Newspaper Journalist
While Ellen Browning was at college her brother James Edmund had become an owner and publisher of The Detroit Advertiser and merged it with the Detroit Tribune. James then convinced Ellen she should take a job as a copy editor. So she did. Ellen had to quit because of her father’s failing health. She was so concerned that she slept in a chair next to her father’s bed with a string tied to her finger so if he woke up she would get woken up. A fire in 1873 burned down the Detroit Tribune building and helped the Scripps family James Collected $20,000 from the insurance and Edward made $1000 on the melted lead type stamps. This allowed James to reinvest the money and start a new company paper The Detroit News. Ellen became copy editor again after her father’s death the same year and made approximately $20 a week. Ellen and James convinced their brother George to sell his farm and invest in the newspaper.
A rift between brothers caused Edward to move to Cleveland and in 1879 he started his own paper, The Penny Press. Even though they were splitting apart, James helped him finance the start up Edward needed about $10,000. The paper was started during a time of increasing literacy and it became hugely popular
Ellen started a column in the paper called "Miscellany". It was a column of trivial news supplemented with historical facts. This column began as a filler piece but then became well received and expected by the public. She pioneered the concept of the feature article.
Read more about this topic: Ellen Browning Scripps
Famous quotes containing the words newspaper and/or journalist:
“A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to “a semi-official statement”; if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as “a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable.” It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of “well-informed circles.””
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)