Red Ink, White Lies: The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles Newspapers 1920-1962

by Rob Leicester Wagner

Los Angeles at the end of World War I was poised to become a major metropolitan center as hundreds of thousands of residents from the East and Midwest flocked to the city they eagerly wanted to call home. To serve the growing appetite for news, particularly scandal among the Hollywood set, were six daily newspapers. These newspapers provided a colorful portrait of a city in its awkward adolescence. They rose to power with their own distinct voice. Behind their mastheads reporters and editors strived to build their own agenda, whether to give a voice to the voiceless or to banish minorities from within the city's borders. It's a bold raucous story told by the newspapermen and women who experienced it first-hand, covering the breaking news, scandals, and tragedies of the City of Angeles.

357 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Rob Leicester Wagner is a veteran newspaper reporter and editor. He began his journalism career in 1974 reporting for his hometown weekly in Sierra Madre, Calif., and for 30 years worked for Southern California suburban daily newspapers. He covered urban affairs in the 1970s and immigration issues, the police beat and legal affairs in the 1980s and early 1990s. He rose through the reporting and editor ranks to become managing editor of a daily newspaper. He also maintained a free-lance career as a regular contributor for true crime publications, numerous automotive magazines and the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal newspaper.

Since 2004 Wagner has been reporting on politics, social issues and religion from Saudi Arabia. He was managing editor of the English-language Saudi Gazette in Jeddah, and later held the same position at the Arab News. As an independent journalist he writes for The Arab Weekly and the International Business Times, which are both based in London. He also writes for Thomson Reuters and Lonely Planet.

Wagner has authored more than 20 books on a wide range of topics, including automotive history, municipal architecture, and Southern California and film history. His latest book, "Hollywood Bohemia: The Roots of Progressive Politics in Rob Wagner's Script (Janaway, 2016)," traces the socialist politics of Hollywood's only leftist film magazine, published by his great-grandfather Rob Wagner, during cinema's Golden Age.

Wagner continues to reside in Saudi Arabia.

Reviews

[Larry Schwartz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a southern California native but too young to remember the days of a multi-paper Los Angeles (though the folks did subscribe to the Herald-Examiner AND the LATimes until the H-E expired). The history of LA journalism is fascinating and this book goes some distance toward writing that history. Unfortunately, it bogs down towards the end in a morass of day-to-day minutiae and supremely bad copy editing (was this a self-published effort?) Recommended for historically-minded Angelenos only.