Tulsa World - History

History

Republican activist James F. McCoy and Kansas journalist J.R. Brady published the first edition of Tulsa World on September 14, 1905 at the time Brady was starting Tulsa World, he was also publishing the Indian Republican a weekly newspaper, which was previously edited by a con artist named Myron Boyle. Brady had bought the Indian Republican in 1905 and fired Boyle in the following year. Boyle borrowed $500 from Dr. S. G. Kennedy, ostensibly to pay some personal debts. Instead, he left town without repaying Dr. Kennedy

Brady was sufficiently successful establishing the Tulsa World that it attracted a Missouri mine owner, George Bayne, and his brother-in-law, Charles Dent, who bought and ran the paper for the next five years. In 1911, Eugene Lorton, who had just sold his stake in a Walla Walla, Washington newspaper, and moved to Tulsa, bought an interest in the Tulsa World', becoming its editor, and then, with financial backing from Harry Sinclair, the sole owner and publisher in 1917.

Beginning in 1915, Tulsa World fought an editorial battle advocating a proposal to build a reservoir on Spavinaw Creek and pipe the water 55 miles to Tulsa. Charles Page was among those who opposed the Spavinaw plan; he advocated a plan in his own newspaper to sell water from the Shell Creek water system, which Page owned. Page's newspaper, the Morning News, closed in 1919 after Tulsans approved a bond issue to pipe the water from Spavinaw. He sold a companion paper, Tulsa Democrat, to Richard Lloyd Jones, who renamed it the Tulsa Tribune.

In the 1920s, Tulsa World was known for its opposition to the Ku Klux Klan, which had risen to local prominence in the wake of the Tulsa Race Riot in the spring of 1921. Lorton was active in Republican Party politics until he suffered defeat to the ultimate winner, William B. Pine, in the 1924 primary election for the US Senate. Lorton then supported Democrats Alfred E. Smith in the 1928 Presidential election and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936. However, Lorton refused to support Roosevelt's third term bid in 1940; he returned to the Republicans and remained so for the rest of his life.

Tulsa Tribune and Tulsa World entered a joint operating agreement in June 1941. Eugene Lorton died in 1949, leaving majority interest in the newspaper to his wife and smaller shares to four daughters and 20 employees. Eugene's presumed successor, Robert Lorton, had died at age 24 in 1939. In the 1950s, his widow, Maude Lorton, transferred one-fourth of the company to attorney Byron Boone, who became publisher in 1959. Upon her death, she left the rest of her shares to her grandson Robert. In 1964, Robert Lorton became director of the News Publishing Corporation, which oversaw the non-editorial operations of both the Tulsa Tribune and Tulsa World. In 1968, he became president of Tulsa World and publisher upon Boone's death in 1988. Tulsa Tribune ceased operations in 1992 and Tulsa World acquired its assets. Robert Lorton reacquired Tulsa World's outstanding shares and made the newspaper entirely family-owned once again. In May 2005, he passed the title of publisher to his son Robert E. Lorton III.