1908 Baseball Newspaper Guide: Washington DC

Exploring papers in the Nation's Capitol.

1908 Baseball Newspaper Guide: Washington DC

Certain American cities had numerous newspapers in 1908. Rather than writing extremely long posts that try to cover every single thing from a certain region, I’ve decided to take cities with significant archived newspaper coverage on an individual basis.

We’re going to look at archived papers from Washington DC today. Again, we’re only looking at papers from June 10, 1908.

Afterwards, we’ll look at Pittsburgh and New York in that order.

As usual, I’m looking at the papers available on newspapers.com only. Though I know it is expensive, I highly recommend subscribing if you can. It will work wonders for your replay.

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The Evening Star

I say this over and over again. If you’re talking about Washington DC news from before the Pentagon Papers, you need to go with The Washington Star. This was the best newspaper in the DC region until it finally went bankrupt in 1981.

As you can see, the sports section is clean and easy to read. I don’t love the columns, which were a 19th century holdover. Everything else looks good.

Aside from the columns, my only other complaint is the lack of cartoons. Otherwise, this is a solid paper with good information.

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The Washington Post

Yes, Virginia, The Washington Post did indeed exist in 1908.

This layout feels more cluttered to me, with a lot more advertisements, amateur baseball featured on the left-hand side where major league games usually went, and less space devoted to gossip.

I’m also baffled as to why the editorial comments originated from Chicago, since the Nationals remained in St. Louis.

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The Washington Herald

Here’s a paper that is often ignored.

I prefer the layout and content of this paper to The Washington Post, though I don’t know much about it.

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The Washington Times

Without getting into any political commentary, I can assure you that this paper was a lot different than its current namesake.

Sadly, the baseball coverage here leaves a lot to be desired:

There’s no gossip, not much by way of minor league coverage, minimal coverage of other teams, and no non-Washington boxscores. I guess that’s what you get when you buy a one cent paper.