Table Of ContentHome Town News
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Home Town News
William Allen White
and the Emporia Gazette
SALLY FOREMAN GRIFFITH
NEW YORK OXFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1989
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
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and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1989 by Sally Foreman Griffith
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be re-
produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-
copying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission
of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Griffith, Sally Foreman.
Home town news : William Allen White and the Emporia Gazette /
Sally Foreman Griffith.
p. cm. Includes index.
ISBN 0-19-505589-6
1. White, William Allen, 1868-1944. 2. Journalists—United
States—Biography. 3. Emporia Gazette (Emporia, Kan. : 1899)
4. Emporia (Kan.)—Social life and customs. I. Title.
PN4874.W52G75 1988
818'.5209—dc 19
[B] 88-18794 4 CIP
246897531
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my parents,
Mary Anne Foreman
James Bradshaw Griffith
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Acknowledgments
This work has been shaped by the many communities of which I have been
a part. I am indebted to those institutions that have provided essential finan-
cial support at various stages of the work's development: Johns Hopkins
University and the Smithsonian Institution provided graduate fellowships,
and Villanova University a faculty summer research grant. Other institu-
tions have ensured access to the materials essential to historical research.
The librarians in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the
Kansas Collection of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the Univer-
sity of Kansas, the Lilly Library at Indiana University, and Special Collec-
tions of the William Allen White Memorial Library at Emporia State Uni-
versity and at Grinnell College and Villanova University were gracious and
helpful. The staff of the Lyon County Historical Museum in Emporia
greeted me with professional assistance and genuine friendship during my
visits to Emporia. None of this work would have been possible without the
support of the White family, Mrs. William L. White and Mr. and Mrs.
Paul David Walker, who allowed me access to materials in their possession
and generous permission to quote widely from William Allen White's writ-
ings. At Oxford University Press in New York, Sheldon Meyer was con-
sistently encouraging and Gilda Abramowitz's editing was admirably alert
and sensitive.
The weekly seminars of the history department at Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity when I was a graduate student created a challenging yet congenial
environment in which to develop as a historian. No doubt, many of my
ideas were shaped there in exchanges that I have long since forgotten. All
of the Hopkins history faculty contributed to my education to some extent,
but my teachers, Louis Galambos, John Higham, Vernon Lidtke, and Ken-
neth Lynn, contributed most through their knowledge and their commit-
ment to the collective scholarly enterprise.
This work evolved through countless retellings of White's story, in in-
formal conversations and at scholarly conferences. Each telling before a
different audience added to my understanding, but I have benefited most
from the responses of those who read part or all of the work at different
stages in its long development: James L. Baughman, James Bergquist, John
Milton Cooper, the late Catherine L. Covert, Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, David
Glassberg, Richard L. McCormick, William S. Pretzer, James K. Pringle,
VIII • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Richard A. Schwarzlose, Kate Torrey, June Underwood, Joseph F. Wall,
and Bernard A. Weisberger. During my tenure at the National Museum of
American History as a Smithsonian graduate fellow, Elizabeth Harris and
Stanley Nelson of the Division of Graphic Arts shared with me their ex-
pertise in the world of "practical printers," and Carl Scheele, now retired
from the Division of Community Life, offered his sage perspective on
American culture. Portions of Chapter 9 appeared previously in somewhat
different form in Mass Media Between the Wars: Perceptions of Cultural
Tension, 1918-1941, Catherine L. Covert and John D. Stevens, eds. (Syra-
cuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1984), pp. 141-55.
Whatever insights I have into small-town life are the product of my sin-
gular good fortune in having been born and reared in Lusk, Wyoming. My
parents taught me, among many other things, the importance of community
participation. During my years of working after school at the Lusk Herald,
the staff demonstrated to me the best values of community journalism in
action. Jane and Gerald Bardo, in particular, continue to provide a shining
example of how life can be deepened and enriched through commitment
to a community.
S.F.G.
Contents
Introduction 3
PART I
The New Man
1. The Education of a "Somebody" 13
2. The New Editor 32
PART II
The Old Order Changeth
3. A Practical Printer 67
4. The Making of a Progressive 92
5. Booster Progressivism 113
6. Spokesman for Community 139
7. Community Journalism 159
PART III
Nationalizing the Community
8. Booster Nationalism 187
9. Mass Media Come to the Small Town 211
Epilogue 240
Notes 243
Index 283
Description:In 1895, a 27-year-old journalist named William Allen White returned to his home town of Emporia, Kansas, to edit a little down-at-the-heels newspaper he had just purchased for $3,000. ''The new editor,'' he wrote in his first editorial, ''hopes to live here until he is the old editor, until some of
