Scripps-McRae League Renamed Scripps-Howard as Second-Largest Newspaper Chain Consolidates Power

The Scripps-McRae League is renamed Scripps-Howard Newspapers in early November 1922, recognizing company executive Roy W. Howard as co-director and consolidating control of the nation’s second-largest newspaper chain after William Randolph Hearst’s empire. Founder E.W. Scripps incorporates all stock, news services, and newspapers into The E.W. Scripps Company based in Cincinnati, with profits directed to the Scripps Trust for his heirs, while transferring direct operational control to his son Robert Scripps and business partner Roy Howard.

The renamed Scripps-Howard chain controls 32 newspapers by the 1920s expansion, making it the second-largest newspaper chain in the United States by E.W. Scripps’s death in 1926. The consolidation represents the culmination of E.W. Scripps’s pioneering strategy of creating the first newspaper chain in American history (founded 1878), originally organized as the Scripps-McRae League with partner Milton A. McRae (1889). The chain expands throughout the 1920s despite Scripps’s semi-retirement, adding newspapers across California, Denver, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, and other major markets.

Scripps-Howard establishes multiple news services during the early 1920s that amplify the chain’s influence beyond its owned newspapers: United Features Syndicate (distributor of weekly comics and news columns), United Newspictures (news photography service and forerunner of Acme Newspictures), and Science Service (authoritative science news syndicate). This vertical integration of content production and distribution enables Scripps-Howard to shape news coverage across hundreds of subscribing newspapers beyond its direct ownership, demonstrating how media consolidation extends influence through syndication and wire services as well as direct ownership.

The Scripps-Howard consolidation continues after E.W. Scripps’s death under Roy Howard’s leadership, acquiring the New York Telegram (1927) and the New York World (1931), merging them into the World-Telegram and growing to 34 newspapers in 15 states by mid-century. However, the chain begins shrinking in the 1930s as less-profitable papers are sold or consolidated and evening newspapers lose appeal - illustrating that even large media chains face market pressures. The Scripps-Howard example demonstrates both the 1920s trend toward “ownership consolidation” through newspaper mergers and chains, and the dangers of concentrated media control that later regulations (ownership limits 1941-1953) attempt to prevent in broadcasting - restrictions subsequently dismantled through deregulation (1980s-1990s) enabling six corporations to control 90% of American media by 2017.