Mary A. Hamilton: "Rising from the Wilderness: J.W. Gitt and his legendary newspaper, the Gazette and Daily of York, Pa."

“Be simple. Simple as Hell. The trouble with too many historians and philosophers is that they get buried under their own rhetoric.” (J.W. Gitt)

Snow flakes gently knock on the windows of Mary Hamilton’s home in  Pennsylvania, as the journalist is flipping through the pages of her recently published book: “Rising from the Wilderness: J.W. Gitt and his legendary newspaper, the Gazette and Daily of York, Pa.”

“Hello Mary could we talk a bit about your book?”

“I'd be delighted.”

“I see. Well…how did you get into writing?”

“I read a lot as a kid and one of the books I read was one about Nelly Bly, a reporter back in the late 1800`s. She disguised herself to go into insane asylums and write about the horrible conditions there. She also took a trip around the world, in just 72 days, sending back newspaper articles.”

“What a woman!!”

“That was how I connected with the outside world. I grew up in a small rural town in the United States, in Pennsylvania but about 85 miles south of Buffalo, New York. I had a very nice childhood there but I knew that I didn’t want to stay there the rest so my life.”

“So you set out to see the world.”

“First I attended Saint Bonaventure university, where they have an excellent journalism department. But I knew that when I graduated I would head for the big city and I did.”

“New York?”

“Yes and my first job I got was advertising production manager at a magazine called "Aerospace Engineering" and my job was calling the big companies, such as Boeing and Lockheed, to get them to advertise. The best part of the job was that the offices were located on 5^th avenue, right across from Central Park. After a bit more than a year I got very bored with my job, but I fell in love with New York City and resolved to return to live.

“So you stayed on…”

“No. I applied to Syracuse University’s graduate school of journalism and completed the course work in just one year.”

“Was it there that you did your master’s in journalism?”

“This is what happened. The man called Dr. Roland Wolseley chaired the master’s program and he was a good liberal. He encouraged me to do a history of ‘The Nation’ magazine—which at that time was almost 100 years old.”

“That brings us to the York Gazette and Daily.”

“Wait a minute! There was journalism professor at Syracuse university who had been the wire editor at the Gazette and he was the one who first mentioned the independent minded paper to me. But before working for the Gazette I felt I needed more journalism experience, so I took a job at a newspaper in Bradford, Pennsylvania, where I did the police beat and things like that. Then I went to Washington, D.C to work for a Methodist church publication which had an ecological and anti-war approach. I was in Washington at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in October of 1962. My roommate and I decided that if anything were to happen we were gonna stand outside and eat ice cream."

“Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“By that time I felt I had had enough experience, so I applied at the York Gazette. That was in late April of 1963 when Jim Higgins was the assistant editor. The Greyhound bus which I took from Washington, D.C. broke down when I was on my way for the job interview. Anyway, they managed to repair it and, well, I went to work for the Gazette.”

“Must have been a challenge!”

“Yes, I consider it to be the most formative period in my life. Once word got around that I was interested in anti-war issues, they had me cover the peace movement, civil rights and other events of that nature. For example, I remember covering a speech of Norman Thomas, the Socialist party presidential candidate. Probably the most important event I covered was the Selma to (Alabama) Montgomery civil rights march in March of 1965. We rode down with an integrated group from Franklin and Marshal college in Pennsylvania. There was one black professor and also a black school teacher. This was after the demonstrators were turned away…”

“That was certainly an enriching experience for you…Could we turn to your book about the Gazette?”

“After leaving the Gazette I went back to New York City, as I had vowed, that must have been in 1966, and got a job as a staff writer at the National Guardian Newspaper. I knew that J.W. Gitt, the owner of the York Gazette and Daily, had had an important role in the founding of the leftist oriented Guardian. I also new that the first issue of the Guardian was printed by the York Gazette and Daily, which featured very interesting editorial page and published writers who had been blacklisted during the period of McCarthyism, in the late 1940`s and early 1950`s.”

“I see…”

“Then I went to England in 1974. I hadn’t yet finished my master’s degree. So the next year I wrote a letter to my journalism professor at Michigan State University. He immediately offered me an assistanship position. I was also fortunate because the director of the department of journalism at Michigan State University, where I was to work on my doctor’s thesis, was a man named George Hough, whose brother had worked for the York Gazette and Daily.”

“How did the idea of the book come about?”

“Because I had worked at the Gazette and at the Guardian, and Gitt had had connections with both. I wanted to finish something I had not finished before. So I went to graduate school at Michigan State and I entered a doctoral program in journalism and American studies. I realized that I wanted to do something on the Gazette for my doctoral dissertation. Professor Hough advised me to choose just one decade. I chose the post-World War II decade because I knew that that included the 1948 Progressive Party campaign."

“How did you go about writing the book?”

“I wrote a letter to Gitt´s widow, Elizabeth. But it was Polly Martin, a peace activist, who introduced me to Mrs. Gitt. That was in August of 1976. We met in her huge house and she ushered me into the living room—there was an enormous library too—but all the data was stored in the living room. And she said: ‘here it is. All his papers and correspondence.’ “

“Did you have the book organized in your head before you started writing?”

“Of course not! I didn’t even know what the boxes held! There were folders and folders and they were labelled, say, 1939, but the majority of the letters were written between 1943 and 1950. There were letters from well-known persons such as Albert Einstein, Roosevelt… Henry Wallace…and all of that would have gone to the trash! You hear over and over again how newspapers don’t save their files. “

“Files that gave you an insight into the workings of the paper.”

“That’s right…There were strikes at a time when the paper was losing a lot of money so what happened was that Gitt himself closed the door and said that was the end. He wanted workers to take a 10% cut to save the paper, but they wouldn’t accept that so the paper was shut down.”

“While writing the book was there anything you discovered that really opened your eyes?”

“Remember that the book is about Gitt, who was state chairman of the Progressive party in Pennsylvania and the Gazette and Daily was the only commercial newspaper in the United States that supported the Henry Wallace campaign. “

“In your book you mention the editorial in the first edition of the book, on June 24, 1918: ‘…we shall stand fearlessly for right and justice, under all circumstances and toward all persons, no matter how powerful the forces on the other side may be.’”

“It was in fact a very liberal newspaper, published in a very conservative community. Gitt felt very strongly that the main purpose of the paper was to educate its readers. He thought that if he continually brought to light discrepancies or policies of the United States, such as the war against Vietnam, the public would comprehend those situations better. However, I must admit that he ended up being pretty discouraged. He felt towards the end of his life that the paper had had very little impact.”

“Hmmm”

“York itself was known as ‘the southern most city north of the Mason-Dixon line.’ “

“Nevertheless, the newspaper was able to subsist and do reasonably well.”

“That was largely because Gitt put his money into it. Also because it was a morning newspaper and reached out into the hinterlands of York county and had an excellent sports desk. It carried information on marriages, agricultural news, about the hogs…it was really only on the first page, the second, a little bit of the third page and the centre fold with Gitt’s editorials and feature stories that reflected its non-conformist stance. People subscribed to the paper because they could get it the same day and also because they were scrappy Pennsylvania Dutch and they loved to have something they could argue about. In contrast the York Dispatch was an afternoon paper and they never photographs, it was very drab. “

“So what impact has it had on the community?”

“I think there have been some changes in York. There hasn’t been a black mayor, but there was a black police chief some years ago...and there was a really great journalist who worked for the Gazette, Bob Maynard..."

"That must have stirred things up at a time with the civil rights issue was exploding!”

“Yes, but I often ask myself whether there has been any real change as a result. Who knows? The problem in small towns in the United States is that most of the news media, not just the newspapers, is in the hands of the conglomerate media firms, for whom the bottom line is making money, not going against the wind. “

“It appears that most of the progressive media in the country are funded by a handful of progressive minded individuals…is there any room today for independent minded journalism?”

“Well, there is a tendency towards more independent expression on the internet, which is also much cheaper. You don’t have to have a huge enterprise, hire printers, workers, staff, and you can publish a small paper of any political inclination. Furthermore, you can’t put people into easy categories. Whenever I get out of my shell and visit people I am always amazed at how liberal people can be on some topics…Do you remember when Barry Goldwater was the Republican presidential candidate?”

“Well...hmm…Yes, of course.”

“Gitt would not authorize any advertising whatsoever from the Goldwater campaign. He said ‘I don’t think that Goldwater is a fit candidate to be president and I won’t accept his money.’ The local Republican party very strongly criticized that but what I found interesting was that Gitt´s daughter, though also very liberal minded, criticized him for not accepting the Goldwater advertisements. She felt the paper was too slanted, too biased in not accepting the ads and not publishing more about the conservative campaign. Gitt also had a strong line in not accepting alcohol and tobacco advertising. “

“Have you organized a signing for your book?”

“Yes, on April 26, in York, at the York County Heritage Trust, 250 East Market street. It was the Trust that published my book.”

“Do you have any special comments for your readers?”

“This biography illustrates how J.W. Gitt in both his professional and personal life promoted positive goals by insisting on independence of thought and action …you might see it as ‘a voice in the wilderness,” yet not as one calling in a vacuum, but rather as a leader marshalling Americans toward the creation of a just and peaceful world.”

Those readers who are interested in ordering the book may do so by contacting the publisher: York County Heritage Trust, 250 East Market street, York, Pa. 17403.

Web: http://www.yorkheritage.org

You can contact Mary A. Hamilton at: [e-mail]