Edward Wyllis Scripps

Edward Wyllis Scripps 1854-1926, American newspaper publisher, b. Rushville, Ill. He began (1873) his career on the staff of the Detroit Evening News, a paper founded and edited by his half-brother James Edmund Scripps. His first independent venture was starting the Cleveland Penny Press (later the Press ) in 1878. He purchased several additional papers and in 1895, with his manager, Milton A. McRae, and his half-brother George Scripps as partners, he set up the Scripps-McRae League, a powerful chain of newspapers. The first such chain in the United States, the Scripps-McRae League was liberal in politics and a crusader for labor. It developed its own news service, and in 1907 Scripps set up the United Press Association, with Roy W. Howard as manager. Scripps also organized the Newspaper Enterprise Association to furnish his papers with features, cartoons, and illustrations. In 1920 he started the Science Service for newspapers; later he endowed a foundation for population research at Miami Univ. at Oxford, Ohio, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, Calif. Scripps's son, Robert P. Scripps, became the partner of Roy Howard in 1922, and the newspaper chain was known as the Scripps-Howard papers.

Bibliography: See E. Scripps's writings, Damned Old Crank (ed. by C. R. McCabe, 1951); biography by G. Gardner (1932, repr. 1971).