Press Coverage of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

This paper is an examination of the press coverage of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, a devastating natural disaster that remains vivid in the public memory in part because of the destruction it caused and in part because of the detailed journalistic record that kept the public informed of the unfolding events. The earthquake occurred just as American journalism was coming into its own as a serious institution, and, while press coverage of the time still used some of the sensationalistic language and irresponsible tactics that had been the accepted way of reporting the news, the majority of the coverage was relatively accurate. Examining the ways in which the press covered this terrifying milestone in history provides a fascinating glimpse into the nature and purpose of modern journalism.

San Francisco in the early 20th century was an important port on America's Pacific coast, described by contemporary authors Richard Linthicum and Trumbull White as "a city of magnificent splendor, wealthier and more prosperous than Tyre and Sidon of antiquity, enriched by the mines of Ophir." The city had been founded by the Spanish in 1776 and named Yerba Buena. By 1847, the town had been taken by U.S. naval forces and renamed San Francisco; three years later, California became a member of the Union.

The 1900 census put the population at 343,000; by 1906, estimates placed this figure at 425,000. The city had grown rapidly through the second half of the 19th century becau

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about his job of preparing an evening edition as if the earthquake and fire were nothing unusual. Within the hour, the reporters were piling eyewitness accounts on his desk. Yet, while reporters from all the city's papers were struggling to continue to do their job, all three Newspaper Row editors soon had to concede their own devastation. They faced "the newspaperman's nightmare: the greatest natural catastrophe that has ever happened in the United States and, by the end of the day, not a single newspaper's presses left to print the story." The only paper in San Francisco that did manage to get an issue out on April 18 was the Daily News, which was located on Ninth Street and escaped burning until later in the afternoon. The paper turned out a hurried edition on borrowed, hand-cranked presses until the printers were forced to evacuate the shop. The edition detailed the initial destruction and the names of casualties. Though hastily compiled, it gave news-hungry survivors a great deal of accurate information. With little available water to douse the growing fires, fire fighters had begun to dynamite buildings in the path of the flames. The editors of the three major newspapers started a frantic search for presses out

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