Description: Edward Willis Scripps revolutionized the newspaper industry by applying modern business practices to his chain of more than forty newspapers and creating a telegraphic news service and an illustrated news features syndicate. Convinced that big business was corrupting the American press, Scripps actively resisted supporting his newspapers through advertising. He also aimed them at the working class, an audience virtually ignored by most newspaper publishers of his era.Maintaining that the press should support the democratic endeavor by informing its largest constituency, Scripps succeeded in creating a string of small, cheap newspapers that were advocates for the common people: crusading for lower streetcar fares, free textbooks for public school children, municipal ownership of utilities, and pure food legislation, among many other causes. Gerald Baldasty's portrait of this long-neglected entrepreneurial giant is the first major academic study to draw on Scripps's business correspondence.

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