Los Angeles Evening Record

Los Angeles Record

Los Angeles Record office in 1902 at 622 South Broadway; on the left is Arthur L. Mackaye, the courts reporter, and on the right is likely Walter Syverston, the circulation manager[1]
Founded	March 4, 1895; 129 years ago (1895-03-04)
Ceased publication	December 12, 1933 (1933-12-12) (or 1936ish?)

The Los Angeles Record was a daily newspaper of the Greater Los Angeles area of California, United States in the first half of the 20th century. Associated with the Scripps chain of newspapers, it was founded on March 4, 1895.[2]: 29 [3]: 408  The Record was an evening newspaper, perceived to be politically independent, and its offices were on Wall Street for much of its 20th-century history.[2]: 37  In the 1920s, the Record was one of six dailies competing for readership in the city.[4] The newspaper ultimately developed a fairly populistic, working-class editorial approach that stood out amongst the city's dailies, especially compared to the arch-capitalist Los Angeles Times.[5]: 85 

History

Circa 1904 it was credited with the removal of LAPD Chief of Police Charles Elton after the paper charged him with protecting illegal gambling rings.[6] Among its editorial practices of the early 1900s was baiting Pacific Electric magnate Henry E. Huntington because, argued Record editorials, "company owners forced employees to operate the trolleys at excessive speed and were interested primarily in profits instead of human lives."[7]: 138  The paper also opposed William Mulholland's planned Los Angeles Aqueduct as exploitative of Owens Valley.[8]: 63  It was the Record that published the so-called "haybag letters" that mayor Charles E. Sebastian wrote to his longtime mistress, in which he referred to his wife as "the Old Haybag".[9]: 58 

Late 1930s photograph of "Old Post-Record Building," almost certainly the office at 612 Wall Street

The paper survived until December 12, 1933, when it became the Los Angeles Post-Record.[10][3]: 411  The Post-Record, or Los Angeles Evening Post-Record, survived another couple years into the mid-1930s, maybe 1936.

Notable personnel

Los Angeles Record exposés of the 1920s, like this one on the Julian Pete scandal, were often marked with a ink splot labeled "The Truth!"

• E. E. McDowell, called Mac, was the editorial cartoonist from 1903 to ~1934[11]
• Dana Sleeth, editor 1916–?[12]
• Burton Knisely, editor, early 1920s
• Henry B. R. Briggs was editor and publisher from 1925 to 1933.[13]
• Notable reporters included Mamie Louise Leung, considered the first Chinese-American female newspaper reporter,[14] and Agness Underwood, a crackerjack crime reporter, who started her career at the Record.

References

1. "Old Timers Phone to Identify 1902 Picture". Los Angeles Evening Post-Record. 14 January 1935. p. 5.
2. McCORKLE, Julia Norton (1915). "A History of Los Angeles Journalism". Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California. 10 (1/2): 24–43. doi:10.2307/41168909. JSTOR 41168909.
3. Los Angeles: A Guide to the City and Its Environs. Best Books on. 1941. ISBN 978-1-62376-053-3.
4. Rasmussen, Cecilia (1997-11-02). "The Grande Dame of L.A. Newspapers". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
5. Tygiel, Jules (1996-01-01). The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-20773-8.
6. "Fourth estate : a weekly newspaper for publishers, advertisers, advertising agents and allied interests 1904". HathiTrust. hdl:2027/uiug.30112044128038. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
7. "Ride the big red cars; how trolleys helped build southern California". HathiTrust. hdl:2027/mdp.39015006398757. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
8. "Water & politics; a study of water policies and administration in the development of Los Angeles". HathiTrust. hdl:2027/uc1.b3127052. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
9. Rasmussen, Cecilia (1998). L.A. Unconventional: The Men and Women Who Did L.A. Their Way. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Times. ISBN 978-1-883792-23-7. OCLC 40701771.
10. homesteadmuseum (2020-11-08). "Read All About It: The Pending End of the First World War and the Raging Flu Pandemic in the "Los Angeles Record," 7 November 1918". The Homestead Blog. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
11. "Chapter XLIX - Chapter 49". Los Angeles Evening Post-Record. 1935-03-05. p. 11. Retrieved 2024-05-28.
12. "Sleeth family collection - Archives West". archiveswest.orbiscascade.org. Retrieved 2024-05-28.
13. "Briggs Given Postmaster's Chair in Los Angeles". Los Angeles Evening Citizen News. 1934-01-27. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
14. Chang Zacher, Yu-Li (2023-10-02). "First Chinese American Newspaperwoman: Mamie Louise Leung at the Los Angeles Record , 1926-1929". Journalism History. 49 (4): 280–299. doi:10.1080/00947679.2023.2263729. ISSN 0094-7679.

Sources

• Wagner, Rob Leicester (2000). Red Ink, White Lies: The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles Newspapers, 1920–1962. Upland, California: Dragonflyer Press. ISBN 978-0-944933-80-0. LCCN 0944933807. OCLC 44654778.