The Life Cycle and Conventions of Nineteenth-Century Breaking News: Disaster Reporting of the 1875 Virginia City Fire

Abstract

Coverage of the Virginia City, Nevada, fire of 1875 provides an opportunity to investigate the life cycle and conventions of breaking-news disaster reporting in the nineteenth century. Factors include timing, publication configuration, and rhetorical style of the story. Stories were characterized by the prominent use of dispatch reportage and a transition from summary content to more detailed content over the course of the first week. The escalating deployment of sensational language and content through the breaking-news cycle functioned to convey the degree of the disaster and to create a multisensory experience for the reader. Another discovery is the emergence of nationalistic discursive themes throughout the reportage, tying disaster reporting to the rhetorical construction of American national identity during the dynamic age of westward expansion.

Notes

1 For a contemporary account of life on the Comstock, see Lucius Beebe, Comstock Commotion: The Story of the Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1954). See also Ronald M. James, The Roar and the Silence: A History of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998); and Grant H. Smith, The History of the Comstock Lode, 1850–1997 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1943, new ed. 1998).

2 Beebe, 65. For more on the Sagebrush journalists, see Janet Floyd, “The Feeling of ‘Silverland’: Sagebrush Journalism in Virginia City’s ‘Flush Times.’” Media History 19, no. 3 (2013): 257–269.

3 David Dary, Red Blood and Black Ink: Journalism in the Old West (New York: Knopf, 1998). See especially 91–93, 122–23, and 230–33.

4 For more on DeQuille, see Richard A. Dwyer and Richard E. Lingenfelter, eds., Dan De Quille, The Washoe Giant: A Biography and Anthology (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1990). De Quille achieved national renown with his book, History of the Big Bonanza: An Authentic Account of the Discovery, History, and Working of the World Renowned Comstock Silver Lode of Virginia City, Nevada. Original publication: 1876 (Los Angeles: Peruse Press, 2013). Twain’s years in Virginia City are well documented. See Harold Meyer, “Mark Twain on the Comstock,” Southwest Review 12, no. 3 (1927): 197–207, and Henry Nash Smith, ed., Mark Twain of the Enterprise: Newspaper Articles and Other Documents, 1862–64 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957).

5 Daily Alta California, October 27, 1875.

6 Jiuchang Wei, Dingtao Zhao, and Liang Liang, “Estimating the Growth Models of News Stories on Disasters,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60, no. 9 (2009): 1741–1755.

7 The current study demonstrates that this prediction holds true, with coverage peaking on days three, four, and five, with the most coverage—sixty-eight articles—appearing in the subject archives on day four. Coverage tapered dramatically on Sunday, October 31, with the number of articles dropping 75 percent from the previous days.

8 Kathleen Fearn-Banks, Crisis Communications: A Casebook Approach (New York: Routledge, 2011).

9 J. Patrick McGrail explores the evolution of sensationalism and its relationship with the newspaper industry in “Sensationalism, Narrativity, and Objectivity—Modeling Ongoing News Story Practice” (Doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, 2008). For additional information on nineteenth-century journalistic practices related to objectivity, see also Hazel Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), especially 54–55; Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978); and David Mindich, Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism (New York: New York University Press, 1998). Andrews explores the tightening of the event-to-publication process due to the wartime development of reporting strategies, collaboration, and technology. J. Cutler Andrews, The North Reports the Civil War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1955), 6.

10 John D. Stevens, “Sensationalism in Perspective,” Journalism History 12, nos. 3–4 (1985): 78; and John D. Stevens, Sensationalism and the New York Press (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 5–6. Emery also includes flippant or satirical topics in the pantheon of sensational reporting. See Michael C. Emery, The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1962).

11 David S. Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville (New York: Knopf, 1988), especially “The Sensational Press and the Rise of Subversive Literature,” 169–181. Stephens also maintains the long sensationalist tradition of narrative. See Mitchell Stephens, A History of News, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

12 See Frank L. Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 Years (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 442; Stevens, Sensationalism and the New York Press, 5; and Warren Francke, “Sensationalism and the Development of 19th Century Reporting: The Broom Sweeps Sensory Details,” Journalism History 12, no. 3 (1985): 80.

13 Sensationalism: Murder, Mayhem, Mudslinging, Scandals, and Disasters in 19th-Century Reporting, ed. David Sachsman and David Bulla (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2013), xxi; and David W. Bulla and Heather R. Haley, “Sensational Journalism in the Mid-19th Century,” in Sensationalism, ed. Sachsman and Bulla, 75–76.

14 Bulla and Sachsman, xx–xxi; and Stevens, Sensationalism and the New York Press, 5.

15 Bulla and Sachsman hint at this criterion when they say that “[t]he degree of the rhetoric exaggerates the sensational effect,” as evidenced by hyperbole and grotesque detail. Bulla and Sachsman, xxi–xxii, emphasis in original. For more on the role of editors in sensational reporting, see Francke, 80–84.

16 The role of the Virginia City newspapers in the fire event is significant. Beebe wrote that a newspaper delivery boy was the first to smell smoke. After rescuing some equipment from the Territorial Enterprise office, the editor himself had to be extricated from the basement as he returned to save the last edition. Since most of the town’s newsprint had been destroyed, the editor’s son later recalled that the newspaper was printed the next day on butcher’s stock (Beebe, 99–100).

17 Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, October 30, 1875,

18 Wheeling (W. Va.) Intelligencer, October 27, 1875.

19 Daily Alta California, October 27, 1875.

20 Cincinnati Daily Star, October 27, 1875.

21 Pioche (Nev.) Daily Record, October 27, 1875.

22 Los Angeles Daily Herald, October 27, 1875.

23 Pittsburgh Commercial, October 27, 1875.

24 Marysville Daily Appeal, October 27, 1875.

25 Daily Alta California, October 27, 1875.

26 National Republican, October 27, 1875.

27 Ibid.

28 Evening Star, October 28, 1875.

29 Los Angeles Daily Herald, October 28, 1875.

30 Pacific Appeal, October 30, 1875.

31 The Sentinel, October 30, 1875; Clarksville Weekly Chronicle, October 30, 1875.

32 Maine Farmer, October 30, 1875.

33 Mariposa (Calif.) Gazette, October 30, 1875.

34 Evening Star, October 27, 1875.

35 Ibid.

36 Evening Star, October 27, 1875. See also Daily Alta California, October 27, 1875.

37 Daily Argus, October 30, 1875; Carson Daily Appeal, October 27, 1875.

38 An announcement of “RELIEF ENTERTAINMENT” in the October 30 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, for example, promised a lively evening of “Dancing, Tableaux, Singing, reading, wax works, etc.” Sacramento Daily Record-Union, October 30, 1875.

39 Pacific Appeal, October 30, 1875.

40 Cincinnati Daily Star, October 27, 1875.

41 Evening Star, October 27, 1875.

42 “The fire department lost its head, and the wind blowing briskly from the west carried the flames through the town, and the water supply gave out. Engines and hose were burned in the street.” Evening Star, October 27, 1875.

43 Daily Alta California, October 27, 1875.

44 Memphis Daily Appeal, October 28, 1875.

45 Evening Star, October 28, 1875.

46 Los Angeles Daily Herald, October 28, 1875.

47 Carson Daily Appeal, October 27, 1875.

48 Ibid.

49 “Virginia’s Trial,” Virginia Evening Chronicle, October 26, 1875. Quoted in Jake Highton, Nevada Newspaper Days: A History of Journalism in the Silver State (Stockton, CA: Heritage West, 1990), 74.

50 New North-West, October 29, 1875.

51 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, October 30, 1875.

52 Arizona Citizen, October 30, 1875.

53 Los Angeles Daily Herald, October 29, 1875.

54 Turner theorized that the frontiersmen regenerated a new and distinctly American civilization on each new frontier, suggesting that Westerners embody that which was most American. For more on Turner, see John Mack Faragher, ed., Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” and Other Essays (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). For a look at the role of journalism in structuring a discourse of nationalism from the western trails, see Katrina J. Quinn, “‘Across the Continent…and Still the Republic!’: Inscribing Nationhood in Samuel Bowles’s Newspaper Letters of 1865,” American Journalism 31, no. 4 (2014): 468–489.

55 Evening Star, October 28, 1875.

56 New Orleans Republican, October 28, 1875.

57 Virginia Evening Chronicle, October 26, 1875, qtd. in Highton, 73–74. On the same day, the Gold Hill News reported that bar owners were not pleased with the move, causing them “hardship at the very time they might be doing a rushing business.” Gold Hill Daily News (October 27, 1875), qtd. in Highton, 74. See also Los Angeles Daily Herald, October 29, 1875.

58 Sacramento Daily Record-Union, October 30, 1875.

59 This was not the first time Virginia City newspapermen had made heroic efforts to maintain a publication schedule. According to Beebe, “During the recurring fires which swept Virginia City’s tents and shacks in the early years, The Enterprise never had been forced to suspend publication. True, on one occasion its precarious quarters in A Street…were burned out, but so modest were its mechanical resources at the time that the staff was able to carry type cases, imposing stone, and Ramage press into the street, where the newspaper was composed and printed with the story of its own misfortune” (Beebe, 99). See also Highton, and Richard E. Lingenfelter and Karen Rix Gash, The Newspapers of Nevada (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1984), 275.

60 Pioche Daily Record, October 30, 1875; San Jose Mercury, October 30, 1875.

61 Los Angeles Daily Herald, October 29, 1875.

62 Mark Tapley is the cheerful-to-a-fault servant in Charles Dickens’s 1843–1844 serialized novel, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit.

63 Los Angeles Daily Herald, October 29, 1875.

64 New North-West, October 29, 1875.