Raise Hell And Sell Newspapers

Raise Hell and Sell Newspapers, the lively biography of Alden J. Blethen, traces the newspaperman's life from his birth in 1845 to his death in 1915. Longtime editor-in-chief of The Seattle Times, Blethen became the most powerful and influential publisher in the Northwest and one of the foremost newspapermen of his generation. Authors Sharon A. Boswell and Lorraine McConaghy tell the compelling story of this self-made man during a period of dramatic change in American life. Alden Blethen arrived in Seattle broke in 1896, after making and losing fortunes as a newspaper owner and publisher in Kansas City and Minneapolis. One year later, the Klondike gold rush transformed the muddy Puget Sound seaport into a magnificent boomtown. Using a loan from his brother-in-law, Blethen purchased a share in The Seattle Times. During the next two decades, as Seattle grew into the queen city of the Northwest, Blethen transformed The Times into the region's largest paper and reclaimed his family's fortune.

Murdering Holiness explores the story of the "Holy Roller" sect led by Franz Creffield in the early years of the twentieth century. In the opening chapters, the authors introduce us to the community of Corvallis, Oregon, where Creffield, a charismatic, self-styled messiah, taught his followers to forsake their families and worldly possessions and to seek salvation through him. As his teachings became more extreme, the local community reacted: Creffield was tarred and feathered and his followers were incarcerated in the state asylum. Creffield himself was later imprisoned for adultery, but shortly after his release he revived the sect. This proved too much for some of the adherents' families, and in May 1906 George Mitchell, the brother of two women in the sect, pursued Creffield to Seattle and shot him dead.

The Alaskan Klondike Gold Rush coincided with major events, including the arrival of the railroad, and it exemplified continuing trends in Seattle's history. If not the primary cause of the city's growth and prosperity, the Klondike Gold Rush nonetheless serves as a colorful reflection of the era and its themes, including the celebrated "Seattle spirit." This historic resource study examines the Klondike Gold Rush, beginning in the early 1850's with the founding of Seattle, and ending in 1909 with the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition commemorating the Klondike Gold Rush and the growth of the city. Chapter 1 describes early Seattle and the gold strikes in the Klondike, while the following three chapters analyze how the city became the gateway to the Yukon, how the stampede to the Far North stimulated local businesses, and how the city's infrastructure and boundaries changed during the era of the gold rush. Chapter 5 looks at how historians have interpreted the Klondike Gold Rush throughout the 20th century. The final chapter brings the Klondike story up to the present, describing the establishment of Seattle's Pioneer Square Historic District and the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. The chapter titles include: (1) "'By-and-By': The Early History of Seattle"; (2) "Selling Seattle"; (3) "Reaping the Profits of the Klondike Trade"; (4) "Building the City"; (5) "Interpreting the Klondike Gold Rush"; and (6) "Historic Resources in the Modern Era." Contains an extensive 147-item partially annotated bibliography; 12 appendixes contain historical documents and photographs.

Daily newspapers are closing across America. Washington bureaus are shuttering; whole areas of the federal government are now operating with no press coverage. International bureaus are going, going, gone. Journalism, the counterbalance to corporate and political power, the lifeblood of American democracy, is not just threatened. It is in meltdown. In The Death and Life of American Journalism, Robert W. McChesney, an academic, and John Nichols, a journalist, who together founded the nation's leading media reform network, Free Press, investigate the crisis. They propose a bold strategy for saving journalism and saving democracy, one that looks back to how the Founding Fathers ensured free press protection with the First Amendment and provided subsidies to the burgeoning print press of the young nation.

Six-day races, record-breaking rides, and renegade leagues are at the heart of this fascinating short fiction collection that explores women’s competitive cycling in the late Victorian era. Each of the stories contained in this meticulously researched collection focuses on a distinct racing event and the individual “ladies” who competed in them—like the indomitable Tillie Anderson—who mustered every muscle and every ounce of strength to prove that women had a place in the world of cycling. Overcoming constant scrutiny, judgement, chauvinism, exploitation, and even danger, these racers pedaled their way into annals of feminism, freedom, and cycling history.

This riveting work of social history documents the role the news media played in spurring two murders revolving around Edmund Creffield, a charismatic "Holy Roller" evangelist who arrived in Corvallis, Oregon, in 1903 and quickly enraged the citizenry by defiantly challenging the religious and sexual mores of the time. When ardent female followers began refusing to speak to their nonbelieving husbands, vigilantes tarred and feathered Creffield, eventually forcing him to flee to Seattle. Once there, Creffield was murdered by George Mitchell, the brother of one of his followers. The news media in Seattle and Oregon applauded George's defense of his sister Esther's honor, influencing the jury. Citing temporary insanity, the jury quickly acquitted George, pleasing the cheering crowds and the approving media. As George prepared to return to Oregon, however, Esther shot him point-blank at Union Station and another moralizing media frenzy broke out. Esther was sent to Western State Hospital and committed suicide after her release. Her short life was among the most poignant of the dozens wrecked by the controversy. Gerald Baldasty's examination of Seattle and Oregon media coverage shows the tenacity with which frontier media protected traditional mores, particularly the notion that men are responsible for women's purity and have the right to take action if they feel another man has besmirched a woman's honor. Expertly crafted in a brisk, accessible style, Vigilante Newspapers illustrates through the tragic tale of Edmund Creffield, George Mitchell, and Esther Mitchell how the news media defined social deviance using vague concepts such as hysteria and temporary insanity, vigorously defending the established order of religious, class, and gender norms.

Low pay. Uncertain work prospects. Diminished prestige. Why would anyone still want be a journalist? Drawing on in-depth interviews in France and the United States, Matthew Powers and Sandra Vera-Zambrano explore the ways individuals come to believe that journalism is a worthy pursuit—and how that conviction is managed and sometimes dissolves amid the profession’s ongoing upheavals. For many people, journalism represents a job that is interesting and substantial, with opportunities for expression, a sense of self-fulfillment, and a connection to broader social values. By distilling complex ideas, holding the powerful to account, and revealing hidden realities, journalists play a crucial role in helping audiences make sense of the world. Experiences in the profession, though, are often far more disappointing. Many find themselves doing tasks that bear little relation to what attracted them initially or are frustrated by institutions privileging what sells over what informs. The imbalance between the profession’s economic woes and its social importance threatens to erode individuals’ beliefs that journalism remains a worthwhile pursuit. Powers and Vera-Zambrano emphasize that, as with many seemingly individual choices, social factors—class, gender, education, and race—shape how journalists make sense of their profession and whether or not they remain in it. An in-depth story of one profession under pressure, The Journalist’s Predicament uncovers tensions that also confront other socially important jobs like teaching, nursing, and caretaking.

A fascinating tale of seduction, murder, fraud, coercion—and the trial of the “Minneapolis Monster” On a winter night in 1894, a young woman’s body was found in the middle of a road near Lake Calhoun on the outskirts of Minneapolis. She had been shot through the head. The murder of Kittie Ging, a twenty-nine-year-old dressmaker, was the final act in a melodrama of seduction and betrayal, petty crimes and monstrous deeds that would obsess reporters and their readers across the nation when the man who likely arranged her killing came to trial the following spring. Shawn Francis Peters unravels that sordid, spellbinding story in his account of the trial of Harry Hayward, a serial seducer and schemer whom some deemed a “Svengali,” others a “Machiavelli,” and others a “lunatic” and “man without a soul.” Dubbed “one of the greatest criminals the world has ever seen” by the famed detective William Pinkerton, Harry Hayward was an inveterate and cunning plotter of crimes large and small, dabbling in arson, insurance fraud, counterfeiting, and illegal gambling. His life story, told in full for the first time here, takes us into shadowy corners of the nineteenth century, including mesmerism, psychopathy, spiritualism, yellow journalism, and capital punishment. From the horrible fate of an independent young businesswoman who challenged Victorian mores to the shocking confession of Hayward on the eve of his execution (which, if true, would have made him a serial killer), The Infamous Harry Hayward unfolds a transfixing tale of one of the most notorious criminals in America during the Gilded Age.