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The city was a manufacturing town back in the '40s, booming with World War II-fueled prosperity, and the labor was resurgent. Trenton Times typesetters belonged to the International Typographical Union and refused to cross Teamster picket lines in 1943. As a result, the paper shut down for a month.
In 1946, the ITU asked for wage increases and more vacation time, only to be rebuffed by a Times management tiring of its antics. When the ITU walked out on Jan. 12, the Times responded by printing anyway, using mimeographed copy instead of lead type. Then it refused to rehire the 40 striking workers.
It was a move that backfired immediately. The ITU decided to strike back at the Times — by competing with it.
Step 1 was to buy an existing paper. That paper existed in the form of a little-read weekly, The Trentonian, which a hustling businessman named Sam Jacobs had founded in June 1945 with $1,300 in war bonds. "One week he would be starving, one week he'd sell an ad and get by. He got $15,000 from the ITU for that paper, and it was worth zero."
That first Trentonian crew included burly union pressmen; hard-bitten Newspaper Guild reporters from New York and Philadelphia; ITU typesetters still smoldering over the Times strike, and a few homegrown journalists . But they all had one common purpose from the old office at 128 S. Warren St.: get the paper out! First The Trentonian became a twice-weekly paper, then three times a week. Aug. 12 is listed as the paper's first daily.
I have no idea how he got the job in New Jersey, it may have been a connection from his time in the Air Force. No one remembers or heard about it only that he worked there writing scorched earth editorials as managing editor and shaped what he wanted the paper to be. He fashioned a community centered daily paper where nothing was too insignificant to be included from lemonade stands to traffic court. He kept a scrapbook of those editorials, now lost to time. Fortunately the Trentonian bothered to keep a morgue of their papers and they were eventually put on microfilm. Soon I will be able to read the paper my Dad edited. He had a lot to say and wasn’t shy about speaking truth to power.
But he also had a softer side. I know this from problems he took on because he was bothered by a situation. In the spring of 1947 a woman was murdered, left in a trunk in the country, not far from where the visiting circus was set up. He ran an ad in Billboard Magazine looking for leads.
No one has said if leads came in from it but a few months later her husband confessed. Dad also forged a relationship with Billboard, yes, the Billboard that became Billboard Magazine.
Dad added a radio page to the Trentonian a big hit with BillBoard.
He also had a thing about the circus. Every time they were in town he would send a photographer and his best reporter to cover it and then give the circus a full page photo spread.
I just love that my Dad was into the circus. I went to the circus once with my grandma when I was about 4, I had a great time. One of the clowns reminded me of her, they both had red hair. When I was three my uncle Bill got me up in the middle of the night to take me to Sioux City 90 miles away to see the circus train come in. He put me on his shoulders, he told me what each animal was as we went down the row of cages. When we got to the tigers I leaned over so I could see better, made eye contact with the tiger who licked their lips. I thought that meant the tiger liked me. Never mind the tiger probably found me a potential snack, I was in love with tigers from that day forward.
He also gave Ernie Kovacs a daily humor column. I don’t know how many of you remember Ernie and his famous Nairobi Trio. The column led to a radio show and the rest is history.
Humor was simpler then. His sponsor was Muriel Cigars and his wife Edie Adams was the Muriel Cigar girl. His show on ABC was wildly popular in the 50s and early 60s. His comedy influenced a lot of comedy that came after. A fair number of stand up comics acknowledge his influence and you see it in shows like SNL.
The 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing was awarded to F. Gilman Spencer, editor of The Trentonian, "for his courageous campaign to focus public attention on scandals in New Jersey's state government
I would like to think my Dad started the trend of calling out corruption in government. There was a period of time in the early years of the paper if they weren’t being sued for defamation they weren’t doing their jobs.
But the classic example of Trentonian impudence in those early years came on Jan. 29, 1947, when the paper carried a front-page photo of one of its reporters placing a bet with an elevator operator in the State House.
The feisty tabloid did it to show up the Trenton Times, which had been crusading to close down gambling houses. Well, The Trentonian said, why don't you just shut down the seat of government too?
The governor, Alfred Driscoll, didn't think it was so funny. He ordered The Trentonian banned from all newsstands on state property, and for two years any Trentonian reporter was persona non grata with the Republican administration.
The interesting thing is with dozens or more suits against them amounting to millions of dollars, not a penny was ever paid out. Those suits included one that defined for all time what constitutes broadcast defamation, a case that is still cited and written about today and still appears in PhD Dissertations.
I am waiting to get the microfilms of the Trentonian while my father was editor so we will come back and revisit 1946 — 1947. They are ordered and should be here in a week or so, very excited. He was a snarky writer which tickles me no end.
One of the research people at the Trenton Historical Society found an article about Dad she found weird and passed it on to me. From April 9, 1947.
Not an insignificant amount of money in 1947, probably close to a week’s salary. My Dad seemed to have a healthy opinion of himself but he wasn’t a snob either and was comfortable with people from all walks of life. Like my Dad that way, I have friends who run the gambit from famous to those at the margins. Some of my friends think I’m weird because even tho I’ve been politically active for years I don’t do selfies with politicians. I use that 30 seconds or so to say something to them I feel is important they know. The politicians probably think I’m a little daft too.
This is going to be the last installment for a week or so while I wait for the microfilms of the Morning Trentonian. Covering Dad’s time as managing editor will be multiple diaries, he was a very busy guy upsetting the apple cart.
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