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Baldasty, Gerald. E. W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. 217 pp. $16.95.
E. W. Scripps, father of the Scripps newspaper chain that spanned the decades at the turn of the twentieth century, was a cross between a modern industrialist of his day and a maximum security prison warden. So concludes Gerald Baldasty, who outlines Scripps's business principles and practices in E. W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers.
Scripps chased profits through continual expansion of his chain of cheap newspapers for the working classes by scrimping on every expenditure, creating vertical integration and dropping papers into unserved market niches in mediumsized cities. He is described as an "autocrat" who demanded obedience to his rules that treated his front-line workers like day...