Grit (newspaper)
Encyclopedia
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
, popular in rural areas throughout the United States during much of the 20th century. It carried the subtitle America's Greatest Family Newspaper. In the early 1930s, it targeted small town and rural families with 14 pages plus a fiction supplement. By 1932, it had a circulation of 425,000 in 48 states, and 83% of its circulation was in towns of less than 10,000 population.
History
The publication was founded in 1882 as the Saturday edition of the Williamsport, PennsylvaniaWilliamsport, Pennsylvania
Williamsport is a city in and the county seat of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania in the United States. In 2009, the population was estimated at 29,304...
, Daily Sun and Banner. In 1885, the name was purchased for $1,000 by 25-year-old German immigrant Dietrick Lamade , who established a circulation of 4,000 during the first year.
Lamade was born February 6, 1859, in Gölshausen
Bretten
Bretten is a town in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located on Bertha Benz Memorial Route.-Geography:Bretten lies in the centre of a rectangle that is formed by Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Heilbronn and Stuttgart as corners. It has a population of approximately 28,000. The centre of...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, one of nine children of Johannes Dietrick and Caroline Stuepfle Lamade. The family moved to Williamsport in 1867, where Johannes died of typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...
on January 1, 1869. To support the family, Dietrick, his sister, and his older brothers quit school. At age ten, Dietrick began working as an errand boy, earning a weekly salary of $3 in the office of a local German-language weekly, Beobachter (literally Observer), when he was 13 years old.
At 18, Lamade began printing theater programs and a four-page ad brochure, the Merchants' Free Press. In the summer of 1880, he did Camp News for the Pennsylvania National Guard, and he married the following year. In 1882, Lamade became the ad compositor and assistant composing room foreman for the Daily Sun and Banner, and that same year, Grit began as the paper's Saturday edition, typeset by Lamade. He left the Daily Sun in 1884 to launch the weekly Times as a daily, but finances and the health of the owner led the Times to cease publication. With two children and no job, 25-year-old Lamade became a publisher. Teaming with two partners, he bought the Times equipment plus the Grit name and goodwill. During his first year, he increased Grits circulation to 4,000. He operated from a third-floor single room, moving down to a storefront location in 1886, establishing a weekly circulation of 20,000 by 1887.
With rapid expansion, a horse-drawn wagon of Remington typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s was delivered to the Grit offices in 1892. In 1894, one member of the art department was the 16-year-old C. W. Kahles
C. W. Kahles
Charles William Kahles was a prolific cartoonist responsible for numerous comic strips, notably Hairbreadth Harry...
, later famed as the creator of the long-run comic strip Hairbreadth Harry.
Grit displayed news and features aimed at rural America, and climbed to a weekly circulation of 100,000 by 1900, following an editorial policy outlined by Lamade during a banquet for Grits employees:
- Always keep Grit from being pessimistic. Avoid printing those things which distort the minds of readers or make them feel at odds with the world. Avoid showing the wrong side of things, or making people feel discontented. Do nothing that will encourage fear, worry, or temptation... Wherever possible, suggest peace and good will toward men. Give our readers courage and strength for their daily tasks. Put happy thoughts, cheer, and contentment into their hearts.
While introducing such innovations as national newsboy delivery and direct mail, Lamade expanded his content to combine news, human interest articles, comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
s (sometimes filling ten pages), puzzles and serials in fiction supplements ("Grit Story Section"). Circulation reached 300,000 in 1916.
Little League and newsboy sales
Grit was a familiar newspaper in small towns across the United States for over a century. By the time of its 50th anniversary in 1932, 400,000 people bought the newspaper each week, increasing to 500,000 by 1934. Lamade retired in 1936, and died October 10, 1938. His son, George R. Lamade, became the publisher and editor, with grandson Howard Lamade, Jr. serving as Grits production manager. George Lamade committed suicide in August 1965.Another son, Howard J. Lamade, was vice president, and also served as a top executive with Little League Baseball
Little League
Little League Baseball and Softball is a non-profit organization in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, United States which organizes local youth baseball and softball leagues throughout the U.S...
, helping to build it into a national institution. The main stadium used for the Little League World Series
Little League World Series
The Little League Baseball World Series is a baseball tournament for children aged 11 to 13 years old. It was originally called the National Little League Tournament and was later renamed for the World Series in Major League Baseball. It was first held in 1947 and is held every August in South...
was built on land donated by the Lamade family, and it is named Howard J. Lamade Stadium
Howard J. Lamade Stadium
Howard J. Lamade Stadium is a baseball stadium in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Each year, it hosts the Little League World Series, along with Little League Volunteer Stadium. Lamade Stadium was built in 1959 and holds 40,000 people, most of whom sit on the outfield berms...
in his memory. Grit went to a tabloid format in 1944. Michael R. Rafferty
Michael R. Rafferty
Michael R. Rafferty served as an editor of the Grit and as mayor of Williamsport, Pennsylvania in the United States from 2000 to 2004.Rafferty, a native of Williamsport, graduated from Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, MD...
was a former Williamsport mayor (2000-2004), and also was an editor of Grit.
During the first three-quarters of the 20th century, Grit was sold across the country by children and teenagers, many recruited by ads in comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s from the 1940s to the 1970s. Approximately 30,000 children collected dimes from more than 700,000 American small town homes during the 1950s when the publication still carried the subtitle, "America's Greatest Family Newspaper." A comical ad in Richie Rich
Richie Rich
Richard "Richie" Rich, Jr. is a fictional character that debuted in Harvey Comics' Little Dot #1, cover-dated September 1953. Dubbed "the poor little rich boy", Richie is the only child of fantastically wealthy parents and is the world's richest kid. He lives and works in an expensive mansion and...
comic books aimed to recruit more young salesmen, suggesting that Richie's father, Richard Rich, made his fortune selling Grit.
Content
By the 1940s, the paper was separated into five different sections "for ease of handling and reading." For instance, the 44-page issue for Sunday, January 1, 1950, was divided as follows:- News Section (12 pages)
- Women's Section (8 pages)
- Family Section (4 pages)
- Comic Section (4 pages)
- Story Section (16 pages)
The News Section, displaying a dramatic page-one headline, "Atomic Energy Provides Man Tool of Death or Good Life," followed with a variety of human-interest stories, a coverage of "1949 in Review," a "Stranger Than Fiction" column and a page of international news. More than a few photos focused on unusual highway accidents.
The Women's Section included fashion features and recipes, along with stories on house plants, new gadgets and how to hold a tea party. The Family Section featured jokes, puzzles and the "Odd, Strange and Curious" page with stories on such subjects as a two-headed turtle and the world's largest collection of cigarette lighters. The Story Section opened with the first installment of the serialized "Ring Out the Old" by Mary Hastings Bradley and included "Modern Parables", a series by Fulton Oursler
Fulton Oursler
Charles Fulton Oursler was an American journalist, playwright, editor and writer. Writing as Anthony Abbot, he was an notable author of mysteries and detective fiction.-Life:...
, author of The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Comic strips
Chic Young
Murat Bernard Young , better known as Chic Young, was an American cartoonist who created the popular, long-running comic strip Blondie. His 1919 William McKinley High School Yearbook cites his nickname as Chicken, source of his familiar pen name and signature...
's Blondie
Blondie (comic strip)
Blondie is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Chic Young. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, the strip has been published in newspapers since September 8, 1930...
, Young's Colonel Potterby and the Duchess, Dixie Dugan by J. P. McEvoy and J.H. Streibel, Donald Duck, Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon is the hero of a science fiction adventure comic strip originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by and created to compete with the already established Buck Rogers adventure strip. Also inspired by these series were comics such as Dash...
by Mac Raboy
Mac Raboy
Emmanuel "Mac" Raboy was an American cartoonist whose comic books and strips remain collectibles more than 40 years after his death. He was known for his work on Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel Jr...
and Don G. Moore, Carl Anderson
Carl Thomas Anderson
Carl Thomas Anderson was an American cartoonist best remembered for his comic strip Henry. Readers followed the pantomime adventures of the mute, bald-headed Henry in strips which he signed with his familiar signature displaying an enlarged "S": Carl AnderSon.-Background:Carl Thomas Anderson was...
's Henry
Henry (comic)
Henry is a comic strip created in 1932 by Carl Anderson. The title character is a young bald boy who is mute...
, Ham Fisher
Ham Fisher
Hammond Edward Fisher was an American comic strip writer and cartoonist who signed his work Ham Fisher...
's Joe Palooka
Joe Palooka
Joe Palooka was an American comic strip about a heavyweight boxing champion, created by cartoonist Ham Fisher in 1921. The strip debuted in 1930 and was carried at its peak by 900 newspapers....
, Jungle Jim
Jungle Jim
Jungle Jim is the fictional hero of a series of jungle adventures in various media. The series began in 1934 as an American newspaper comic strip chronicling the adventures of Asia-based hunter Jim Bradley, who was nicknamed Jungle Jim...
by Paul Norris
Paul Norris
Paul Leroy Norris was an American comic book artist best known as co-creator of the DC Comics superhero Aquaman, and for a 35-year run as artist of the newspaper comic strip Brick Bradford.-Early life and career:...
and Moore, Fran Striker
Fran Striker
Fran Striker was an American writer for radio and comics, best known for creating The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, and Sgt...
's The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture....
, Mandrake the Magician
Mandrake the Magician
Mandrake the Magician is a syndicated newspaper comic strip, created by Lee Falk , which began June 11, 1934. Phil Davis soon took over as the strip's illustrator, while Falk continued to script. The strip was distributed by King Features Syndicate.Davis worked on the strip until his death in 1964,...
by Lee Falk
Lee Falk
Lee Falk, born Leon Harrison Gross , was an American writer, theater director, and producer, best known as the creator of the popular comic strip superheroes The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, who at the height of their popularity attracted over a hundred million readers every day...
and Phil Davis
Phil Davis (cartoonist)
Philip Davis , better known as Phil Davis, was an American artist who illustrated Mandrake the Magician, written by Lee Falk. Davis was born in St. Louis, Missouri....
, J. R. Williams
J. R. Williams (cartoonist)
James Robert Williams was a cartoonist who signed his work J. R. Williams. He was best known for his long-run daily syndicated panel, Out Our Way. As noted by Coulton Waugh in his 1947 book, The Comics, anecdotal evidence indicated that more Williams' cartoons were clipped and saved than were...
' Out Our Way
Out Our Way
Out Our Way was a single-panel cartoon by J. R. Williams which was syndicated for decades after it first appeared in a half-dozen small-market newspapers on March 20, 1922.-Characters and story:...
, Hal Foster's Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur, or simply Prince Valiant, is a long-run comic strip created by Hal Foster in 1937. It is an epic adventure that has told a continuous story during its entire history, and the full stretch of that story now totals more than 3700 Sunday strips...
and Ed Reed's three-panel The Three Bares, extracted from Reed's Off the Record gag panel feature. To squeeze three or four strips on a page, some strips appear to have panels slightly cropped and other strips were stacked vertically, with The Three Bares inserted at the bottom as a filler.
A few years later, Grit reduced the number of pages from 44 to 40, and went from five sections to four sections by combining the comic strips and illustrated stories into a single section. In this format, the strips were scattered about with a single strip used as a design element to relieve the monotony of many grey columns of story text.
Charlie Walker, writing in the February 16, 2000 edition of The News (Kingstree, South Carolina
Kingstree, South Carolina
Kingstree is a town in and the county seat of Williamsburg County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 3,328 at the 2010 census.-History:...
), described a 1956 issue:
- A few weeks ago, Leo Barrineau, who lives at Barrineau's Crossroads, gave me a call. His son Steve, while remodeling the church at Broad Swamp, had discovered a 1956 Grit newspaper in the walls of the church. When it comes to old newspapers, old pictures and old phonograph records, I don't need Viagra to turn me on. This Grit was published January 1, 1956. It contained 40 pages and cost a dime. So hop aboard the Twilight Zone Express. Put your memory in reverse, and together, we will remember the way it was. The back page of this 44-year-old newspaper recalled the dramatic events of 1955. The polio vaccine was developed by Dr. Jonas SalkJonas SalkJonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine. He was born in New York City to parents from Ashkenazi Jewish Russian immigrant families...
. President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack. The first atomic-powered submarine, the Nautilus, was launched. In 1955, the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. Oklahoma was the #1 college football team in the land.
- Bennett CerfBennett CerfBennett Alfred Cerf was a publisher and co-founder of Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his television appearances in the panel game show What's My Line?.-Biography:Bennett Cerf...
wrote a column for Grit. The funnies included Blondie, Joe Palooka, The Lone Ranger, Donald Duck and Henry. There was a crossword puzzle and a serial, a murder mystery called, Tell Her It's Murder. This copy of Grit contained the 29th and final chapter. The first Grit of 1956 also contained predictions for the upcoming year. The unicycle would be the number one sport in the summer of 1956. And the TV program that would replace The $64,000 Question would be one called Can You Trust Your Wife?Who Do You Trust?Who Do You Trust? is an American game show which aired from September 30, 1957, to November 15, 1957, at 4:30 PM, Eastern on ABC, and from November 18, 1957, to December 27, 1963 at 3:30 PM, Eastern - which helped garner a significant number of young viewers coming home from school.The series was...
And in 1956 just like today, doctors still couldn't cure the common cold. Grit carried a full-page ad offering Valentine cards for seven cents each. Grit also carried an ad for Sinclair Gasoline. (Willie Munn operated a Sinclair station at the corner of Main and Jackson streets in Kingstree.) Grit was recruiting carriers to sell their paper. You could make 4¢ for each paper you sold.
Grit was a pioneer in the introduction of offset printing
Offset printing
Offset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...
. It was one of the first newspapers in the United States to run color photographs, with the first full-color picture (of the American flag
Flag of the United States
The national flag of the United States of America consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows of six stars alternating with rows...
) appearing on the front page in June, 1963. At its peak in 1969, Grit had a total circulation of 1.5 million copies every week.
The Lamade family owned Grit for nearly 100 years, but in 1981, ADVO-System, Inc. of Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...
purchased the paper. In 1983, Grit was purchased by Stauffer Communications, Inc. of Topeka, Kansas
Topeka, Kansas
Topeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...
, which already owned Capper's Weekly, a national tabloid also marketed to rural areas and small towns, albeit mostly in the Great Plains and Midwestern states.
From Williamsport to Topeka
In 1992, Grit left Williamsport after 111 years and moved its offices to Topeka. At that time, Roberta Peterson was editor-in-chief of Grit and also of Best Recipes, a bimonthly glossy magazine that grew to be a Top 10 paid circulation national food title. Peterson left the group for a Senior Editor position at Meredith Corporation (Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies Home Journal) in 1995, at the time of the magazine group's double sale—first to Morris Communications, and very shortly after in the same year, to Ogden Publications. At that time, publishing of Best Recipes was suspended.For decades Grit had published a national edition, a Pennsylvania edition (for sale within the Keystone State, featuring mostly Pennsylvania-related stories) and a local edition. The local edition was the Sunday newspaper for Williamsport and Lycoming County, Pennsylvania
Lycoming County, Pennsylvania
-Appalachian Mountains and Allegheny Plateau:Lycoming County is divided between the Appalachian Mountains in the south, the dissected Allegheny Plateau in the north and east, and the valley of the West Branch Susquehanna River between these.-West Branch Susquehanna River:The West Branch of the...
, and was circulated in 13 other counties in north-central Pennsylvania as well; the National Edition served essentially as its magazine. This edition stopped publication in the early 1990s, whereupon the Williamsport Sun Gazette
Williamsport Sun Gazette
The Williamsport Sun-Gazette newspaper's history.The newspaper now known as the Williamsport Sun-Gazette was founded in 1801 as The Lycoming Gazette. This nation was only 25 years old at the time and there were only 131 residents in Williamsport. The newspaper was started in a building in what is...
begin producing a Sunday edition.
In 1995, the Morris Communications Corporation purchased Stauffer Communications
Stauffer Communications
Stauffer Communications was a corporation which until 1995 owned many media and other companies in Topeka, Kansas including the Topeka Capital-Journal and WIBW, WIBW-FM, and WIBW-TV....
, giving Morris a total of 32 daily newspapers in 13 states when it added Stauffer's 20 daily papers, including the Stauffer flagship, the Topeka Capital-Journal. Morris president Paul S. Simon said he intended to sell Stauffer's broadcast division, including 11 stations and several radio networks, and Stauffer Magazine Group, which included Grit, Cappers (a rural tabloid with a 120-year history, formerly the Cappers Weekly referred to above) and Best Recipes magazine.
Later that year, Grit and Cappers were acquired by Ogden Publications. Grit, which had until this time been biweekly, was then edited by Kathryn Compton as a monthly with the subtitle "Stories of American Life & Tradition." Other Ogden Publications include American Life & Traditions, Farm Collector, Mother Earth News
Mother Earth News
Mother Earth News is a bi-monthly American magazine that has a circulation of 475,000. It is based in Topeka, Kansas.Approaching environmental problems from a down-to-earth, practical, how-to standpoint, Mother Earth News has, since the magazine’s founding in 1970, been a pioneer in the promotion...
and Utne Reader
Utne Reader
Utne Reader is an American bimonthly magazine. The magazine collects and reprints articles on politics, culture, and the environment from generally alternative media sources, including journals, newsletters, weeklies, zines, music and DVDs...
.
Beginning with the September 2006 issue, Grit converted to an all-glossy, perfect bound magazine format and a bi-monthly schedule. The revamped editorial policy encompasses more of a contemporary rural emphasis on content, rather than the nostalgic themes of the previous decade. With a print run of 150,000 and Time Warner
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...
as the national newsstand distributor, Grit was displayed and sold at general newsstand outlets, bookstores and specialty farm feed and supply stores, including Tractor Supply Company
Tractor Supply Company
Tractor Supply Company is a large retail chain of stores that offers a number of products for home improvement, agriculture, lawn and garden maintenance, and livestock, equine and pet care. It is a leading U.S. retailer in its market.Founded as a mail order tractor parts business in 1938, the...
.