Newspapers Created the First Baseball Superstar Newspapers spurred the growth of America. They began as small operations, usually an editor with a few typesetters, that reported on current events and local political affairs, with most income generated by advertising rather than subscriptions. As the country began to expand, editors started to fill pages from exchanges, simply arrangements for different newspapers to share information. This allowed editors to include more regional and national coverage for their readers. Another step forward came during the Mexican War when correspondents went out to gather news rather than wait for information to trickle back home. This use of paid correspondents would cover such topics as the California Gold Rush, the Civil War, Reconstruction, westward expansion, immigration, and the Spanish-American War. By the dawn of the twentieth century, newspapers were poised to report on another major topic that would profoundly affect American life--the rise of professional baseball. Journalism in New York City was a cutthroat business.

Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World in 1883 and, capitalizing on his business acumen gained with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , within four years it became the most successful newspaper in the city. Pulitzer''s success hinged on his emphasis of reporting sensational stories about lurid criminal acts, disasters of all sorts, and scandals involving prominent politicians and society''s elite. The World ''s most aggressive competitor was another morning paper, the New York Sun , owned by Charles A. Dana, a former assistant secretary of war. Competition between Pulitzer and Dana increased in 1887 when the latter began to publish the Evening Sun , a move countered by the former launching the Evening World . Employees of the original World derisively referred to this new upstart as World Junior . As if to emphasize his importance in journalism, Pulitzer built the New York World Building, then the tallest structure in the metropolis, which stood across from City Hall on Park Avenue and stretched from Frankfort Street to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Dana''s Evening Sun soon began to lose traction and William Randolph Hearst brought forward a new competitor in 1896, the Evening Journal . This new rivalry became even more intense than the previous Pulitzer-Dana clash. Rather than presenting a background on New York City newspapers in general, this narrative will focus on how the Evening World organized its staff to cover its two Major League baseball teams. To counter the popularity of Hearst''s paper, Joseph Pulitzer hired Foster Coates as managing editor of the Evening World . Coates set out to immediately increase circulation by using shocking headlines and huge typefaces to attract readers. He compared his front page to the window of a department store: "One must display his wares attractively," he argued, "or the other fellow would reap the largest sales."1 When exceptional news stories came, there was no way to promote them beyond a typical front page other than to resort to red ink to catch attention. This step soon failed when women complained that red ink ruined their white gloves.

Women were critical to any newspaper since they read the advertisements that brought in the bulk of its profits. For example, the Evening World for years sold at just one penny an issue. Hearst stole Foster Coates in 1900, but his front-page layout remained. In the very middle were baseball scores for the New York Giants and Brooklyn Superbas. Coates had discovered that baseball scores were just as important to circulation as horrific murders and natural disasters. But he had a target audience in mind. Wall Street shut down at three in the afternoon, so the Giants and Superbas accom- modated this elite crowd by throwing out the first ball at four, giving these well-dressed sports fans time to get to the stadiums. Editions of the Evening World were printed early, then held for baseball scores to be inserted as games concluded.

Extra-inning games played hell with distribution as newsboys had to wait for late deliveries. Interestingly, these ball scores appeared in a fainter type than all other stories on the front page.