James E. Scripps

James Edmund Scripps (March 19, 1835 – May 28, 1906) was an American newspaper publisher and philanthropist.

Biography

Scripps was born in 1835 in London to James Mogg Scripps and Ellen Mary (Saunders) Scripps. His father was a bookbinder who came to America in 1844 with six motherless children. Scripps grew up on a Rushville, Illinois, farm. Securing employment at the Chicago Tribune in 1857, Scripps moved to Detroit in 1859 and in 1862 became manager of the Detroit Tribune and also became at length part owner and manager of the Detroit Daily Advertiser.

When the Advertiser's premises burned in 1873, Scripps took his $20,000 insurance money and with it started his own newspaper. Scripps decided to tap the growing literate class of working men and women by launching a newspaper, The Evening News (later, The Detroit News). Running with an idea new for its time, he filled the paper with inexpensive advertising and instructed his reporters to write "like people talk." His competitors called the News "a cheap rag" and labeled his reporters "pirates," but Detroiters loved it.