The Fake Evening Herald
A morning newspaper launches a sham evening edition to monopolize city printing contracts through a loophole in the city charter.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Last Saturday, a new paper made its appearance in the evening field. It came on the streets unheralded by previous notice, although its name was Herald. It does not appear to have had any existence until the newsboys had it on the streets. The printers were as greatly surprised as any one, for the paper was spun out practically without employing the labor of typographers. It was a neat sheet, with an editorial announcing that it was to represent the Populist party. An examination of its contents showed that it was made up, with the exception of two columns of material, of matter lifted bodily from the columns of the Telegraph. The city charter requires that the publication of city official printing shall be in two newspapers of different political faiths. The Telegraph is sure to be one of these papers no matter how high its bid may be, for the Democratic board is pledged to that. It is intended that the Herald shall be the other official paper. As its composition will cost it nothing, it can afford to put in a low bid. It will simply lift the official city notices from the forms of the Telegraph. By this scheme the Telegraph Publishing Company will have a monopoly of the city printing.
“An evening paper composed wholly of the news of a morning paper, under the same type and employing very little labor, was such an anomaly that it created general wonderment.”
This 1893 scheme to game municipal printing contracts via a 'shell' newspaper illustrates the Gilded Age obsession with controlling the levers of local government for private profit. Today's battle over transparency in government contracts and public notices continues to echo the same distrust of consolidation in the media landscape.
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