ads in papers that weren’t being
delivered, adding to the pressure to settle the dispute. The Item’s
management and members of the newsboys union met twice the afternoon of August
23.
The managers and
newsboys agreed to ask the newly created three Mobile City Commissioners to
arbitrate the dispute. The two sides also essentially agreed to the route
carriers’ demands regardless of what the arbiters decided and the carriers
agreed to return to work.[8]
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The Mobile Item was located at 118-120
Conti St., probably in the three-story
building in the space next to the
closest wall. The building was once
occupied by Klosky's restaurant.
|
At the end of the
year a series of deaths left the Item with changing management and
uncertain leadership. Founder John F. Cothran died on December 12, 1911, and
William P. Cothran took over running the paper, his older brother Lockiel
having died in 1899 at age 32.
James Callanan Van
Antwerp, the firm’s secretary-treasurer, became president of the Item
Publishing Co. Van Antwerp was the son of Mobile pharmacy entrepreneur and
leading businessman Garrett Van Antwerp, Oddly enough, the senior Van Antwerp
had died two days before Cothran. His father’s death may have required James to
focus on running the family’s business interests instead of the newspaper,
leading to another change.
At any rate, in
April 1912, the stockholders sold the newspaper company, perhaps without
William P. Cothran’s cooperation. Journalist John C. O’Connell, representing a
group of wealthy Mobile businessmen, bought the interests of N. A. Richards and
his wife, giving the investors control of the Item and capitalizing the
company at $150,000.
While O’Connell
managed the newspaper, Albert Peyton Bush, Jr., served as secretary-treasurer
of the new Item company. Bush had wide-ranging business interests
including being an owner in his father’s wholesale grocery firm, a director of
the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, and president of the Mobile Cotton Exchange and
the Mobile Chamber of Commerce. The sound newspaper experience of O’Connell and
the extensive business connections of Bush seemed to bode well for the future
of the Item.[9]
Cothran,
meanwhile, took his profits from the sale of the Item and in 1913 used
the money to start up another afternoon daily, the Mobile Post. He
headed up the Post until 1914 when, apparently ill, he quit the paper,
moved to Gulfport, Mississippi, and died in March 1915 at age 42.[10]
Meanwhile,
something was amiss at the Item. The ownership and management of the paper
changed once again. In January 1915, Ralph R. Buvinger bought a large share of
the newspaper’s stock and took charge as general manager. Buvinger already
owned the afternoon Meridian Star in Mississippi, which was
out-competing the morning Meridian Dispatch. He also was part owner of
the Columbus Enquirer in Georgia. Buvinger sought to put the Item
on a sounder financial footing and to improve the news and editorial
departments. In March, W. M. Clemens, a cousin of Mark Twain, bought part
interest in the Item and became the managing editor.[11]
Clemens, a native
of Kentucky, had been in the newspaper business for more than 20 years,
including as managing editor and general manager of the Memphis News
Scimitar. In 1911, he became managing editor the Birmingham News, where
he was before coming to Mobile. He also served as secretary treasurer of the
Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, which moved its headquarters to
Mobile with him.[12]
The shifting
management at the Item damaged its ability to compete effectively
against the Register. More important, however, was Thompson’s aggressive
pursuit of advertisers, subscribers, and news.
By 1914, the Item’s
circulation had grown to 12,000 readers. But the Register’s had grown
even more. The morning daily had 14,000 readers and the Sunday paper could
boast of 19,000 readers. And the Register’s growth would continue to
outpace the Item’s.[13]
In April 1916,
Thompson secured a controlling interest in the Item and became president
of the Item Publishing Co., and on April 10, the Register began
publishing the Item from its presses. Thompson continued the Item
as the afternoon publication of the Register and suspended the Sunday Item.
He reinstated the Saturday Item, which had been discontinued several
months earlier.
Buvinger returned
to Meridian to manage the Star. Several Mobilians persuaded Clemens to
stay in the Port City as general secretary of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce.
After the United States entered the Great War in 1917, he served in the branch
office of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. The corporation built, owned, and
operated a merchant fleet for the U.S. government in support of the war effort.
Around early 1919, Clemens left Mobile to become managing editor of Hearst’s Atlanta
Georgian and Atlanta American.[14]
A year after
Thompson bought the Item, the name “News”
was added to that of Item at the
suggestion of a reader who thought that News-Item
more accurately reflected the newspaper’s purpose. The News-Item
continued to publish until 1932 until Thompson lost out to an upstart afternoon
competitor, the Mobile Press. The merged company kept the Register
but discontinued the News-Item and made the Press the afternoon
paper.
