Newspapers, from the staid “gray lady” New York Times to the garbage-can-liner tabloid National Enquirer, all claim—rightfully—that “news” is their main purpose. But they exist on their ability to sell things through advertising. Of course, they have withering competition for the advertising dollar from radio, television and social media. As a result, they are losing editorial and news power as they struggle to survive.
But in 1925, when the powerful Rhinelander family sued Alice Jones for fraud, hoping to annul her marriage to one of their own, newspapers were the supreme method of spreading the news—and advertising. Imagine a world where TV and social media didn’t exist, and radio airwaves and frequencies were unorganized and often cancelled each other out through signal overlap. How delightful!
The New York Times by that time had become the “newspaper of record,” gaining that title by publishing an annual comprehensive subject index. It published on its front page a daily, detailed summary of the Rhinelander trial.
The NYC tabloids of the day were the Daily News, the country’s most circulated paper; the Daily Mirror, William Randolph Hearst’s effort; and the Evening Graphic, the most extreme and salacious of the bunch, famous for inventing “composographs” (faked photo collages) and establishing columnists Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan. In vicious competition with each other, they fed on the Rhinelander trial, without allowing any inclination toward factual limitation.
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