The Mirror

The Mirror was founded by William Randolph Hearst in 1924. Like Joseph Medill Patterson, editor and publisher of the Daily News, Hearst had been intrigued by the success of The Mirror in London and wondered if a similar newspaper in a tabloid format with brief articles, lots of photographs and a focus on crime and scandal might work as well in New York City. Yellow journalism was already a city tradition. It was the emphasis on photos that was the innovation. He was more hesitant, however, and let Patterson beat him to the punch by five years. At the time. Hearst already had the two newspapers with the highest circulation in the city, the Journal and the American. not yet combined, and perhaps did not want to cannibalize his successes. There was also a question of whether advertisers would be interested in a paper that targeted working-class readers.

That same year Bernarr Macfadden, who published a roster of pulp magazines like True Romance started The Evening Graphic. It was full of photos, sometimes composite shots, of half-nude women and featured stories, sometimes invented, about lurid crimes and scandals. Some called it the "Porna-Graphic." It also carried columnists including Walter Winchell, who would move to the Mirror, and a former sportswriter-turned-entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan, who later would take up residence at the News. It lasted eight years. Hearst hired away the editor of The Graphic who promised to make the Mirror "90 percent entertainment and 10 percent news."

Once The Evening Graphic bit the dust the Mirror took on the reputation as "the worst newspaper in America," a sentiment shared shamelessly by Hearst and his executives. It attempted to win readers by being even more sensationalistic than the News which took steps in the opposite direction by increasing its news coverage. In 1935 the Mirror attempted to redefine itself as the "newspaper with heart." By 1946 it was the newspaper with the second highest circulation in the city, with more than a million readers for the daily and over 2-million on Sunday. This was, however, only about half the readership of The News and there was a sizable overlap in readership, particularly on Sundays. As a result the Mirror had trouble attracting advertising and, despite its popularity with readers, struggled financially.

Many people read the Mirror as their second or third newspaper of the day for its popular columnists. Walter Winchell, who also had a highly rated radio show, was the most popular. The readership was made up largely by blue collar and clerical workers. A lot of its columnists and reporters were Jewish making the paper somewhat more appealing to this audience than the News despite its conservative editorial policy. Winchell was outspoken in his condemnation of Fascists and anti-Semites and a New Deal supporter, although in postwar years he would turn hard right and become known for his anti-Communist crusades that would smear the reputations of many entertainers.

I remember the Mirror from my childhood in the Fifties when I would spend some of my summer and holiday vacation days with my maternal grandparents in Queens. My grandfather, who worked an evening shift as a supervisor at a security firm, brought home the thin Night Owl edition of The Mirror to read on the long trip home from Manhattan. He left his office around midnight, catching the last night bus down Union Turnpike from the Kew Gardens subway station in Queens. I would be long asleep when he got in. Although he came from a respectable old stock family, his father had been a black sheep who had fathered a large family on a limited income. My grandfather had only a sixth grade education but he went off to work in a suit and tie with a neatly creased hat on his slicked down hair and well-polished Florsheim wingtips on his feet. The paper would be sitting on the linoleum kitchen table when I got up for breakfast. In my memories it always had a photo of some boxer's face being knocked cockeyed on the back page and an accident or murder on page one. It was even gorier than the Daily News which my parents preferred. There was very little in the way of national or international news.