The Scripps Newspapers Go to War, 1914-18

2. Seeds Get Planted: June 1914 to May 1915

32 2 Seeds Get Planted: June 1914 to May 1915 E. W. Scripps often used a metaphor of planting seeds to describe the impact his newspapers had on shaping public opinion. Public acceptance of new ideas takes time, he explained in a 1914 letter: “When I have planted a dollar’s worth of effort to my newspapers, with a view of gathering the harvest from 10 to 20 years thereafter, I have gotten a yield of one-hundred fold. When I have planted a dollar’s worth . . . with a view of plucking the harvest in a few months, I have seldom gained more than a bare twenty-five percent.”1 In June 1914 Scripps was about to plant his biggest seed of all—offering President Woodrow Wilson the help of his newspaper chain. Scripps hoped a harvest of societal reforms would result from such an alliance. He had never been so willing to tie his newspapers to one national politician , but Wilson was proving himself to be a good progressive, and this looked like an excellent opportunity for the Scripps chain to exert influence nationally. Scripps could not know that a world war would soon emerge to consume any chance of the bountiful harvest he hoped for. The seed of national progressive reform that Scripps intended to plant would become entangled with the unprecedented demands for covering the war. Of all the main factors that shaped the Concern during the years of the Great War, virtually all emerged quickly—before mid-1915: the Scripps Concern ’s allegiance to Wilson, its use of the war to build its reputation, its dealings with censors, its promotion of high-profile correspondents, its Seeds Get Planted 33 commitment to neutrality in how it presented the war, its internal battles over centralized control of editorial policy, its concerns with costs and competition, and its use of editorial campaigns to advocate its policies. These were seeds that would reshape the Concern itself. The metaphorical harvest to be reaped would have more effect on the Concern than on progressive reform. A New Seed in an Old Haunt Scripps was in Washington, D.C., when Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, the former Countess Sophie Chotek, during the royal couple’s visit to Sarajevo. Austria had officially annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which Sarajevo was the principal city, in 1908, angering neighboring Serbia.2 The assassination was the product of long-simmering hate in the Balkans. It was June 28, 1914. While the greatest war in world history—one that would eventually topple or seriously weaken several European empires—was about to start, Scripps was on his first trip to Ohio and Washington, D.C., in ten years. The Balkans seemed far away; the popularity of the Democratic president was at the top of Scripps’s agenda.3 He intended to use this trip to solidify his own empire with the help of President Woodrow Wilson. Scripps was particularly interested in talking with William Jennings Bryan, an old acquaintance and an occasional visitor to Miramar. “The Commoner” personified the populist spirit Scripps believed in and now, as secretary of state, held a prominent position in the Wilson administration . Scripps visited Bryan in Washington on June 27. “I had told him that it was bad for the administration, and hence bad for the country at large, that the great mass of the people (whose interests required that they should thoroughly understand the President) were kept in entire ignorance of the human and humane side of the President,” Scripps wrote to his half-sister Ellen later. Bryan agreed that Wilson needed help in publicizing his personality and achievements, and asked Scripps for suggestions. Scripps wrote to Ellen, “I immediately replied that to the present Cabinet should be added a secretary of the people—a skillful journalist who, being entirely in the confidence of not only the President, but of his Cabinet, would have imposed upon him the duty and the right to stand between the administration and the press, and who could make use of both the journalistic enemies and the journalistic friends of the administration.”4 34 the scripps newspapers go to war Bryan asked Scripps if the two could discuss the matter further later, and the two parted. “With Bryan, I finished up the business of seeing all the men I wanted to see while...