Los Angeles County
Biographies
PRESS-TELEGRAM
The Long
Beach Press, forerunner of the Press-Telegram, was founded by John G. Palmer
and F. R. Smith in 1897. Under its
leadership, a progressive city council was elected, and the start made on a
development that has continued almost without interruption.
In 1897 Long Beach had a
population of about twelve hundred. Already there were two newspapers, The Eye,
a small, four-page daily; and the Breaker, a weekly published by William
Galer. Robert M. Lynn was the owner of
The Eye. When Messrs. Palmer and Smith
appeared as promoters of a third journalistic venture for the village, Long Beach was in the
midst of a hot campaign over the liquor issue.
Other political division added to the chaotic situations, and the
existing newspapers usually took opposite sides in every controversy. This was true of the saloon question. Personalities grew into hatreds, and the town
was in turmoil. After having been
incorporated as a city of the sixth class, internal disputes had brought about
disincorporation, and municipal affairs were directed by the county board of
supervisors. None of the streets were
paved; nor were the dusty trails that served as public thoroughfares ever
sparkled, unless by private subscription.
Some of the merchants on Pine
Avenue, then as now the chief business street,
united in financing a sprinkling arrangement that served the purpose fairly
well, except for those storekeepers who refused to contribute. The water was shut off by the sprinkler when
their frontage was reached. Trash and
garbage were collected by the same process of private subscription, and there
were other painful evidences of the lack of coordinated public service. Yet the feud between political factions
prevented a correction of those defects, until the new paper started its
campaign of conciliation and progress.
The Press
was launched as a four-page, six-column semi-weekly in the fall of 1897. In the latter part of 1899 it passed to the
ownership of James A Miller, who a year or two later organized the Press
Publishing Company, with A. C. Malone as a stockholder and business
manager. It was then that The Press
became a daily newspaper. The
institution prospered, and Mr. Malone built an office for it, on First Street, east
of Pine Avenue. The Press was still being published in that
location when purchased by the Prisk-Hosking interests in December, 1910. Meanwhile, there had been other changes. C. L. Day of Pasadena purchased an interest in the year
1905 and became business manager. Later
in the same year J. P. Baumgartner acquired Mr. Malone’s share of the
property. By 1920 the newspaper had
outgrown its First Street
office, and temporary quarters were rented, first on Broadway, later at 432 Pine Avenue. Then, after the merger of The press and the
Telegram, in 1924, the Press-Telegram took up its permanent home in a fine new
built-to-order, four-story structure at the northwest corner of Pine Avenue and
Sixth Street, a full quarter-block of space giving ample opportunity for future
expansion. This new office was dedicated
on March 7, 1925, and thousands of patrons visited the building, inspecting the
new equipment which gave the Press-Telegram one of the finest plants in the
west. A special one-hundred page edition
marked this step of progress, a striking feature of which was a complete list
of the thirty-seven thousand, two hundred and twenty-three subscribers then on
the rolls.
On March 1,
1932, the Press-Telegram interests purchased the Long Beach Morning Sun, of
which Ira C. Copley was publisher. The
Sun is now published from the Press-Telegram plant, still as a morning paper,
with separate editorial offices. At the
same time, the Pasadena Star-News purchased the Pasadena Post, which is a
morning edition of the Star-News. The
combined circulation of the four Prisk newspapers of Southern
California is approximately one hundred and twenty thousand.
Transcribed
By: Michele Y. Larsen on February 11, 2012.
Source: California
of the South Vol. II,
by John Steven McGroarty, Pages 79-81,
Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los Angeles,
Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 Michele
Y. Larsen.
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