An Irishman's Diary

ONE OF the lesser misfortunes of the US newspaper crisis is the loss – real or threatened – of the some of the industry’s greatest names. I don’t mean the institutions behind them: that’s the main misfortune, of course. I mean actual newspaper names, of which Americans have made an art form.

In his short, fictional memoir of Journalism in Tennessee, Mark Twain paid a sideways tribute to the genre. Appointed as associate editor with the Morning Gloryand Johnson County War-Whoop, his first (and last) job is to write an op-ed piece savaging the pretensions of the paper's rivals, including the Daily Hurrah, the Semi-Weekly Earthquake, the Mud Springs Morning Howl, and the Higginsville Thunderboltand Battle-Cry of Freedom.

Reading his first draft, however, the War-Whoop's editor is disgusted at Twain's mild language and rewrites the piece in much more violent terms, before being interrupted by a gunshot fired through the window. Recognising another rival editor – "that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano– he was due yesterday", he returns fire, mid-correction.

And after a few such hours on the job, Twain resigns, protesting that the cut-and-thrust of Tennessee newspaper life is “too stirring for me”.

His description of southern journalism was probably an exaggeration, even then, but the newspaper names are close enough the mark. For every sober title in US print-media history, like the New York Timesor the Washington Post, there has been an eccentric one: redolent of the frontier, or of the egomaniac who founded the paper in question.

In fact, some of the funnier versions are mere embellishments of the colourful place-names in which America abounds. One of the greatest newspaper titles of all, for example, is also among the most logical. What else would you call the journal of a certain Arizona town except the Tombstone Epitaph: founded in 1880 just in time to cover the Gunfight at the OK Corral and still produced to this day, albeit now as a monthly history magazine?

Its rivals for the world's-best-newspaper-name award include a publication in Arkansas, whose name derives from the US media habit of using the word "Bee" in titles. Suggesting busyness (and presumably a willingness to sting when necessary), the trend was started in the 1850s by the Sacramento Bee, which has been covering life in the Californian state capital ever since.

There is the Modesto Beetoo, also in California. But the aforementioned Arkansas has a small town called "De Queen": a corruption of a Dutch surname "De Goeijen". So naturally the local newspaper is De Queen Bee; although the publishers insist on putting a definite article before the name (The De Queen Bee) which, while maintaining journalistic propriety, somewhat ruins the effect.

The Chelsea Clinton News, a New York publication, did not always sound so wacky. Contrary to what you might think, it is not a fanzine dedicated to Bill and Hillary's only child. As a local newspaper in Manhattan, it long predates her: covering a number of downtown neighbourhoods – including Chelsea – between Fifth Avenue and the Hudson river. Maybe Bill and Hillary called their daughter after it, for all I know.

In the realm of less logical titles, my favourites include the Snow Hill Standard-Laconicin North Carolina: where, incidentally, there is also a newspaper that sounds like a module of the Mahon tribunal. I refer to the so-called Bertie Ledger Advance, which evokes a certain former taoiseach's complicated finances, but is actually a weekly publication covering events in "Bertie County". It still sounds interesting.

In sharp contrast with the Standard-Laconicis an Oklahoma newspaper called the Drumright Gusher. Also gushing, but in a more sophisticated way, is the Pantagraph: an Illinois daily whose Greek-derived name indicates a willingness to write about everything.

And there are even more obscure newspaper names than that: like the Jefferson Jimplecute, or Jimpfor short, which has been published in Texas since 1848. The town is called Jefferson. But nobody now knows for sure where the other part of the name came from, or what if anything it means.

Titles from the Journalism in Tennesseeschool include the Anti-Masonic Republican(New York), which no longer exists, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which still does. The Unterrified Democratalso survives (in Mark Twain's home state of Missouri): 143 years after it was founded there by the just as colourfully-named Col Lebbeus Zeveley. It's a Republican paper now, ironically.

Speaking of Missouri, we might also mention the Lamar Democrat; not because it has an interesting name, but because it suggests Twain did not have to go to Tennessee to experience the dangers of journalism.

The LD's best known editor achieved national fame in the early 1900s because of his pioneering use of scandal and salacious detail to sell newspapers.

But as well as fame, this approach earned him three libel cases, an assault “with a club”, and numerous other threats of body harm.

According to one according, he finally died from “lingering head injuries caused by an umbrella handle wielded by an irate woman reader”.