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Newspaper Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942 Evening public ledger and the evening telegraph

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About Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942

In 1913, prominent Philadelphia magazine publisher Cyrus Curtis turned his interest toward the newspaper business and purchased the Public Ledger with intentions of making it the “greatest American daily.” Curtis then launched the Evening Public Ledger in 1914 for middle-class readers in Philadelphia. Several years later, he purchased the Evening Telegraph to acquire its Associated Press franchise and merged it with the Evening Public Ledger.

The Evening Public Ledger appeared in multiple editions every day except Sunday and included local news, sports, entertainment, and women’s columns. Stock market information from Philadelphia, New York, and London and the society pages highlighting engagements among the city’s prominent families represented significant features. The intended audience was conservative, middle-class Philadelphians, and the paper was more entertaining than its morning counterpart, the Public Ledger. The Evening Public Ledger’s objective journalism and its style of writing helped make it standard daily reading for the upper-middle class in Philadelphia. Much space was devoted to financial information and to advertisers, with many local businesses purchasing full-page ads. In an effort to appeal to Philadelphia’s Italian community, which was the second largest in the nation, the Evening Public Ledger published an Italian–language article with a dateline from Rome several times a week. The paper also included obituaries, classifieds, and later a cartoon column titled “Scrapple” in each edition.

The Evening Public Ledger soon became one of the most widely read dailies in Philadelphia, second only to the Evening Bulletin. The combined circulation of the Ledgers reached 700,000 in the 1920s, and Curtis bought high-speed presses to accommodate as many as six editions a day. By the 1920s, Curtis commissioned the construction of a building at Independence Square costing $15 million to house his newspaper publishing efforts.

Curtis directed the Evening Public Ledger for most of its existence, attempting to duplicate with newspapers his success with magazines. He served as the chairman of the editorial board in the paper’s earliest years with P.H. Whaley as the executive editor and John C. Martin, who married Curtis’ second wife’s daughter, as the general business manager. Curtis consolidated the city’s numerous papers by also purchasing the Philadelphia Press and the North American, both of which eventually folded or were absorbed by his Public Ledger. Curtis later purchased the Philadelphia Inquirer, positioning it as a competitor of the Public Ledger, but the Inquirer absorbed the latter upon Curtis’ death in 1934.

While the Public Ledger ceased publication, the Evening Public Ledger would continue for almost a decade before being purchased by Robert Cresswell in 1941 and folding in 1942 after a court-ordered liquidation. The last editorial board for the Evening Public Ledger consisted of new owner Robert Cresswell as publisher; Charles Munroe Morrison as editor; Harry E. Nason, Jr. as executive editor; and Edwin J. Pollock as managing editor.

Provided By: Penn State University Libraries; University Park, PA

About this Newspaper

Title

  • Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942

Other Title

  • Evening public ledger and the evening telegraph

Dates of Publication

  • 1914-1942

Created / Published

  • Philadelphia [Pa.] : Public Ledger Co.

Headings

  • -  Philadelphia (Pa.)--Newspapers
  • -  Pennsylvania--Philadelphia
  • -  United States--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia--Philadelphia

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Daily (except Sun.)
  • -  Vol. 1, no. 1 (Sept. 14, 1914)-v. 212, no. 87 (Jan. 5, 1942).
  • -  Published as: Evening public ledger and the evening telegraph, July 1-Dec. 31, 1918.
  • -  Archived issues are available in digital format as part of the Library of Congress Chronicling America online collection.

Medium

  • volumes

Call Number/Physical Location

  • Newspaper

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn83045211

OCLC Number

  • 9355469

ISSN Number

  • 2151-3945

Preceding Titles

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials. Researchers using newspapers published less than 95 years ago should be alert for modern content (for example, registered and renewed for copyright and published with notice) that may be copyrighted. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Evening Public Ledger Philadelphia Pa. -1942. (Philadelphia, PA), Jan. 1 1914. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045211/.

APA citation style:

(1914, January 1) Evening Public Ledger Philadelphia Pa. -1942. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045211/.

MLA citation style:

Evening Public Ledger Philadelphia Pa. -1942. (Philadelphia, PA) 1 Jan. 1914. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/sn83045211/.