Tale of dueling editors is a reminder of the early days of Texas community journalism
We do love to moan about the pressures of the news business.
Come to one of our workshops, or maybe to a TPA meeting, and you'll hear lots of talk about the problems of life in a newsroom.
Most of them deal with stress and time and money. And listen long enough, and you'll hear some whines about the good old days when life was simpler.
Yeah, sure. Kerry Craig, assistant editor of the Sulphur Springs News-Telegram, sent the Center an email this week that's a reminder that the good old days of journalism weren't exactly stress-free either.
Fact is, they could be downright dangerous.
Kerry sent along a news article from 1891, found by a researcher working on a book and passed on to him.
The article, from the St. Louis Republic, was headlined "FOUGHT A DUEL TO DEATH." The deck: "Two Texas Editors Shoot at Short Range with Fatal Result." Here's the article:
Sulphur Springs, Tex., Sept. 16 - This quiet little city was thrown into great excitement over an impromptu duel about 9:30 o'clock this morning between E.M. Tate and Everett Moore, respective editors of the Hopkins County Echo and the Alliance Vindicator, which resulted in the death of the latter. Tate received a slight wound in the left arm. Moore received five wounds, one in the groin, two in the side and two in the leg, and lived but a few hours. The pistols used were large and deadly weapons. There has been ill-feeling between the two men for some time, and they have been attacking each other very severely in their papers. This morning at the hour mentioned they met on the public square and at first engaged in a fist fight. Moore finding Tate to be the better man, backed off from him and drew his gun, but Tate was equal to the occasion and drew his gun by the time Moore could fire. Both men continued firing until their weapons were emptied, Moore shooting after he had fallen to the ground. Eye-witnesses to the affair are unable to say which was the first to shoot. Tate says Moore fired first and that he acted purely in self-defence. Tate surrendered himself to the Sheriff, and is now undergoing a preliminary trial.
The Vindicator isn't around anymore, but the Echo lives on today as a weekly publication of Kerry's Sulphur Springs News-Telegram.
Dueling editors weren't exactly unique to Texas. The history of American journalism is full of editors (especially in the South and West) for whom the term "newspaper war" was a literal conflict.
The arguments in print frequently erupted in fisticuffs on the street, and duels like this one were not uncommon.
One San Francisco editor even put this sign on his door: "Subscriptions received from 9 to 4; challenges from 11 to 12 only."
Photos
Share this
About the author
Bio
Tommy Thomason, the founding director of the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism, has left that position to become the founding director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism. Thomason began his career in journalism in the early 1970s with the Associated Press, working as a sportswriter in Arkadelphia and Little Rock, Ark. He has also worked in public relations in Dallas and as a copyeditor for several regional magazines.
Dr. Thomason has taught journalism at five universities and has been at TCU since 1984. In 1987, he was one of the winners of a national Teaching Award in Journalism Ethics from the Poynter Institute of Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla.
He has been one of the nation's most active researchers on the media's treatment of crime victims. His research has been presented at both regional and national symposia and has cited in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, Presstime and the Columbia Journalism Review.
Dr. Thomason was co-director of the first national symposium on crime victims and the news media, which was televised nationally on C-SPAN, and a symposium on coverage of sex crimes, Sex in the Media: The Public's Right to Know vs. the Victim's Right to Privacy.
He maintains an interest in writing at all academic levels, and frequently speaks to elementary school teachers about writing workshops for children. He is the author of More than a Writing Teacher: How to Become a Teacher Who Writes, Writer to Writer: How to Conference Young Authors, Write On Target: How to Prepare Young Writers for Success on Writing Achievement Tests, Absolutely Write: Teaching the Craft Elements of Writing and Writeaerobics: 40 Exercises to Improve Your Writing Teaching. A new book, Tools, not Rules: Teaching Grammar in the Writing Classroom, is scheduled for publication in 2009.
He is listed in Who's Who in the South and Southwest, Who's Who in American Education, Men of Achievement, Who's Who in the World and Dictionary of International Biography.
