Newspaper Wars
It was my coworker Tyson Evans who first suggested that HBO should make a gritty series about the vicious New York City newspaper wars of 1896 - 1911, and thinking it over, I’d have to agree that it would be amazing.
For starters, we have the major organizations competing (but 14 newspapers in all)
- The New York World (Pulitzer’s newspaper)
- The New York Journal (that upstart Hearst’s paper)
- A floundering newspaper called the New York Times
- The Sun, the old guard newspaper
Look at some of these characters:
- Joseph Pulitzer, ruthless publisher of the The New York World
- William Randolph Hearst, upstart publisher of the New York Journal
- Homer Davenport, political cartoonist for the Journal
- Richard Outcault, creator of the Yellow Kid at the Journal later poached by the World
- Charlie Chapin, callous editor of the World, later jailed for murdering his wife
- Adolph Ochs, ambitious immigrant who bought himself a newspaper
- Stephen Crane, noted author and journalist for the Journal, saddled with his own scandals and dying an early death of TB
- Julian Hawthorne, son of Nathaniel Hawthorne and reporter for the Journal
- Nelly Bly, journalist for the World and investigative pioneer
- Robert Van Wyck, Tammany Hall-controlled mayor of NYC
- Teddy Roosevelt, NYC police commissioner in 1895, Rough Rider (1898), President (1901)
Read that last bullet point again. Not only do you get to see the sweeping changes to NYC and the nation through the lens of two warring newspapers, you get Teddy Roosevelt with a different role in every season for free.
And here are some of the major and minor events that could comprise arcs of subsequent seasons:
- Hearst buys the New York Morning Journal (1895)
- The 1896 presidential campaign between McKinley and Bryan
- Purchase of the NY Times by Ochs (1896)
- “All The News That’s Fit To Print” (1897)
- The Spanish-American war (1898)
- Merger of Brooklyn and Queens into NYC (1898)
- President McKinley Assassinated (1901)
- Phillipine-American War (1902)
- The General Slocum disaster (1904)
- The Stanford White murder (1906)
As well as some general trends and innovations in journalism and life:
- Yellow Journalism
- Rewrite men and the inverted pyramid form
- Muckraker journalism
- The Rise of Objectivity
- Growth and demographic changes in NYC
- Immigration and assimilation
- The growing Temperance/Prohibition movement
- The remnants of Gilded Age cronyism
- The rise of radio and motion pictures
This show simply must be made. As Tim Carmody pitched it, “It’s Deadwood Meets Citizen Kane.” How could you not watch that?
Now all it needs is a catchy title. Get me rewrite!
