cover image Scripps: The Divided Dynasty

Scripps: The Divided Dynasty

Jack Casserly. Dutton Books, $23.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-1-55611-378-9

This encomium to the Scripps family depicts behavior that Casserly attempts to pass off as eccentric or quirky, but that most people would characterize as vicious. Dynasty founder Edward W. Scripps (1854-1926) built an empire on the so-called Penny Papers, which spoke for the proletariat. He trained his dependable and talented son Jim, the oldest of his four children, to manage the empire, then disinherited him. Jim and his brother Bob battled for control of the chain. In 1920 the founder named Bob and Roy Howard, the head of UPI, which the family owned, to run the Scripps-Howard papers. Jim died in 1921 and that same year his widow and two sons, Ed and James, set up the Scripps League Newspapers, concentrating on small-town papers. It now owns 25 papers, incuding 18 dailies, and 23 shoppers (free) with an estimated readership of more than a million. Bob died in 1938 and his offspring continued to run the Scripps-Howard chain. The story of family infighting, padded with chapters about the social doings of Ed and his wife and the views of some of his editors on newspapering, is at best a footnote to Vance Trimble's The Astounding Mr. Scripps. Photos. (Oct.)