Rowdy, Gaudy Century

Young Editor Edward Kemble seemed to have what it took to be a frontier journalist in San Francisco in 1848 (pop. 375). It was a time when editors had to be "true with the rifle, ready with [the] pen and quick at the typecase." But Kemble just didn't seem to have much news sense. After a trip to Sutter's Mill, he reported in his weekly Star that the great gold strike was "all a sham, as superb a take-in as ever was got up to guzzle the gullible." The rival Californian had no sense of smell, either. For seven weeks, the Californian and the Star ignored the big news. Then they had to shut up shop. Every gullible soul in town had gone tearing off to the gold fields, leaving nobody to buy a paper.

That was about the last time the San Francisco press erred on the conservative side. In its rowdy, street-brawling career it has spawned some rich newspaper legends and some tough and capable newspapermen. One of the best of them, City Editor John Bruce of the Chronicle, has marshaled the legends and the men in Gaudy Century (Random House; $3.75), a new book as bouncy and nostalgic as a ride in a stagecoach.

Hang an Editor. In the bad old days, says Bruce, editors shot at each other on the streets as often as they did in print. One is reported to have kept a card over his desk: "Subscriptions received from 9 to 4; challenges from 11 to 12 only!" A newsman who was slow on the draw had no future. (But editors were careful not to shoot a subscriber.)

Once an editor with the quaint name of James King of William left his office at the Bulletin during a feud with Editor James P. Casey of the Sunday Times. As King reached a corner, deep in thought, Casey confronted him with the usual challenge: "Draw and defend yourself!" Before he could, Casey shot him. In the confusion that followed, someone stuffed a dirty sponge into King's wound and it became infected. Casey was hanged by the vigilantes--and posthumously cleared by a court. Too late to help him, the Sacramento State Journal righted the miscarriage of justice, just for the record. It reported: JAMES CASEY INNOCENT OF MURDER. DEATH OF JAMES KING CAUSED BY DOCTORS.

In the generations after that, legions of wandering newsmen made the Golden Gate a port of call. Some big names were among them. Rudyard Kipling, says Author Bruce, was "a bad reporter . . . snagging on his careless pen events and scenes that were never there." White-coated Horace Greeley found the climate the "worst on earth." Nevertheless, he went back to New York and urged young men to go west.

Free Mooney. Whimsical Johnny Bruce, an editor who never finds it necessary to shout or swear at his staff, was weaned on the newspaper lore of his town. At nine, the year after the 1906 earthquake, he hawked the Bulletin in San Francisco's Mission district.

Later he was a protege of famed Editor Fremont Older. When Older became convinced that Tom Mooney (whom he disliked) had been railroaded to jail for the Preparedness Day bombing of 1916, the Bulletin's bosses refused to back up their editor. W. R. Hearst sent Older a wire: COME TO THE CALL. BRING THE MOONEY CASE WITH YOU. Older took Johnny Bruce with him too, and Bruce dug up the evidence that eventually helped free Mooney.

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