Owner/Publisher WE 'Ned' Chilton III and the Charleston

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‘Sustained Outrage': Owner/Publisher W.E. 'Ned' Chilton III and the Charleston (West

Virginia) Gazette, 1962-1987

A thesis presented to

the faculty of

the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts

Edgar C. Simpson

November 2009

This thesis titled

‘Sustained Outrage': Owner/Publisher W.E. 'Ned' Chilton III and the Charleston (West

Virginia) Gazette, 1962-1987

EDGAR C. SIMPSON

has been approved for

the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism

and the Scripps College of Communication by

Patrick S. Washburn

Professor of Journalism

Gregory J. Shepherd

Dean, Scripps College of Communication

Abstract

SIMPSON, EDGAR C., M.S., November 2009, Journalism

‘Sustained Outrage': Owner/Publisher W.E. 'Ned' Chilton III and the Charleston (West

Virginia) Gazette, 1962-1987 (236 pp.)

Director of Thesis: Patrick S. Washburn

W.E. “Ned” Chilton III, over nearly three decades years as the third-generation

owner/publisher of the Charleston Gazette, West Virginia’s largest newspaper, developed a philosophy of journalism called “Sustained Outrage,” which stressed ongoing investigative reports about and direct commentary on society’s major social and commercial issues. These efforts included a five-year campaign to end the “ghoul system” in the state; crafting a strategy of suing lawyers who sued him for libel; successfully suing for open records; becoming the first in the nation to wrest his own files as well as the newspaper’s from the Federal Bureau of Investigation; using his own reporters to investigate his fellow publishers in West Virginia; and many other crusades.

This thesis examines those efforts in the context of his overall philosophy, the shifting industry trends toward consolidated ownership, the battle to define and uphold First

Amendment values, and the state’s own struggle to shake off historic poverty and provincialism.

Approved: ______

Patrick S. Washburn

Professor of Journalism

iii

Acknowledgments

I was a reporter and editor in West Virginia, twice working for the Charleston

Gazette. The first time, in 1984, was as an intern between college semesters. I knew Ned

Chilton only to the extent of being terrified of him. My second stint, in 1989, came after the demise of United Press International, for which I was the West Virginia state editor.

Like so many others acquainted with Chilton, I came to understand the publisher’s significance in the context of the industrial battle for the First Amendment only in hindsight.

Many people contributed to this project. I would like to thank Committee Chair

Dr. Patrick S. Washburn for his good humor, keen insight, and sharp red pen wielded through many hours of laborious reading. This project is much better for his efforts. In addition, I would like to thank committee members Drs. Aimee Edmondson and Joseph

Bernt, both of whom offered invaluable advice and unswerving support.

This thesis could never have been completed without the aid of dozens of people in West Virginia. Special acknowledgement should be given to Gazette Editor James

Haught, who remains a powerful force in the state; Gazette President and Publisher

Elizabeth Chilton, whose love and admiration for her colorful husband continues to shine; the staff of the Gazette morgue, and the many reporters and editors at both the

Gazette and Charleston Daily Mail who offered insight into and anecdotes about W.E.

“Ned” Chilton III. In addition, the staff at the West Virginia and Regional History

Library, which holds the Chilton family papers, were decidedly helpful, especially in the early stages of research when the direction of the project had not been clear. I also would

iv like to acknowledge the previous work done by Fran O’Brien McEwen, who did her master’s project on the Charleston Gazette and whose well-written thesis provided several helpful dates.

To Tomi, whose endless supply of love, encouragement, hugs, and chocolate pop tarts

made this thesis possible.

Table of Contents

Page

Abstract ...... iii

Acknowledgments...... iv

List of Figures ...... ix

Chapter 1: Sustained Outrage ...... 1

Notes ...... 27

Chapter 2: A Job That ‘Lasts All Day’ ...... 33

Notes ...... 58

Chapter 3: A Traitor to His Class ...... 63

Notes ...... 86

Chapter 4: An Offense to Conventional Wisdom ...... 91

Notes ...... 118

Chapter 5: More News Space...... 124

Notes ...... 145

Chapter 6: “Towering Law Reforms” ...... 151

Notes ...... 175

Chapter 7: The Insipid Press ...... 180

Notes ...... 204

Chapter Eight – “Ave Atque Vale” ...... 209

Notes ...... 220

Bibliography ...... 222

vii

Manuscript Collection ...... 222

Books ...... 222

Magazine articles ...... 224

Interviews and correspondence ...... 225

Legal cases ...... 225

Journal articles ...... 226

Newspapers ...... 227

viii

List of Figures

Page

Figure 1: Photo of W.E. “Ned” Chilton III………………………………………… ……1

Figure 2: Map of West Virginia………………………………………………………….33

Figure 3: Map of Southern West Virginia……………………………………………….65

Figure 4: Photo of U.S. Senator Robert Byrd……………………………………………73

Figure 5: Photo of U.S. Senator John “Jay” Rockefeller IV……………………………103

Figure 6: Photo of West Virginia Governor W.W. “Wally” Baron…………………….106

Figure 7: Photo of West Virginia Governor Arch A. Moore Jr……………………...…108

Chapter 1: Sustained Outrage

Figure 1. W.E. “Ned” Chilton III in 1980.

W.E. “Ned” Chilton III was vigorously handsome, athletic, and a lover of

London-tailored suits, monogrammed shirts, and journalism of a uniquely American style. A child of privilege once warned by his father to stop his “loud and boastful talking,”1 he was the third-generation owner and publisher of West Virginia’s largest newspaper, the Charleston Gazette. On a brisk fall weekend, he had traveled the 933 miles from his hilltop home overlooking the lazy Kanawha River to a small New England college to accept the national Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for exhibiting unusual courage and tenacity in how he ran his newspaper. He accepted the award on November

8, 1982, with fire, using the occasion to predict the death of newspapers. The press, he said, was under attack not only from an onslaught of electronic competition, including the computer-spawned “cybernetic revolution,” but from corporate newspaper owners, who insisted on pap rather than news, and tepid chiding instead of editorials that demanded

true reform.2 “It worries me . . . to read that media stocks are among the nation’s hottest growth and profit properties,” he said. “Keepers of the tablets shouldn’t have to go around in sackcloth, but neither should they be wrapped in ermine.”3 He quoted press

critic Ben Bagdikian to support his case.4

He occupied the same stage held the year before by A.M. Rosenthal, the executive editor of the New York Times. No one in attendance could possibly confuse one with the other. The venerated Rosenthal, soft words filtered through a New York accent, calmly accepted the Lovejoy Award with a scholarly speech aimed at protecting a newspaper’s right to seek government information from whistleblowers, free from the interference of

enterprising prosecutors and judges. He quoted Vice President Walter Mondale to support

his case.5

Chilton invoked the press’ unique role in American life and warned of a dire

threat to free expression if their mission of “protecting First Amendment freedoms” was

not passed on to the next generation of technology. He was referring to the explosive

growth of cable television in the early 1980s. Though he could only dimly see the

Internet revolution that has assaulted the press since the mid-1990s, he correctly predicted the impact of video and why new technologies threatened newspapers, telling

the crowd that “video is bringing to viewers data and information from myriad fields and

sources never previously covered.”6

Over the course of more than two decades as owner, publisher, and chief editorial

writer of the Charleston Gazette, Chilton built a reputation as a gruff, liberal crusader,

slowly crafting his philosophy of “sustained outrage” through numerous battles with state

and national elites. With a personality that more often engendered hate rather than love,

he wrote editorials with a biting venom and was known for frightening reporters, as

Gazette columnist Rick Steelhammer noted, “when he had those blue eyes locked on you and he had his voice rising and he had his finger pointed at your chest.”7

He believed newspapers existed for the purpose of watching the establishment and holding those in power accountable, for promises kept and promises broken. He formally outlined his policy of institutional memory and outrage in a 1983 speech to the Southern

Newspaper Publishers Association during a meeting in Memphis, Tennessee:

Precious few of us practice crusading journalism on a day-to-day basis. The hallmark of crusading journalism is sustained outrage. I’m not talking about spurts of indignation or vituperative anger. We all relieve ourselves from time to time with that. I’m talking about sustained outrage over basic injustices and fundamental idiocies. I think we’ve allowed our minds and spirits to become three-piece suited. We’re too conscious of our own position in the community.

Our editorials too often sound like what they are: the voice of an extremely wealthy corporation that needs to be concerned about certain pressing problems. Our editorials make the sound of a decorous jackhammer, not the startling thump of a sledgehammer, and worst of all we don’t keep hammering away, day after day, day after day.8

Chilton came to lead the Gazette (he was named publisher in 1962) at a time

when the newspaper industry was in a period of relative stability, with rising profit

margins but an ongoing trend of consolidated ownership, a trend that he viewed with

dismay and an attitude that set him apart from many of his fellow owners and publishers.9

He was not yet born when the daily press hit its peak of 2,042 newspapers in 1920. By the time the United States entered World War II and Chilton was preparing to enter the

U.S. Army Air Corps, the number of daily newspapers had fallen to 1,754. That number

remained stable for the next two decades. In the late 1970s, newspapers were on the front

lines of feeling the latest national recession, and by 1995 the number of daily U.S.

newspapers fell to 1,533.10 West Virginia, known for its natural beauty but dependent on

coal, natural gas, and timber for its economy, followed the trend. In 1912, the state had

223 newspapers, both daily and weekly, with at least one publication in each county. In

1980, two years before Chilton accepted the Lovejoy award, the number had fallen to

101. Seven counties had no newspaper.11

Osward Garrison Villard suggested part of the reason for the mid-century decline

was a scarcity of print, ink, and workers during the war, but the overriding cause was a

movement by newspaper owners to consolidate in order to increase profits. The result

was a severely dampened flow of information, especially a dearth of local news in towns

with only one newspaper. In addition, newspapers appeared less interested in the news,

devoting more and more space to sports and entertainment. This phenomenon, he argued,

was dangerous for a democratic society that depended on an informed electorate. He

believed the owners of the press were in the process of selling their souls: “The

newspaper owner feels that he belongs in the Chamber of Commerce and the merchants

associations more naturally, perhaps, than anybody else except the heads of the public

utilities.”12

As the only medium in existence at the time of the framing of the U.S.

Constitution, the “press” symbolized not just a technology but an important idea.13 The technology was the printing press, a clunky, hand-operated machine that could be used with a lot of brawn but not necessarily much brain. The idea was more complex – free expression, defined as the right of a people tasked with governing themselves to demand

information from their government, to openly criticize their institutions, and to share these thoughts among themselves. The means of achieving this was the press, words splashed on paper and distributed among the populace. The press was deemed so important, in the context of preserving popular government, that it was the only private industry protected from government regulation by the Constitution.14

The press always has been viewed differently than the broadcast media, which have been regulated by the government in some form or other since their commercialization. President Herbert Hoover explained the philosophy of government intervention of broadcast in a speech to the first National Radio Conference in 1922.

Hoover saw broadcast, since it used limited public airwaves as a means of distribution, as a commonly-owned commodity and believed its content should be restricted to “news, to entertainment, to education and to communication of such commercial matters as are of interest to large portions of the community at the same time.”15 The press, in the form of the written word, was viewed as having no limits – anybody with the capital and desire could launch a printing press and therefore had no need to claim public resources. Chilton believed First Amendment protections should be extended to the broadcast medium, and frequently editorialized about ending the Equal Time Rule and reducing Federal

Communications Commission regulation of broadcast content. The Equal Time Rule demanded that radio and television producers offer the same amount of airtime to opponents of an issue, a regulation he thought prevented many broadcasters from editorializing about important local and national issues.

Freedom from direct government intervention (except in times of war when sedition becomes an issue) does not mean freedom from scrutiny or criticism. As private

industry, the printing medium has come under wide examination, much of it focusing on

the owners of the press, their agendas, and whether they are conducting their operations within the spirit of the Constitution’s First Amendment that protects their private businesses. Early in the republic, those who owned the presses were seen as the politically elite, either politically powerful themselves or serving at the behest of the politically powerful.16

As the nation grew, the press stormed through the Penny Press days of the 1830s,

which saw the rise of popular journalism for the masses, and into the more sensational

Yellow Journalism period of the 1890s. As both circulation and profits rose, more and

more critics were taking note that the press as a private enterprise, while free from

government censors, often had another, bigger barrier to independent reporting: those

who owned the presses and paid the salaries of the journalists.17 In 1880, noted New

York City journalist John Swinton, speaking to his colleagues, pointed out the differences

between reporters and owners during an awards acceptance speech: “There is not one of

you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did, you know before hand that

they would never appear in print. . . . We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the

scenes.”18

Criticism that separates owners from the work of day-to-day journalists rests on the theory that the owners control journalists, either through direct orders or by establishing a culture that fosters obedience. In a 1955 study, Warren Breed attempted to explain why newspapers, largely populated with college-educated, liberal thinkers, failed to report some stories and largely stayed within the bounds of the status quo. Through a series of interviews and applying his own experience as a newsman, he argued there was

a gulf between the reporters, who gathered the information and wrote the stories, and the

executives, who set policy and controlled the reporters through a variety of subtle means.

While some reporters wanted to pursue stories of corruption and abhorrent business practices, the executives had many ways of stopping the reporting or printing of the information without directly saying no.19

These methods included simply “blue penciling” (or spiking) the story; assigning

the reporter to cover something else or even withholding a kind comment. Breed contended one of the most powerful means of control was new reporters simply reading the newspaper. Through this practice, they learned what was played well and what was buried, and the natural inclination was to follow what had gone before. The social controls to ensure this system included successful senior reporters, a desire to advance to management positions, the good will of their fellows, and positive feedback from their sources. He noted: “The newsman’s source of rewards is located not among the

readers, who are manifestly his clients, but among his colleagues and superiors.”20

Criticism against press owners has centered on three main themes: they were

more interested in money than in upholding First Amendment values that allowed them

to manufacture profits unfettered; they were beholden to special interests, including

advertisers, political machines and, perhaps, the most enslaving of all, the status quo. The

latter was defined by a long line of press critics as press owners becoming involved in

local politics, merchant associations, and belonging to networks of friends and business

allies who worked, played, and married each other. Finally, press owners also came under

withering scrutiny for developing business models that promoted consolidation and tepid

journalism rather than fostering rousing debate and a vigorous democracy. In other

words, most press criticism has a common denominator: Journalism is a means of making

money. Yet, while this system no doubt laid the foundation for valid concerns about the

fate of the First Amendment and the press’ supporting role in representative democracy,

it also attracted the brilliant and the ambitious, who crafted journalism and newspapers

into the most potent force in society.

The launch of the modern press system after the Civil War was marked by the rise

of energetic entrepreneurs with passion and vision. This was made possible by the

relatively small amount of cash it took for the ingenious and hard working to enter the

newspaper business as an owner. The American landscape was dotted with thousands of

weekly and daily newspapers, many of which barely sustained their owners. In 1878,

Adolph Ochs acquired controlling interest in the languishing Chattanooga (Tennessee)

Times by borrowing $300. Two years later, after pledging to his readers and community

to build a newspaper that served the “business and commercial” interests of the town, his

share was valued at more than $5,000.21

Social scientist John Dewey argued in 1935 it was impossible to separate press

criticism from critical examinations of the underlying, capitalist economic system. He suggested the press was an offspring of the system that demands giving readers what

“they want” rather than what they need. In other words, editors and publishers – if they were to be editors and publishers under the economic system as it existed – must prefer content that panders over content that is important in order to build circulation, which in turn builds advertising, which in turn builds profits.

Dewey argued this should come as no surprise to anyone who believed in the capitalist system, and it made no sense to criticize the press without criticizing the

underlying economic foundation that created it. Dewey observed that most newspapers refused to print unemployment numbers following the crash of the stock market in 1929, fearing that reporting the decline would deepen financial problems that at their root were

“psychological.” He noted: “The very set-up of the system that nourishes these evils is such as to prevent adequate and widespread realization of the evils and their causes; it is such as to divert the public mind into all sorts of irrelevancies.”22

Few press owners knew this better than William Randolph Hearst, who largely has been credited with creating the “Yellow Journalism” period in his newspaper battle for New York circulation with Joseph Pulitzer. A child of wealth and heir to a gold and silver fortune, Hearst launched what would become the nation’s first media empire by taking over the struggling San Francisco Examiner in 1887, which his father already owned. In pleading for capital to revamp the operation, Hearst laid out his plans for building circulation, concentrating on mass appeal, rather than democratic debate and politics. First, he told his father, George Hearst, in 1884, the paper should change its format from nine columns to seven, use bigger headline type and more illustrations.

Second, the paper should change its content to concentrate on staff-generated, original content that featured “enterprise, energy, and a certain startling originality and not upon the wisdom of its political opinions or the lofty style of its editorials.” Third, the paper must be delivered throughout the West Coast to ensure that circulation and “our advertisements . . . [are] constantly increasing.”23 Within three months of taking control of the newspaper, circulation had nearly tripled and within five years, the Examiner was hailed as one of the most profitable newspapers in the country.24

Hearst crafted a successful business model, repeating it in a number of cities

across the country. At the heart of the business plan was making his newspapers a daily,

printed version of himself. The formula included “startling” original content, loud

headlines, and aggressive campaigns against local corruption. He envisioned himself as a

progressive reformer, a fierce fighter in the campaign to wrest America from the hands of

a ruling elite and to solve vexing social problems partially created by a wave of immigration.25 His newspapers, as a reflection of his own agenda, fought for tougher

factory regulations; child, female, and convict labor law reforms; and the eight-hour

workday.26

But reform was not a charitable enterprise. He made money, on purpose and with

intent. In 1895, Hearst entered the New York City market by purchasing for $180,000

the Morning Journal, a failing operation that had been bought just months previously for

$1 million by John R. McClean, publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer.27 Hearst wanted to

compete directly with Pulitzer’s reknowned World, at which Hearst had spent a summer

between college semesters as a reporter. By using the same tactics that had worked in San

Francisco, Journal circulation climbed to more than 430,000 within a year of Hearst

buying the newspaper.28

Critics at the time, while decrying their methods, credited both Hearst and Pulitzer

with using the power of their presses to address deeply engrained social problems,

including the warehousing of newly arrived immigrants in drab, dangerous tenements and

New York City Hall corruption. Pulitzer, for instance, exposed corrupt practices that

resulted in higher milk prices. Yet, the newspapers, while dramatically profitable, often

failed to stay between the lines of what was true. In Citizen Hearst, a biography of the

press titan, W.A. Swanberg suggested the Hearst newspapers were not newspapers at all,

at least as envisioned by the First Amendment: “They were printed entertainment and excitement.”29

Hearst, as an outrageous example of press ownership, was the most flamboyant of a class of industrialists who used First Amendment freedoms to build their businesses

through a cocktail of worthy struggles against local corruption, which took advantage of the poorest, and screaming headlines, which tantalized without enlightening or informing.

Silas Bent, writing in 1927, protested the trend toward turning mild entertainment, commercial sports, and average crime into blaring news. Though owners, he wrote, were responsible for this degradation of First Amendment principles, the public was to blame as well. He suggested the reading public, having conquered the frontier and cementing the Industrial Revolution, was looking inward and, presumably, looking to be distracted

from what had become an existence tied to work and consumerism.

Bent noted the public frenzy over Charles Lindberg’s transatlantic flight in 1927,

calling it a manufactured newspaper event that rivaled big prizefights of the day. The fact the newspapers focused on an interesting, but less than earth-shattering event, created a

public appetite for more sensationalism, which in turn spurred more newspaper sales.

This was an art he called “ballyhoo.” The more newspapers focused on the absurd rather than the important, the more they failed to reveal “the invisible,” which was meant to be their central function. “Day after day, one may note a certain sameness in the press; a sameness not of content, but of effect,” Bent wrote. “The effect is produced by the

process of selection and emphasis. In this second quarter of the Twentieth Century ballyhoo is a noteworthy part of the process.”30

While there is no authoritative source on profit margins of the average newspaper,

it is clear that by the time Bent was writing, newspapers were big business. In 1927,

Frank Gannett, the father of the modern newspaper chain, purchased his second

newspaper in Rochester, New York, for $3.5 million.31 With an estimated circulation of

65,000, that price amounted to $18.50 per subscriber. By contrast, just twenty-one years

before, Gannett had purchased a half-interest in the Elmyra Gazette for $20,000, or $1.50

per subscriber.32 Few publishers, like Hearst, so thoroughly embraced the political power their throbbing presses created,33 but nearly all understood the power of their presses to

make money, and it was on the latter where they focused most of their attention. Indeed,

Gannett prided himself on independence and often stated that a newspaper was a “public

trust.” Yet, the first Gannett executive to arrive at a new acquisition was an auditor, who

quickly and thoroughly imposed Gannett’s system of accounting.34

As the newspaper industry became entrenched as an industrial concern, owners

and publishers became more and more part of the establishment that helped to support

them. The first generation of entrepreneurs who started or acquired their newspapers with

nerve, energy, and enthusiasm had given way to “professionals,” editors and publishers

who were hired to perform certain tasks. The result, as in many industries, was a

tendency toward conservatism and the status quo. This came in a variety of forms, from

fighting labor laws that would hurt their profits to courting and protecting advertisers in

their news pages.

George Seldes, writing in 1938, noted how the American Newspaper Publishers

Association met each year to establish a lobbying agenda that was to be carried out by

hired agents in Washington. The agenda rarely involved free press issues, instead

focusing primarily on corporate profit. Among the issues were successfully exempting from new child labor laws the boys used by most newspapers at the time for daily home delivery. The group also conspired to thwart unionizing efforts in its newsrooms and press departments, as well as fighting truth-in-advertising laws for drugs, tariffs on imported wood pulp, and rules governing interstate newspaper haulers. One of the most virulent critics of his time, Seldes was a former World War I war correspondent who felt betrayed by what he saw as collusion between the military and newspaper owners who promoted America’s entry into the war.35 After leaving the industry, he wrote books and articles pillorying the press. Seldes wrote: “The press needs free men with free minds intellectually open; but its leadership consists of moral slaves whose minds are paralyzed by the specter of profits.”36

Advertising frequently was seen as a corrupting influence. Will Irwin, using the

Boston press as an example, noted in 1911 that no Boston newspaper of the time was free from either the direct or indirect influence of the advertisers. The most insidious manifestation of this influence was silence. For instance, he noted that only one of

Boston’s several daily newspapers printed the indictment of Harvard Ale for contaminating its product, and no newspaper took note of a woman found dead in the elevator shaft of a well-known department store.37 The business leaders at one struggling newspaper, he noted, gave a book to newsroom leaders that contained a list of names to which “every courtesy should be extended.” Irwin suggested that Hearst started his

Boston newspaper in 1904 by challenging the local establishment as a way to build circulation but backed off the approach once it was established. The reason was that fiery, emotional campaigns worked to build circulation, but advertisers were attracted by

newspapers willing to look the other way when events happened that put them in a poor

light. The business model of most newspapers demanded such obsequiousness, since

advertisers brought in far more money than did circulation. “The chief purchaser of

newspaper wares is, after all, not the reader, but the advertiser,” Irwin observed. “This

consideration, if no other, reduces to an absurdity the business attitude to journalism.”38

Morris Ernest noted in 1946 that most newspapers rely on a two-to-one ratio of

advertising money to circulation, with some properties going a bit lower and some much

higher. The influence of advertising rose with the growth of radio in the 1920s and 1930s and with generous tax policies during World War II that allowed businesses to deduct up to 80 percent of the money spent on ads that carried patriotic themes. As newspapers became more and more reliant on advertising, publishers became more and more compliant to their wishes. This model made it particularly difficult for small and new papers to survive. Advertisers wanted to deal with as few properties as possible, and existing publishers installed policies that punished advertisers who dealt with

competitors. These included bulk rates that locked advertisers into large buys and, in

some cases, refusing to take advertising from companies that dealt with the competition.39

Gannett, in particular, was known for buying newspapers in the same town in order to consolidate operations, save money, and increase profits. He did this unapologetically: “I justify the consolidation of papers in various cities by the fact that in this manner I was able to produce a stronger, better newspaper, one that could stand on its own feet and be independent of any outside influence.”40 After waging war for several

years with Hearst in New York state, he and Gannett reached a deal to carve up several

markets, thereby eliminating competition. Gannett agreed to merge the Knickerbocker

Press (his morning newspaper in Albany) with his Albany Evening News, and Hearst

agreed to switch his evening Albany Times Union to a morning print cycle. The result

was a confused readership that once had a Gannett paper in the morning and a Hearst

paper in the evening, but were suddenly faced with the reverse. A side part of the deal

called for Hearst to shut down his two Rochester, New York, papers (one daily and one

Sunday) and sell the presses to the Gannett.41

Gannett insisted the men that he hired to run his newspapers (by the mid-1940s,

Gannett owned twenty newspapers and controlled another) operated independently.

Corporate offices served primarily to support the local properties, such as buying

machinery at cheaper prices than individual newspapers could do on their own. Hearst

was forthright in his insistence on editorial control: “I cannot conduct any publication

with people who do not follow instructions.”42 Neither Gannett nor Hearst, as each side of the same newspaper owner coin, hid their rising fortunes; they both desired money.

Gannett noted: “The independent community newspaper has two incentives: to promote

the general welfare and to make money.”43 Hearst agreed: “I want to make money, and I

insist that every paper shall make money.”44

At the time Hearst, Gannett, and E.W. Scripps and a few other press titans were

building their empires, the vast majority of newspapers were locally owned. In the years leading up to and after World War II that changed dramatically and chain ownership became the rule rather than the exception. In 2003, there were 1,463 daily newspapers, of which 260 were locally owned. The rest were properties of a variety of groups, including the flourishing Gannett chain with ninety-nine newspapers and 14 percent of the nation’s circulation.45

The switch from locally invested newspaper owners to national chains spawned a

new round of worries about the fate of First Amendment values. In order to gauge the

true effect of the trend, researchers Allison Plessinger and Jeanne Criswell set out to

document how Gannett’s purchase of the Indianapolis Star in 2000 affected its content.

At the time, the sale of the Star and the Arizona Republic from the Pulliam family to

Gannett was the largest newspaper sale in history, a transaction worth $2.6 billion, or an

astounding $2,400 per Sunday subscriber to the Star (based on an estimate of the Star’s

value in the transaction of $900 million). They found that two years after the purchase,

the Star’s content remained relatively stable, up slightly in local and state news but down

slightly in national and international news.46 A similar study of Gannett’s influence after

purchasing the Louisville (Kentucky) Courier Journal in 1986 showed opposite results,

with local and staff-generated stories declining in favor of more wire and national

stories.47 Other researchers and commentators concentrated less on what appeared in the

daily editions and more on hiring favored corporate veterans and a standardization of

news and journalistic values that dampened local character and nuances.48

First writing in 1983 and then updating his thesis to include the Internet in 1997, press critic Ben Bagdikian suggested the rise of a harmful media “cartel” toward the latter half of the twentieth century. The conglomeration of information outlets and their powerful financial abilities turned America from the world’s military-industrial center to the world’s purveyor of American capitalism and hedonism, in contradiction to First

Amendment principles.49

Conglomeration meant the managers of media properties, newspapers in

particular, were not only geographically removed from the everyday work of average

journalists but were often philosophically and ethically removed. He argued that a

business manager in New York City could not understand why reporters for a local

newspaper would write stories, for instance, about a local, advertising car dealer being

sued. Bagdikian contended the irony of the situation was that corporate managers

strangled the business model that made the properties so attractive to corporate investors

in the first place.

Robert McChesney labeled the consolidation among like media, such as

newspapers, as “horizontal integration.” He also noted a new trend, one of “vertical

integration,” or the rise of the media conglomerate that controlled various channels of

communication. The idea was to create synergies that would leverage profits for specific

brands. For instance, Disney acquiring cable television companies, book publishers, and

movie houses could effectively and profitably market a singer in a variety of formats.

McChesney argued the rise of the media oligopoly necessarily meant a further crimping

of new ideas and a further decline in democratic involvement.50

Bagdikian and other critics have not suggested the rise of corporatism has killed

American journalism; rather it has exacerbated problems that existed from the nation’s founding. He wrote: “The butcher’s thumb that quietly tilts news in favor of corporate values has survived the rise in journalistic standards. The tilt has so quietly and steadily integrated into the normal process of weighing news that the angle of the needle is now seen as zero.”51

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky advanced Bagdikian’s ideas, contending

in 1988 that a corporate mindset had so overtaken the modern media that the products they produced should not be considered news, but rather a “propaganda model” for what

viewers of broadcast and readers of print consumed.52 By virtue of being private business, media outlets must make money, they argued. Any information that interfered with that primary function was necessarily discarded or distorted. Advertisers were the source of profits and therefore they must be pleased; information that displeased them was ignored, downplayed, or twisted. Sources must be pleased in order to keep the information flow open and to feed the daily beast of empty pages. That meant sources had tremendous power in the definition of news.53

In 1947, the Commission on Freedom of the Press, popularly known as the

Hutchins Commission, examined the state of the press, using as its underlying premise that the press as big business was the single greatest danger to American free expression.

The commission reported:

When an instrument of prime importance to all the people is available to a small minority of the people only, and when it is employed by that small minority in such a way as not to supply the people with the service they require, the freedom of the minority in the employment of that instrument is in danger.

This danger, in the case of the freedom of the press, is in part the consequence of the economic structure of the press, in part the consequence of the industrial organization of modern society, and in part the result of the failure of the directors of the press to recognize the press needs of a modern nation and to estimate and accept the responsibilities which those needs impose upon them.54

Press critic A.J. Liebling, best known for his “Wayward Press” column in New

Yorker magazine, suggested in 1964 that established press owners often became giddy with profit and were dazzled by the country club company they kept and the power they wielded. Though there are many examples of press owners who start out as trumpets for

“the common man” as they build circulation and advertising, they invariably become less

champions of the people and more general managers, serving as employers, landlords,

and keepers of the local status quo. Liebling was often pilloried by the newspaper owners

whom he criticized, which he argued reflected a widely held publisher belief that they

“are part of the great American heritage with a right to travel wrapped in the folds of the flag like a boll weevil in a cotton boll.”55 The sons and daughters of press titans, he noted,

were even less likely to carry on the founding traditions, observing wryly that “mavericks

seldom breed true.”56

Chilton was the exception who proved Liebling’s rule. Not one to exhort others

while sitting quietly, he wrote about half of the newspaper’s editorials and those he did

not craft personally, he directed with a sharp comment or rewrote to suit the points that

he wanted to make. He sought to punish those in public office – as well as those in

private business or his own reporters (though always privately, if not quietly) – who

failed in his eyes to uphold the public trust.57

This was a wide-ranging mission. Chilton consistently and virulently railed

against United States involvement in Vietnam, at one point in 1967 framing the issue as

racist and calling the conflict “incredible stupidity.”58 At a time when African-Americans

represented slightly more than five percent of the West Virginia population, Chilton was

a strident voice for racial equality.59 He pushed insistently for passage of housing reform

in 1967, at one point chastising the president of the West Virginia Realtors Association,

B.Y. Chalfant, a powerful voice for hundreds of advertisers. A Gazette editorial noted:

“What Mr. Chalfant means is that all-white neighborhoods must be insured the right to

wall out those whose complexion isn’t quite socially acceptable.”60 He frequently tilted at

lawyers and the law, pioneering in the early 1980s a philosophy of countersuing those

who sued him for libel; prying disciplinary records from the West Virginia Bar

Association and, at one point, personally suing the local county clerk found innocent of a

misdemeanor elections charge when she sought her lawyers’ fees.61 He ordered teams of

his reporters between 1982 and 1984 to visit each of West Virginia’s fifty-five county

courthouses, pulling thousands of probate records for an ongoing expose of the state’s

“ghoul system” that allowed attorneys to reap large percentages of estates.62 The result

was legislation that took lawyers out of the equation and saved West Virginians millions

in legal fees.

The state’s industrial and business concerns often were Chilton targets. In 1964,

United States Senator Paul Douglas, an Illinois Democrat, praised him in the

Congressional Record for being one of the few newspaper owners to back his truth-in-

lending legislation. Douglas noted:

In a recent editorial, the Charleston, W.Va., Gazette, the courageous and influential newspaper of the Mountain State, urges enactment of the truth- in-lending bill. With characteristic forthrightness, the Gazette criticizes the powerful lobby groups who so vigorously oppose this simple proposal to inform borrowers and installment purchasers of the true annual interest rate owed on loans or on goods bought on time.63

In 1967, Chilton was a loud voice for strip mining reform, serving on a governor’s task force to examine the issue. The result was that West Virginia was among the first in the nation to enact strict rules on how strip mining could be conducted and how the land must be reclaimed after the coal was removed.64 In 1976, he waged a nine-month battle

with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for copies of files that he was certain J. Edgar

Hoover had ordered kept on him, his editors, and the Gazette. The result was that the

nation’s editors learned for the first time that the FBI not only monitored certain press

owners and media executives, but developed profiles on them.65 In 1980 and again in

1986, Chilton ordered his own reporters to investigate the state’s newspapers. In two separate series – “All the News?” in 1980 and “The Insipid Press” in 1986 – Gazette reporters uncovered press abuses ranging from scams involving legal advertising to bogus circulation claims to failing to report local political and business corruption.66

Chilton maintained long, intimate and, at times, contentious and ugly relationships with political leaders on the state and national levels. He is credited with organizing the only debate between John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey during the groundbreaking West Virginia Democratic primary in 1960. He supported Adlai

Stevenson during the primary, seeing Kennedy as a brash, young politician too reliant on his looks and his family connections. After Kennedy’s assassination, Chilton said he was mistaken about him and wished he had supported him, as his wife did.67 He befriended

John D. Rockefeller IV when the young, lanky heir to the Standard Oil fortune first volunteered as an anti-poverty worker in West Virginia in 1964 and laid plans for his future career as a state Democratic politician. Rockefeller asked Chilton for help in learning about the poor in a letter dated April 27, 1964, the first record of correspondence between the two:

I was grateful for your offer to help develop insight into poverty conditions in West Virginia. I want to take you up on that. I hope to spend about ten days or more there – on my own and without my last name. I would like to live in several depressed areas and homes. I want to try to feel some of their thoughts, rub shoulders casually over a few days at a time and generally try to understand their view, problems and hopes.

West Virginia is crucial in this war on poverty. It is, also, it seems to me, an important field of battle and opportunity in many ways other than the war on poverty. I want to make West Virginia the focus of my preparation for the war, Ned.68

Chilton’s relationship with Governor Arch A. Moore Jr. served as the

counterpoint to his warm friendship with Rockefeller. A sparring match spanning two

decades, he and the Gazette kept up a constant din against Moore, who served as a

congressman and three terms as governor. In 1980, when Moore ran an unsuccessful

campaign to return to the governor’s mansion, Chilton compared him in an editorial to disgraced President Richard Nixon.69 When Moore was convicted in 1990 on federal

corruption charges of taking more than $500,000 from state coal interests, Gazette Editor

Don Marsh brought a magnum of champagne into the newsroom, popped the cork, and uttered a toast, “This is for Ned.”70

Chilton died of heart failure on February 6, 1987, three years before Moore’s indictment and conviction, during the quarterfinals of the sixty-five and older division of

the 28th Annual Woodruff Nee, a national squash tournament in Washington, D.C. In the

1982-83 rankings, he had been ranked eleventh in the nation in the sixty-plus division.

His death was greeted with shock in liberal quarters with The Nation magazine saying

those who followed “his colorful career judged him to be the best newspaper publisher in

the United States. Certainly, there was none other like him.”71 Consumer advocate Ralph

Nader praised him as a defender of the true role of the press: “All people who believe in

an independent and free press that concentrates on community issues, as well as global

subjects, will mourn the passing of Ned Chilton.”72

Chilton has largely been ignored in journalism scholarship despite wide coverage

of his policies and investigations at the time they were done. He was the subject of several New York Times articles; a contributor to the Associated Press Managing Editors

(APME) newsletter on newspaper policies, including calls for front-page corrections and

a “Readers Bureau” to address fairness complaints; and a regular contributor and sometimes source in The Nation magazine, as well as a speaker to local and national publisher and press associations. He served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize board in the late 1970s, and his newspaper’s investigations won many of the major industry prizes with the exception of the Pulitzer, including APME’s First Amendment Award and several Headliner awards from the National Press Club. Thomas F. Stafford, a former

Gazette reporter, wrote a book about his exploits covering West Virginia business and politics. He dedicated the book to Chilton, calling him a “friend, employer and sparring partner.” James Haught, Chilton’s most consistent admirer and an editor of the Gazette, published Fascinating West Virginia, a book about his own investigations for the newspaper. He included a chapter on his relationship with Chilton and the publisher’s philosophies.

There are numerous historical works on crusading journalists and powerful newspaper owners who built media empires, including Scripps, Pulitzer, Ochs, and

Hearst. All were products of an emerging industrial system of mass communications. No prior work has been found that has attempted to trace the rise of a modern crusading newspaper owner who challenged not only the entrenched political system and major industries but fellow newspaper owners and industry foibles. This thesis was greatly aided by the donation six years ago to the West Virginia Regional History Collection at

West Virginia University of a collection of Chilton’s papers by his wife, the former

Elizabeth Early. The author is the first researcher to go through the archives, which provide rich insight not only into Chilton’s published works but his childhood separate from his father, his private correspondence with friends, political leaders, and other

publishers, and his emerging philosophy of “sustained outrage.” In addition, the author conducted numerous interviews with the people who lived and worked closely with

Chilton.

What became clear in digging into his rare approach to journalism was a portrait of a publisher who had become indistinguishable from his newspaper. The two – one an organization with a press as its heart and ink for blood, and one a frail human destined to die like all others – became more than either could be without the other. Hence, in

retrospect, there was no oddity in Chilton in one edition telling readers in a front-page, first-person story of his bumpy ride in a transatlantic jet to England, and in another

edition releasing his own tax returns in response to criticisms of hypocrisy.73

The Gazette was an extension of Chilton, just as he was an extension of the

Gazette. Both, the paper and Chilton, were arrogant and haughty, often white hot in tone, unforgiving in stance, and sometimes derided. Yet, both were sincere adherents to the best of what the First Amendment intended: a free press able and willing to challenge those in power.

Over the years of his stewardship of the Gazette, he ran counter to the central themes of press criticism, though he sometimes stepped outside the mainstream of what many considered ethical journalistic practices. Car dealers pulled their advertising from the Gazette for six weeks in 1978 after Chilton ordered an investigation into shoddy sales practices. He later estimated the boycott cost the newspaper more than $120,000.74 The

series won the consumer reporting award from the National Press Club. During his

crusade to change probate laws in West Virginia, he sent to every lawmaker in the state a

complementary copy of the newspaper’s West Virginia Heritage Calendar. Inside, was a

letter from Editor Marsh and a pamphlet headlined “Update the Probate,” which was a

reprint of the newspaper’s first probate investigation and urged the Legislature to reform

the system. One state senator tried to send Chilton $3 by way of a reporter, but he refused

the money. The senator, implying that Chilton should not practice the reviled freebie

system he so often criticized, sent the calendar back to the Gazette.75

This thesis tracks Chilton’s evolving philosophy of what journalism means to the

core democratic ideal of a free press and a pluralistic society, but also seeks to place

those efforts within the industry overall and within the framework of a state struggling to

shake off historical poverty and provincialism. He viewed both the Gazette and West

Virginia as a national stage and refused all efforts to point out otherwise. Rosalie Earle, a long-time reporter, city editor, and managing editor for the Gazette, noted: “When Ned died, we – West Virginia – lost something. We lost a protector, our best fighter for a better life.”76

A child of privilege who inherited what already had become the state’s widest and

largest circulation newspaper, Chilton could have taken several paths. He could have

spent his considerable energies building his family’s fortune, like Hearst, by buying more

newspapers. He could have chosen to sit back in the executive suite of the Gazette

building, guiding the newspaper’s business functions and forming closer relationships with the newspaper’s advertisers. He could have stayed in politics, like his grandfather and many newspapermen who had gone before him. Instead, he chose to take the corner office in the newsroom and repeatedly put his fortune and his personal energies to work for causes he believed in: governments that work, policies that protected the powerless, and the exposure of hypocrisy at every level, including at times his own. His bulldog

approach to upholding what he saw as his First Amendment responsibilities is as important today as it has ever been and should not be lost.

Notes

1 William E. “Ned” Chilton Jr. to William E. “Ned” Chilton III. Box 3, File 17, William Edwin Chilton III Papers. A&M 3020 Addendum, West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Library, Morgantown.

2 William E. Chilton III “Convocation Address.” Box 4, File 8, Chilton III Papers.

3 Ibid.

4 Bagdikian is a former journalist and former head of the journalism graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. His influential book, The Media Monopoly, is available from Beacon Press.

5 A.M. Rosenthal. 1981. “Convocation Address.” Colby College, Elijah Parish Lovejoy Awards, at http://www.colby.edu/academics_cs/goldfarb/lovejoy/recipients/a-m- rosenthal.cfm (Accessed April 1, 2009).

6 Ibid.

7 Interview, Rick Steelhammer, Charleston, W.Va., January 29, 2009. Steelhammer has been a reporter and columnist at the Charleston Gazette since 1976. He got his popular Sunday life and humor column when Chilton called him to his office in 1984 after reading Steelhammer’s frequent contributions to the “common queue,” a file in the newsroom computer system to which everyone had access and was used as an electronic message board. Steelhammer often wrote amusing parodies of Chilton, which were popular reads among the staff. Chilton told him, “If you’re going to write that on company time anyway, you may as well put it in the paper.” Unfortunately, Steelhammer’s common queue pieces were lost to subsequent computer systems.

8 William E. Chilton III, “Hallmark of Crusading Journalism is Sustained Outrage,” Charleston Gazette, November 18, 1983.

9 Ibid.

10 Number of Daily Newspapers, 5-year Increments, at http://www.journalism.org/node/1134. (Accessed April 3, 2009).

11 Otis K. Rice and Stephen W. Brown. West Virginia: A history (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 264.

12 Oswald Garrison Villard. “The Disappearing Daily” in Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism, eds. Robert W. McChesney and Ben Scott (New York: The New Press, 2004), 49.

13 Thomas Patterson and Philip Seib, “Informing the Public,” in The Press, Institutions of American Democracy, eds. Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Geneva Overholser. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 178.

14 U.S. Constitution, amend. 1. The full text of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

15 Michael J. Zarkin. The Federal Communications Commission: Front Line in the Culture and Regulation Wars. (Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006), 4.

16Jeffrey L. Pasley. Tyranny of Printers. (Richmond: University of Virginia Press, 2005). 12.

17 W. Joseph Campbell. Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the myths, defining the legacies. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001), 2.

18 Richard O. Boyer and Herbert Morais. Labor's Untold Story. (1955, repr., United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, New York, 1979), 82.

19 Warren Breed, “Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis” in Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media criticism. eds. Robert W. McChensey and Ben Scott. (New York: The New Press, 2004). 229-243.

20 Ibid., 242.

21 Doris Faber. Printer’s Devil to Publisher. (New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1963). 40-41.

22 John Dewey. “Our UnFree Press” in Our Unfree Press, McChensey and Scott, 207-210.

23 Roy Everett Littlefield. William Randolph Hearst (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980), 5. The quotations were originally printed in 1947 in Hearst’s New York America.

24 Ibid., 6.

25 Ibid., 350.

26 Ibid., 350.

27 Ibid., 10.

28 Ibid., 11.

29 Ibid., 11.

30 Silas Bent. “The Art of Ballyhoo” in Our Unfree Press, McChensey and Scott, 193-206.

31 Samuel T. Williamson. Imprint of a publisher: The story of Frank Gannett and his independent newspapers. (New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1948), 147.

32 Ibid., 87-89.

33 Littlefield, William Randolph Hearst, 177-306. Hearst spent most of the latter half of his life as a quixotic political candidate, with runs ranging from mayor of New York City to president of the United States. He came under frequent criticism for using his newspapers to support his political interests.

34 Williamson, Imprint of a Publisher, 139.

35 Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press directed by Rick Goldsmith, Kovno Films, 1996.

36 George Seldes. “The House of Lords” in Our Unfree Press, McChensey and Scott, 46.

37 Will Irwin. “The Advertising Influence” in Our Unfree Press, McChensey and Scott, 121-131.

38 Ibid., 124.

39 Morris Ernest. “The Vanishing Marketplace of Thought” in Our Unfree Press, McChensey and Scott, 211-219.

40 Williamson, Imprint of a publisher, 188.

41 Ibid., 171.

42 Littlefield, William Randolph Hearst, 349.

43 Williamson, Imprint of a publisher, 180.

44 Ibid., 349.

45 John Morton, “Noble Sentiments,” American Journalism Review 25, No. 2 (March 2003): 60.

46 Allison Plessinger and Jeanne Criswell. “Results of Gannett’s purchase of Indianapolis Star mixed.” Newspaper Research Journal. 27(4) 2006, 6-22.

47 David C. Coulson and Anne Hansen, “The Louisville Courier-Journal’s news content after purchase by Gannett,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 72, No. 1 (Spring 1995): 205-215.

48 See Roberts, Kunkel and Layton, Leaving Readers Behind; Sig Gissler, “What Happens When Gannett Takes Over,” Columbia Journalism Review, 36, No. 4 (November/December 1997): 42-47; Richard McCord, The Chain Gang: One Newspaper versus the Gannett Empire (Columbia, Missouri.: University of Missouri Press, 1996); Roya Akharan-Majid, Anita Rife and Sheila Gopinath, “Chain Ownership and Editorial Independence: A Case Study of Gannett Newspapers,” Journalism Quarterly 68, No. 1/2 (spring/summer 1991): 59-66; Susan Brockus, “Gannett and Its Newsrooms: Use of Distancing to Forge a Strategic Organizational Divide,” (paper presented at annual meeting of Central States Communication Association, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2002); Susan Brockus, “Newsroom Initiatives: The Influence of Corporate Control on the Concept and Content of Community Newspapers” (paper presented at annual meeting of Central States Communication Association, Omaha, Nebraska, 2003).

49 Ben Bagdikian. “The Growing Gap” in Our Unfree Press, McChensey and Scott, 275-286.

50 Robert McChesney. “U.S. media at the dawn of the Twenty-First Century” in Our Unfree Press, McChensey and Scott, 47-59.

51 Ibid., 283.

52 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. “Propaganda Mill” in Our Unfree Press, McChensey and Scott, 405-411.

53 Ibid., 408.

54 The Commission on Freedom of the Press. A Free and Responsible Press (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), 1-2.

55 A.J. Liebling. The Press (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964.), 15-19.

56 Ibid., 22.

57 James Haught, Fascinating West Virginia (Charleston, W.Va.: The Printing Press Ltd., 2008), 109-117. 30

58 Editorial, “White man against yellow Asian – this is the present state of Viet War,” Charleston Gazette, April 2, 1967.

59 United States Census. Table 63. West Virginia - Race and Hispanic Origin: 1790 to 1990, at www.census.gov. (Accessed April 1, 2009).

60 Editorial, “Realtor cry raised anew – Tragedy is they may win,” Charleston Gazette, February 11, 1967.

61 James Haught, Fascinating West Virginia, 109-117.

62 Ibid., 112.

63 United States Senator Paul Douglas, speech, Congressional Record, July 23, 1964, 16129.

64 Interview, Dave Callaghan, by telephone, December 28, 2008. Callaghan, an administrator for Governor Cecil H. Underwood, served as chair of the group that made the legislative recommendations.

65 Ben A. Franklin, New York Times News Service, “Files show paper critical of FBI monitored,” The (Nashville) Tennessean, November 28, 1976.

66 The first series was done by James Haught and was published in two separate timeframes, both under the logo “All the News?” The first section was published between June 26 and June 28, 1980, in the Charleston Gazette. The second section was published from September 24 to September 25, 1980. The second investigation, called the “Insipid Press” and reported by Martin Berg, was published September 6 to September 12, 1986.

67 William E. Chilton III Oral History. John F. Kennedy Library. Transcripts available in Box 1, File 18a, Chilton Papers III.

68 John D. Rockefeller IV to William E. Chilton III, April 27, 1964, Box 1, File 17, Chilton Papers. After working two years as a VISTA volunteer in southern West Virginia, Rockefeller served as a delegate to the House of Delegates, secretary of state, governor and United States senator.

69 Editorial, “Nixon-Agnew-Moore,” Charleston Gazette, September 30, 1980.

70 Haught, Fascinating West Virginia, 109-117.

71 Editorial, The Nation, February 21, 1987, 205. The editors quoted one of Chilton’s editorials as a sort of eulogy: “If free enterprise is the wave of the future in the

world, then the Lord help the world. What is increasingly becoming clear about this economic system is that it placed greed over all other concerns.”

72 Rick Steelhammer, “Gazette publisher Chilton dies in D.C.,” Charleston Gazette, February 8, 1987.

73 W.E. Chilton III, “Bumps, boosebumps – A ride on Concorde,” Charleston Gazette, May 7, 1977. This is the editor’s note that ran on top of the story: “Publisher W.E. Chilton III and his family were aboard a Concorde supersonic aircraft which had an engine malfunction over the Atlantic Ocean Friday en route to Europe. It was the first leg of an around-the-world trip marking the Chiltons’ 25th wedding anniversary. Here is Chilton’s account of the event.” Also, Daily Mail staff, “Gazette publisher reveals net worth,” Charleston Daily Mail, May 13, 1974. The tax returns listed $91,413 in income, of which $51,000 was salary from the Gazette as publisher. The other income was a variety of investments. An accountant’s statement showed Chilton and his wife, Elizabeth, had a net worth of $593,000. Chilton, himself, later acknowledged that the report was highly misleading, since it did not value his 24 percent interest in the Gazette, which potentially was worth millions.

74 James A Haught, “Odometer problems persist despite federal law,” Charleston Gazette, September 28, 1978.

75 Staff, “Gazette calendars, pamphlet given to senators,” Charleston Gazette, February 13, 1981.

76 Interview, Rosalie Earle, Charleston, W.Va., January 9, 2009.

Chapter 2: A Job That ‘Lasts All Day’

Figure 2. Map of West Virginia.

The Gazette came to the Chilton family in 1907. Founded as the weekly Kanawha

Chronicle in 1873, the paper was by then called the Daily Gazette, was printed in downtown Charleston, and was an apparent irritant to the powerful Chilton clan that included Joseph E. Chilton, a lawyer involved in developing regional railroads and coal mines. He also was an influential Democratic political powerbroker, serving as prosecuting attorney for the southern counties of Lincoln and Logan and as the attorney for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway.1 With his brother, William E. Chilton, also a lawyer and a political powerhouse, and West Virginia Governor William A. MacCorkle, he founded the law firm of Chilton, MacCorkle and Chilton.

The story, perhaps apocryphal, of how the family acquired the paper was recounted in the 100th anniversary edition of the newspaper by reporter John G. Morgan, a loyal and longtime employee of the Gazette:

One day Uncle Joe came into the living room and announced: ‘I have stopped the Gazette from talking about us.’ ‘Oh, you couldn’t do that,’ somebody said. ‘Oh, yes I would; I bought it,’ Uncle Joe said.2

At the time of the purchase, the price of which went unrecorded, West Virginia was in the throes of developing its rich natural resources, and the battles that would signal decades of strife with out-of-state landowners and coal barons were well underway.

Rugged and beautiful with soaring mountains, deep ravines, and an established

Appalachian culture of self-reliance, West Virginia was the only state formed during the

Civil War.

For decades before 1862, the year Abraham Lincoln signed the law accepting

West Virginia as the nation’s thirty-fifth state, natives of western Virginia had complained to lawmakers in Richmond, Virginia, about unfair treatment. Under the

Virginia Constitution only white, male landowners could vote and two seats in the House of Delegates were allotted to each county, regardless of population. Barred by topography from being part of the expansive plantation system, most of the thickly wooded

Allegheny Plateau, which made up 80 percent of the territory, was owned by wealthy stockholders in the eastern part of the state. Unable or unwilling to send their own progeny into the wildness, the established rich recruited immigrants from Europe to settle the area. The result was a population that outnumbered the gentry but who lived and worked on land that was not their own and therefore were prevented from voting. Writing as “A Mountaineer” in the Richmond Examiner in 1803, Delegate John G. Jackson argued forcibly that the Virginia Constitution should be rewritten to allow men to vote

who had “sufficient evidence of permanent interest,” such as paying taxes or serving in

the military.3

Tension between sections in Virginia matched the rising regional conflicts across

the country. Economically separated from the rest of Virginia, many political leaders in

the western part of the state were pro-union and believed Virginia secession would be

unconstitutional. Largely ignored by the Virginia power structure in the previous

decades, talk of civil war, growing unrest, and the rising need for the natural resources so

abundant in the verdant hills of the west spurred Richmond into a new era of

infrastructure building. In the last years of the 1850s, the Virginia Assembly agreed to spend more than $3.5 million on railroad construction west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the Kanawha Valley, which included Charleston.4

Initial western optimism waned quickly with Abraham Lincoln’s election and the

vote April 17, 1861, by the General Assembly in Richmond to secede from the union.

County officeholders throughout the trans-Allegheny region resigned and pro-union

groups quickly formed, leading to a convention in Wheeling on May 13 among selected

delegates of the western counties. After heated debate, the convention agreed to put the

question of secession to a referendum in the western counties and to meet again on June

11 to deal with the outcome.5 The counties, though the vote total remains in dispute,

voted with the union, 34,677 in favor and 19,121 opposed.

The second Wheeling convention resulted in a plan to reconstitute the Virginia

government as loyal to the union, a move that leaders hoped would be recognized by

Lincoln as the true state government. Still, talk of a new state carved from the Old

Dominion remained high. Union forces, fearing Virginia would try to consolidate its hold

on the region, swiftly moved to push Confederate forces to beyond the Blue Ridge

Mountains, and on October 24, 1861, voters in the territory overwhelmingly approved an

ordinance to form a new state called Kanawha. But, in the kind of maneuvering Chilton

III would later spend much of his professional life fighting, political leaders called a

convention to the write the constitution for the new state and rejected what the voters had

approved. Instead they chose the name “West Virginia” as a nod to Virginia and as a sop

to counties that would be contiguous.6 United States Senator Waitman T. Willey drew

laughter when he told the convention the name as it appeared on the ordinance for

statehood was too hard to spell, noting that, “I will say that in this case I think the rose

would smell sweeter by some other name.”7

Slavery, as for the rest of the country, remained a divisive issue for the new state.

Separated by geography, economy, and politics from its mother state, West Virginia

nonetheless struggled for its own identity as a single entity. Its Eastern Panhandle

bordered Washington, D.C., and was more aligned with Virginia, while its Northern

Panhandle jutted into Pennsylvania and Ohio. Its southern regions, though rich in coal,

timber, and later natural gas, were isolated by their extreme hills and flowing rivers. The

state was not southern per se, but certainly was not part of the Great Lakes nor the

Midwest regions. The inability to easily classify West Virginia would remain a focal

issue for the state to the present day and would mark many of the political battles in the twentieth century including, the fight against racism, an issue that would establish

Chilton III as a leading liberal voice in the state and mar the early career of one of the

nation’s most prolific senators, Robert Byrd. In 1850, the United States Census listed

20,500 slaves in the area that would become West Virginia and 2,000 free Negroes. By

1860, the number of slaves had declined to fewer than 18,000 and the number of free

blacks rose to 3,000. The question of slavery immediately became an issue at the

constitutional convention, with several religious leaders calling for outright abolition and

others demanding gradual emancipation. The latter won out. Lincoln wrestled with

whether to sign the bill approved by Congress that would accept the new state, fearing it

would later harm efforts to bring Virginia back into the Union and that the question of

freeing the slaves would make this even more difficult. Eventually satisfied that the new

state had more positives than negatives, he signed the bill acknowledging West Virginia

on December 31, 1862.8

A decade later, factional forces that would exist for another century revealed themselves at a new constitutional convention, called to rewrite the state’s governing document to better conform with the federal Constitution, as they wrangled over the location of the capital. Wheeling, many in the state felt, was too far removed and failed to reflect the major economic and political forces shaping the new state. Others argued that

Charleston, with only 3,000 residents in 1870 and no significant railroad or river

infrastructure, could not support the growing bureaucracy. The question was settled, four

years after the founding of the Kanawha Chronicle, when state voters – choosing among

Charleston, Clarksburg, and Martinsburg (in the Eastern Panhandle) – overwhelmingly

chose Charleston.9

The Industrial Revolution came slowly to West Virginia, which was a captive of

its rugged topography. River locks, roads, and railroads were expensive to build,

requiring slashing into the jutting peaks and the construction of bridges to span the many

valleys, streams, and rivers. Still, spurred by the national economic collapse of the 1870s,

industrialists craved the resources of West Virginia as new streams of revenue. Clear-

eyed railroad entrepreneur Frederick J. Kimball of Germantown, Pennsylvania, formed a

confederation of financiers to take over ailing railroads in the region and formed the

Norfolk and Western Railway, pushing spurs and new lines throughout central West

Virginia. This, probably more than any other development, opened up the southern West

Virginia coalfields. In 1870, 1,527 miners produced 608,000 tons of coal. By 1888,

Kanawha County, the home of Charleston, produced 982,310 tons. In 1903, southern

McDowell County zoomed to the top of state coal production, pushing out 5,249,913

tons. At the outbreak of the World War I, West Virginia was among the top-producing energy states, with output statewide of more than 65 million tons of coal.10

Although the expanding coalfields brought new development and some wealth to

native West Virginians, the majority of the riches flowed east to out-of-state financiers,

developers, and industrialists. This produced ongoing strife between the men who labored

in the black dust and mine owners, many of whom had never visited their holdings. The mining companies built “towns” for their workers, withholding from their pay rent for

their houses, food purchased at company stores, and even lease payments for the picks

and shovels used to wrench the black rocks from the ground. Assigned to subsistence living, the workers also faced rising safety concerns, a vexing political issue that

continues to plague the state. Company owners, through political contributions, controlled much of the politics in the state, and West Virginia fell behind other states in

regulating the mines.11 In the early 1900s, West Virginia had the worst death rate among

miners in the nation, including the dubious distinction of the worst mining accident. On

December 6, 1907, a pocket of gas exploded at an underground mine in Monongah in

Marion County, killing 361 people.12

The squalid conditions, poor safety record, and little hope of improvement at coal mining operations formed the foundation for the rising union movement across the country. Most unions at first were tied to individual companies and mines, but as the

movement grew the local unions eventually forged themselves into the United Mine

Workers of America (UMA). West Virginia miners were seen early on as important in the union struggle, but attempts to organize them between 1892 and 1897 failed.13 In

1902, the Kanawha-New River Coalfield was the first to be successfully organized. The companies fought back, forming the Kanawha County Coal Association, hiring Baldwin-

Felts detectives out of Bluefield, West Virginia, to curb union activity. Though little is known about possible involvement of the Chilton family in the coal association, it is known Joseph Chilton owned coal assets in the county, and the Chiltons, intimate in local politics, were likely to at least be aware of the association’s activities. The situation simmered for a decade before UMW miners on Paint Creek struck on April 18, 1912, and were quickly joined by miners in nearby Cabin Creek.14 When the miners struck,

Baldwin-Felts guards evicted the workers from their company-owned homes. Violence

between the workers, homeless and hungry, and the hired guards escalated. Finally, West

Virginia Governor William E. Glasscock sent in 1,200 state militia on September 2 to

disarm both sides, arresting famed union organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones in the

process. The strike produced one of the most violent and deadly labor-related incidents in

the nation’s history when coal operator Quin Morton, accompanied by Kanawha County

Sheriff Bonner Hill, opened fire on a miners’ tent village from an armored rail car, killing

a miner. The miners retaliated by attacking a guard encampment at Mucklow. A battle

that lasted several hours resulted in the death of sixteen people, mostly guards.15

As the southern coalfields, including those in Kanawha County, broiled in violence and union-management strife, a new controversy gripped the state. William E.

Chilton Sr., Joseph Chilton’s brother and founder of the powerful “Kanawha Ring” that controlled local Democratic Party politics, was seeking a seat in the United States Senate

held by Republican Nathan B. Scott.16 On Feb. 1, 1911, the state Legislature approved

Chilton’s appointment along with fellow Democrat Clarence Watson amid allegations of bribery. Watson was president of Consolidation Coal Co., based in Fairmont and the largest producer in the state. House member L.J. Shock alleged that he was given $1,000 and promised more if he would vote for Chilton and Watson during the Democratic nominating caucus. Both men denied the allegation, with Chilton, himself, initially demanding an investigation. The Wheeling Intelligencer noted that his ardor for a probe dimmed once his appointment was made official:

Every day that the Democratic members of the legislature delay the investigation of the bribery charges in connection with the senatorial caucus simply confirms and establishes the public belief in the truth of the charges. Following the expose made in the House of Delegates, both Mr. Watson and Mr. Chilton loudly proclaimed they wanted an investigation.

They went so far as to say that they would not accept their seats if they were found to be tainted with fraud. Both gentlemen have now secured their certificates of election and their interest has suddenly wavered.17

Democrats in the state Senate voted down a resolution to form an investigating

committee, and West Virginia factions continued the fight in the U.S. Senate, asking the

Committee on Privileges and Elections to look into the fraud allegation. The committee

agreed, and two years later, on February 11, 1913, dropped the matter, calling the

allegations “of that general character too frequently indulged in by both individuals and

the public press on the occasion of elections.” The committee was influenced by a letter from Shock to Watson recanting his initial allegation. In the letter, on January 8, 1913, he told Watson that “the truth is that I set up the whole business.”18

Chilton’s tenure in the Senate was most notably marked by filling in for the ill chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and he was credited with being the driving force behind the successful nomination of famed Jewish jurist Louis D. Brandeis to the United

States Supreme Court. A former West Virginia secretary of state and a member of the state Democratic executive committee for many years, Chilton Sr. never lost his interest in politics. The U.S. Constitution was changed during his time in office to make the U.S.

Senate position open to popular vote rather than appointment by state legislatures, and he lost his re-election bid as well as races in 1924 and 1934.19 He was editor of the Gazette

from 1907 until 1924, though incorporation papers were not filed with the state until

1912 and did not list his name as an owner. The official incorporators were C.A. Ashcraft

(news manager), T.S. Clark, W.A. MacCorkle, Joseph E. Chilton and Sam B. Chilton.20

The Gazette under Chilton, Sr. was ardently Democratic, following through on a

re-dedication pledge printed in the December 5, 1914, edition, in which the newspaper

committed itself to a management restructuring and:

To the earnest and consistent advocacy of the principles of popular government as enunciated by the democracy of Jefferson, Jackson and Wilson. It pledges its unremitting efforts to fight the battles of faith in the commonwealth of West Virginia and to lend its influence to the bringing . . . of social, political and industrial equality of opportunity for all the citizenship of our state and nation.21

Throughout its modern history, the liberal Gazette was locked in a circulation battle with the conservative Charleston Daily Mail. In order to be eligible for the potentially lucrative government legal advertising, newspapers had to register with the state as Republican or Democratic. The Mail historically was registered Republican and the Gazette as Democratic.22 The Gazette was delivered in the morning and the Daily

Mail in the evening. Though not stated, it is likely the restructuring that accompanied the

Gazette’s “rededication” in 1914 was spurred by the revival of the Daily Mail.

Floundering financially for years, the roots of the newspaper were planted in the years

immediately after the Civil War as a publication called the Star, which was merged a few

years later with a small rival newspaper, the Tribune.23 About the time of this merger,

John W. Jarrett, the owner of the largest printing company in town, launched the

Charleston Mail. In 1896, two politicians, W.M.O. Dawson and A.B. White, both of whom later went on to become state governors, acquired both newspapers and combined them as the Mail-Tribune. The merged operation never financially succeeded, and the newspaper was eventually taken over by Democratic powerbroker Moses W. Donnally.

With the Gazette already stridently Democratic, Donnally appointed a board of five

Republicans to establish editorial policy. After several bitter disagreements among managers and owners, including Donnally’s switch to the Republican Party, and

additional mergers with other papers launched over the next few years, the Charleston

Daily Mail was on the brink of bankruptcy in April 1914 when Walter E. Clark arrived in

Charleston to take over the newspaper. At the time that he acquired it, employees had not

been paid “in five weeks.”24

A dashing figure with a stern expression behind his spectacles, Clark pledged the

Mail would be an “independent Republican paper,” and no “individual, not even the

owner, would control it.”25 He was born in 1869 in Connecticut and worked as a reporter and editor for the Hartford Post, the Washington Times, and the New York Commercial

Advertiser. He spent twelve years as the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for the New

York Sun under famed editor Charles Dana. He took two leaves of absence during his time at the Sun, both times venturing to Alaska, where he prospected for gold and wrote a special newspaper section touting the virtues of the new frontier. His love of the new territory attracted the attention of President Howard Taft, who appointed him Alaska governor in 1909.26 His direct connection to West Virginia is not known, though it is

likely his newspaper and political contacts knew of the opportunity in the form of the

Mail and he was looking for a way to get back into newspapering. He never again

ventured into politics and remained in control of the Daily Mail for the next thirty-six years, relinquishing to his heirs only on his death on February 5, 1950.

As the Daily Mail’s fortunes turned under Clark’s sure guidance, the Gazette’s finances were in doubt until the mid-1930s. In 1924, the year Chilton Sr.’s son, W.E.

“Ned” Chilton Jr., took over editorial control, circulation reached 20,000.27 Although

making enough money to stay in business, it is not known whether the Chiltons’ other

holdings supported their newspaper venture or whether the Gazette was surviving on its

own. The elder Chilton would later claim he lost $300,000 from keeping the newspaper

in business and recovering from a devastating fire in 1918 that destroyed the Gazette’s

printing plant.28 In 1937, circulation passed 50,000 for the first time, enabling Eustace

Chilton, Chilton Jr.’s brother, an insurance salesman and a frequent actor in local

community theater, to declare to his father in a hand-scrawled, four-page letter written

during a sleepless night that they were “set for life” after ten years of “hard struggling.”29

The “hard struggling” was not explained, but other documents hint at the financial problems of his father that may have affected the newspaper. In July 26, 1925, after his second unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate, Kanawha National Bank sued Chilton Sr. for

$13,236.32. The previous March and April he had taken out two $1,000 loans and a

$10,000 loan, in addition to overdrafting his bank account. To secure the loans, he put up

ninety-five shares of Gazette Co. stock and twenty-five shares of Goshorn Hardware Co.

stock.30 In his letter, Eustace Chilton wrote that his sentiments were shared by all of the

children, and they could never harbor ill will against their beloved father. He noted the

children were now middle-aged and contemplating retirement, and the Gazette was free

from “intra-family and external debt” and all shares were now back in the family. He

pledged the newspaper would remain in the Chilton family “as a cherished duty and

responsibility.”31 Though relinquishing control of the business side of the newspaper in

1922 to his son and editorial control in 1924, the elder Chilton remained as associate editor until his death on November 7, 1939, at the age of eighty-one.

Chilton Jr., born in 1893, was a Naval Air Force Reserve aviator during the latter part of World War I, flying air patrols in North Sydney and Nova Scotia. Proud of his service record, he kept meticulous records of his flights.32 During World War II, he was

named to the Alien Enemy Hearing Board in West Virginia. Under his guidance, the

Gazette began to acquire its reputation as an aggressive newspaper that would challenge

government and straightforwardly address issues of the day.

A Yale University graduate, he turned a keen eye and clear writing to both local

and national issues. He quickly chastised the House Committee on Un-American

Activities for launching a probe into whether Hollywood was harboring communists in

1947, labeling the investigation as “ridiculous” and dependent upon “the glamour of

movie stars for public interest that otherwise would be lacking.”33 He noted Europe was

waiting for American aid and that repairing the damage from World War II was far more

important to the American people than hunting communist sympathizers. Just three days

later, in a ramping up of venom that could serve as the harbinger for his son’s later

editorials on a wide range of issues, he denounced the investigation as unconstitutional, said “congressional bullying has gone far enough,” and offered a suggestion for a specific reply witnesses could use if they were hauled before the committee:

I am an American citizen and entitled to all the rights guaranteed to me by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I pay my taxes; I vote at the polls; and I serve when called for jury duty. If I knew of anyone or any

organization trying to betray my country or overthrow it by force, I wouldn’t have to be called here to testify about it; I would tell the authorities of my own free will. When you ask me what I believe, what are my opinions, what I say or what I read, I tell you that it is none of your business.34

He turned the same energy to local issues. In one of his most vehement

campaigns, he was credited with helping to dismantle the sheriff’s fee system in West

Virginia. Under the law at the time, sheriffs were paid personally to feed inmates. Chilton

Jr. believed the system, rather than saving taxpayer money, resulted in providing sheriffs with an incentive to “jail as many people as possible” and feed them “skimpily and cheaply” to “great advantage of his own personal pocketbook.” Using capital letters, he

demanded an end to the practice, calling it “shamefully wrong, barbarous, and

antiquated.”35

When the Judiciary Committee in the House of Delegates tabled a measure to end

the practice, Chilton accused the members of political cowardice in a two-column, front-

page editorial. Under the headline “The People Be Damned,” he charged the West

Virginia Sheriffs’ Association with intimidating the lawmakers and then listed each

member of the committee who voted to table the reform with this introduction: “Here are

the sheriffs’ active little helpers.”36 Mercer County Delegate Walter V. Ross was enraged

and launched a blistering assault against him when the committee next met, prophetically

issuing a charge that Chilton III would repeatedly confront: “This arrogant editor has

firmly convinced himself that The Charleston Gazette is the people, and all others be

damned.”37

Chilton Jr. came back with fire, offering a second front-page screed that noted papers in Huntington, Wheeling, Parkersburg, Clarksburg, and even Ross’ home city of

Bluefield had editorialized against the “sheriffs fee system racket.” Calling Ross’ tirade a

“badge of honor,” he wrote that “these furtive legislators chose to ignore the fact that the press of West Virginia is up in arms against their high-handed attempt to do in committee what they obviously feared to attempt to do on the open floor of the House.”38 A week later, the state Senate approved a plan eliminating the fee system, and the House followed suit.

While engaged and erudite, Chilton Jr. also dealt with ongoing tragedy and the apparent financial difficulties at the newspaper. His wife of seven years, the socially well-connected daughter of wealthy New York City bankers, the former Louise Burt

Schoonmaker of Kingston, New York, died of spinal meningitis when their children, a son and daughter, were six and three respectively. He sent them to live with his in-laws in

Kingston. The reasoning for this is clouded. Speculation ranges from the possibility that, as a professional man of the pre-War World II years, he saw his primary role as editor and not father; his position required him to work too many hours; he simply felt the children would have more advantages with his in-laws; or his well-known love of alcohol interfered with family life.39

Nonetheless, though distanced from his father, the young Edwin Chilton, as he was called until his late twenties, had some contact with the West Virginia side of the family. As the only male heir, Chilton III found the family mantle heavy and expectations high. His aunt, Eleanor Carroll Chilton, wrote the best-selling novel Follow the Furies as

well as several others, was a popular and well-known poet, and was married to a Pulitzer

Prize-winning columnist for the Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal. He would later correspond with her regularly, and she encouraged him toward a life in “letters.”

His early childhood in Kingston was one of privilege, as his wife later recounted, with “upstairs maids and downstairs maids, the whole thing.” Even as a toddler in

Charleston, his father had employed a governess, who later traveled with the children

when they were sent to live with maternal relatives in New York.40 As a young child,

Chilton III collected autographs of the famous in all walks of life from entertainers to

politicians, sending them simple, hand-scrawled notes, asking them to sign an enclosed

small card and to send them back to him in attached self-addressed stamped envelopes.

The requests included one to his grandfather, who replied that he could not refuse any

request from his “dear grandson.” The quest to be near the great and famous never left

him as he later carried on correspondences with a wide variety of friends and

acquaintances on the national scene. Chilton Jr. enlisted the various syndicated

cartoonists whose strips appeared in the newspaper to mark his son’s birthdays with

special panels highlighting the event. These were not printed, but sent to him as gifts.41

He was sent to boarding school in his early teens, attending Woodberry Forest

School in Orange, Virginia, and Adirondack-Florida School in Onchiotoa, New York.

The young Chilton was a seemingly difficult student, defiant of authority, and inattentive to assignments. In 1935, when Chilton was thirteen, his grandfather mounted a campaign aimed at getting his grandson to focus, soliciting encouraging letters to him from top

West Virginia officials. These included a note from then West Virginia University

President Robert A. Armstrong, who urged the boy to study and quoted Longfellow’s

“Excelsior!,” and from Ernest L. Bailey, then with the state Road Commission, an agency

Chilton III as publisher would spend considerable energy lampooning as corrupt and

inefficient. Bailey wrote: “Your family has helped shape the destinies and direct the

course of public affairs in West Virginia since before I was born and from what I have learned of you I am sure that through you your family will carry on this task and duty of public leadership.”42 The carrot apparently having failed, his father threatened the stick,

finally issuing a warning in an undated letter that, by virtue of Chilton keeping it the remainder of his life, likely had some impact. Chilton Jr. noted he had been in contact with “the school” (most certainly Woodberry, but the institution is not named) and had learned he had been skipping geometry and overall avoiding schoolwork. He threatened to bring him back to West Virginia and put him to work in a “job that starts at 8 in the morning and lasts all day.” He ended the letter as if he were writing an editorial to unruly legislators: “You will quit your loud and boastful talking. You will get no more demerits and you will give no more alibis.”43

Chilton III returned to Charleston full-time partway through his senior year in

high school, a technicality that would later allow his official Gazette biography to say he

was educated in “Charleston public schools.”44 At nineteen, tall, lanky, a shock of dark

hair raking his forehead, and his piercing blue eyes alternating between flashes of anger

and laughter, he volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1941, where his problems

with authority and lackluster attention to formal classroom work would continue to dog

him.

He kept a meticulous diary of the year he spent as a clerk at the Army Air Corps basic training base in Bainbridge, Georgia. Neatly folded inside was a Gazette clipping of the strikingly beautiful Jean Carson, a blonde, community-theater actress well known in

Charleston. He called her his former “flame girl.”45 The clipping announced Carson’s signing of a seven-year contract with MGM Studios, which included a variety of USO tours. Included with the clipping, were several letters from Carson. In a spritely letter postmarked July 13, 1943, she related to him a story about meeting a mutual acquaintance on a train, who expressed shock at seeing him recently in uniform with a pint bottle of liquor in his pocket. “I said to myself, ‘She should see him hit the gin and vodka with me – wow!’”46 In a later letter, Carson’s demeanor had dimmed. She wrote she was busy working, suggested he had “misunderstood” her earlier letters, but promised more “good times together.”47 Carson’s name never appeared among Chilton’s papers after 1943.

If Chilton pined for the beautiful actress, he hid it well. He chronicled an Army life of avoiding authority, while spending most of his time drinking, gambling, sleeping, and reading. In the entry for January 2, 1943, he reported losing $24 at stud poker, and on

January 6 he “missed calisthenics . . . per usual.” Two days, later he showed up for the morning exercises and was unimpressed. “What a farce!” he wrote on January 8. He finally clashed with his sergeant in earnest early in the morning on January 28. Chilton acknowledged he had returned to the barracks at 3:30 a.m. after he “had killed a pint of

Johnny Walker Red Label Scotch” and had been confronted by the beet-faced barracks leader. Though silent on the specifics, he was charged with insubordination and court

martialed in what he termed a “railroaded” proceeding. He was sentenced to a $10 fine

and ten days in the guardhouse. On February 12, he reported he was able to slip away

from his confinement and “slept two hours in the latrine in the afternoon and it was very

welcome as I was tired.”48

The experience apparently did little for his rehabilitation. His diary entry for

December 12 was typical: “Slept through ’til 4:30 in the afternoon, arising with a mild

hangover. Shower, shave, a few games of nineball and so to the cafeteria to eat. Bake and

I went to see ‘Old Acquaintances’ with Betty Davis. A very excellent movie. Nice acting all the way around. Shot the bull with Brownie and Red and then to bed at 12:30.”49

Though indifferent as a soldier, never being promoted past private first class during four years, he was an avid Army sportsman and fiercely competitive, collecting trophies for ping-pong and bowling. He once bowled a 201 and reported his average at a more-than-respectable 164. He wrote sports for the base newspaper and devoured books as a member of the Literary Guild. At the end of the diary, he noted fifty-four books that he had read during the year, the title and author of each recorded along with a score of one to seven, with seven being “exceptionally excellent.” Only John O’Hara and John

Sanford earned sevens in Chilton’s critique.50

After the Army, where he met and kept in touch with Catcher in the Rye author

J.D. Salinger and eventually spent time overseas, he attended Yale University, where he

began a decades-long relationship with conservative scion William F. Buckley Jr.51 He

returned to Charleston after graduation in 1950, the same year his father died at age fifty-

six. Chilton Jr. had become more and more reclusive in the years following his own

father’s death in 1939, many days never showing up at the Gazette. Widely known to be a heavy drinker, he wrote editorials from home, sending them to the newsroom to be typeset and consulting with editors by telephone. On his death, West Virginia Governor

Okey Patteson issued a statement calling him a “most public-spirited man [who] was widely known as a champion of worthwhile local, civic and state projects.”52 Herman P.

Dean, president of the West Virginia Publishers Association, called his death a blow to

the state’s fourth estate, saying the newspaper fraternity had “lost a courageous

torchbearer for truth and freedom of the press.”53 Chilton Jr. specified in his will that his

body be cremated and that no service be held. In compliance with his wishes, his ashes were interned quietly at a St. Albans, West Virginia, cemetery, and his obituary reported

that the family requested no flowers be sent. Though well off by the standards of the day,

he died without a vast fortune. His will listed the following assets: $42,649 in United

States Treasury bonds; $156,663 in various bank, coal, and corporate stocks; $5,884 in

cash; $40,000 in life insurance, and $43,104 as the remainder of a five-year contract with

the Gazette that was to be paid to him after he retired. His ownership of the Gazette was

not valued in his will, but he left equal shares to his son and daughter. That gave Chilton

III 24 percent ownership in the newspaper.

If rarely seen in public, Chilton Jr. was widely respected as a writer and

intellectual, and his death left a gap in the family leadership of the Gazette. With Chilton

III too young and inexperienced (and perhaps too much the rake about town) to take over

the reins at twenty-eight, the Gazette board, made up primarily of family members,

turned over the day-to-day running of the newspaper to General Manager Robert L.

Smith. Smith acquired a small ownership interest in the Gazette, after devoting his entire

adult life to the newspaper. He started work at the Gazette as an errand boy at the age of

ten. By 1914, he was named circulation manager and in charge of all national

advertising.54 He served as president and publisher of the newspaper until his death twelve years later, as Chilton III would finally settle down to a job that “lasts all day.”

Chilton would occasionally talk about his father in kindly terms, but they were never a “father-son, such as going golfing.”55 He passionately loved his grandfather, whom he called “Atta,” a tall, effectionate, gregarious man with a mane of white hair.

Though distanced from the immediate Chilton clan, his family responsibilities were impressed upon him from an early age, and, apparently, having made the decision to accept them, he attacked his new professional life with the same passion and vigor with which he had challenged authority during his youth and Army years. He began work at the Gazette in 1951 as the promotion manager, which entailed running various events sponsored by the newspaper. At the same time, he was courting another well-known

Charleston beauty, Elizabeth Early, whom he had met in 1950 when she showed up with a male friend of Chilton’s for a tennis match at a local club. In Charleston society, as in most of the rest of the country, it was common for young people to openly date a variety of suitors. Yet, the athletic young man with the flashing eyes, broad grin, and loud wisecracks immediately captured her attention. “He was good looking, very good looking. I liked him, everything about him,” Elizabeth said decades later.

They married in 1952, the same year he was first elected a Democratic delegate to the West Virginia House of Delegates. Chilton had asked his Army buddy, J.D. Salinger,

to be best man, but already headed toward his famous reclusiveness, he declined, telling

him, “It’s very nice, Ned, and I’m touched. But I don’t feel up to it. But I do appreciate

your having thought of me, and I’ll be present, if possible, in astral form.”56

Local politics at the time in West Virginia were relatively low-key affairs, without

the big money advertising campaigns and bare-knuckled, public brawling that would later

come to characterize even local races that were hotly contested. Chilton ran his

campaigns primarily by sending small notes to fellow Democrats asking for their support,

and by attending political rallies and events.57 His tenure was relatively unremarkable,

although he showed signs of the stalwart independence and allegiance to liberal causes that would mark his career as a publisher. In a 1954 survey, he gave the following as his legislative priorities:

1) Establishment of some sort of program to help alcoholics and to keep them out of

mental institutions. (At the time, he was a member of a legislative interim

committee studying the issue.)

2) Finding a way to permit (municipalities) to raise more tax money.

3) Attracting more and better teachers to state schools.

4) Curbing the “spoils” system presently operating in the West Virginia Liquor

Commission with regard to the wine accounts.

5) Increasing aid for the state’s Publicity Commission so that more tourist dollars

could be lured to West Virginia, and even more important, so that sound

industries could be brought to the state to take up the present coal slack.

6) Abolishing the straight ticket vote.58

As promised elsewhere in the questionnaire, he voted in 1954 to admit women to juries

and was once praised for a separate issue by a Charleston attorney, in what could only be

seen in hindsight as high irony, for a speech on the floor: “You did not engage in

personalities. I was of the opinion that Chilton has gone a long way in his short experience in the legislature. He looked, acted and carried on like a statesman – a credit to his family, his county and his state.”59

He was promoted from promotions manager to assistant publisher in the summer

of 1956, about the time negotiations began between the Daily Mail and the Gazette to

merge business operations. In 1923, 502 cities in the United States had at least two

competing, separately owned newspapers. By 1953-54, that number had declined to eighty-seven, of which Charleston was one and Huntington, West Virginia, another.

Pressures on the newspaper industry during the Eisenhower years were mostly centered

on the afternoon press, such as the Daily Mail. The rise of suburbia that involved daily

commuting, existing radio competition, and the rapid expansion of television all put

financial pressures on the press and ratcheted up competition for readers’ time.60 One of

the responses by the industry was to merge business operations while keeping editorial

operations separate. The Gazette and Daily Mail announced their marriage on January 1,

1958. The move included the formation of an operating company, the Newspaper Agency

Corporation, that handled all functions of the newspapers except the editorial departments. Incorporators of the new company were Chilton and Smith for the Gazette and the new owner of the Mail, Lyell B. Clay of Clay Communications, which also owned the Beckley newspapers. In making the announcement, Clay and Mail Publisher

Fred Staunton said the move was “but a continuation of the national pattern” and

“economic pressure is the motivating factor.”61 The announcement was only mildly

disingenuous. Though certainly financial constraints on the newspaper industry were felt, the Gazette and Mail were one of only eight Joint Operating Agreements in the country.62

The more likely scenario to keep the evening editions alive were for the stronger morning papers to buy the weaker evening operations, merge print and business functions, and keep the editorial departments at least nominally separate. Such was the case in both

Wheeling, West Virginia, and Parkersburg, West Virginia, where the Ogden Chain kept two newspapers in each of the cities profitably alive until around 2000. The agreement called for the Gazette to move from its then Hale Street plant to a consolidated operation at 1001 Virginia Street East. In addition, the two would combine to publish a single

Sunday edition, called the Gazette-Mail, for which the Gazette editorial department would take responsibility. In this, the announcement turned out to be more than mildly disingenuous. Under Chilton, the Sunday Gazette-Mail was rarely “bipartisan,” as Clay and Staunton pledged, and often was used as a showcase for his most biting editorials and news investigations.

Though not yet at the top of the newspaper’s hierarchy and still in the midst of cementing a major change in the business structure of his newspaper, Chilton was being wooed by an aspiring John F. Kennedy. In a letter on April 28, 1959, a year before his run for the presidency, Kennedy lamented that Chilton had missed a luncheon in

Charleston but hoped to see him at a function two weeks later in the southern coalfield town of Welch, West Virginia, at which time he hoped to “exchange ideas” with him.63

Chilton served as a Democratic delegate to the national convention in 1960 but never

supported Kennedy despite his wife’s fascination with the handsome New Englander.

Chilton later would come to admire Kennedy and regret his decision. After four, two-year

terms in the House, he quit politics when he was named publisher in 1962.64 Chilton told

his wife he could not serve two masters – the Gazette and politics – and he far favored the

newspaper.65

It was a decision that would have enormous consequences in West Virginia for a

free press, race relations, and generations of politicians on the local, state and national levels. The strong-willed child who grew up more than 1,000 miles from his father, spent ten days in the stockade during the height of World War II, and married the town beauty, was ready to take the reins of the state’s largest newspaper, a platform he viewed as giving him a national microphone and from which he would launch one of the most consistently liberal voices in the nation.

Notes

1 John Morgan. “Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette Gains First Century Milestone,” Congressional Record, May 10, 1973, E3089. Morgan was a longtime reporter for the Charleston Gazette and as the newspaper’s unofficial historian wrote hundreds of inches of copy for a celebratory 100th anniversary edition of the newspaper. United States Senator Jennings Randolph inserted a version of the main story in the Congressional Record. In his introductory remarks, Jennings called the Gazette a consistent leader in journalism and that the newspaper “has been a strong, vigorous, and independent advocate.” Under Chilton, Jennings said, those principles “remain strongly anchored.”

2 Ibid.

3 Otis K. Rice and Stephen W. Brown. West Virginia: A history. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 91.

4 Ibid., 100.

5 Ibid., 120.

6 Ibid., 141.

7 West Virginia Division of Culture and History. “A state of convenience: The creation of West Virginia. Chapter 11,” at http://www.wvculture.org/history/statehood/statehood11.html. (Accessed June 23, 2009).

8 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 150.

9 Ibid., 164.

10 Ibid., 187.

11 West Virginia Division of Culture and History. “West Virginia’s mine wars,” at http://www.wvculture.org/hiStory/minewars.html. (Accessed June 23, 2009).

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Todd Hanson. Campbell’s Creek: A portrait of a coal mining community. (Charleston, W.Va.: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1990), 45.

15 West Virginia Division of Culture and History. “West Virginia’s mine wars,” at http://www.wvculture.org/hiStory/minewars.html. (Accessed June 23, 2009).

16 Staff, “West Virginia Senators: Democratic caucus names C.W. Watson and W.E. Chilton,” New York Times, January 19, 1911.

17 Editorial. Reprinted from the Wheeling Intelligencer in the Huntington Dispatch. William E. Chilton III Papers. Box 3, File 28. A&M 3020 Addendum, West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Library, Morgantown.

18 Report from Committee on Privileges and Elections. Congressional Records. Senate. Report No. 1206, February 11, 1913.

19 West Virginia Division of Culture and History. “Timeline: March 17, 1858, Birth of U.S. senator & journalist William Chilton,” at http://www.wvculture.org/hiStory/timeline.html. (Accessed April 12, 2009). The official history noted that Chilton used the Gazette “skillfully to promote his political views.”

20 Morgan, “Gazette gains first century milestone,” Congressional Record.

21 Ibid.

22 Interview, Nanya Gadd, Charleston, W.Va., June 16, 2009. Gadd, whose father was the editor of the Sunday magazine for the Charleston Gazette, has worked at the Charleston Daily Mail since the mid-1970s, after her father, frequently irate at Chilton III, told her, disingenuously, that the Gazette had a no-nepotism policy. Gadd said: “I later found out that wasn’t quite true; I think he just didn’t want me working for the Gazette.”

23 Typed history of the Charleston Daily Mail contained in the “Daily Mail History” file in the Gazette morgue.

24 Ibid.

25 Staff, “Walter E. Clark, 81, publisher, succumbs,” Charleston Daily Mail, February 5, 1950.

26 Ibid.

27 Morgan, “Gazette gains first century milestone,” Congressional Record.

28 Ibid.

29 Eustace Chilton to William E. Chilton Sr., no date other than a hand-scrawled 1937, Chilton III Papers. Box 3, File 28. West Virginia and Regional History Collection. Eustace Chilton held an unspecified position in the company.

30 Kanawha County Circuit Court filing (copy). Chilton III Papers, Box 1, FF1. West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

31 Eustace Chilton to William E. Chilton Sr., no date, Chilton III Papers. Box 3, File 28, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

32 William E. “Ned” Chilton Jr. Service Record. Chilton III Papers. Box 3, File 29, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

33 Editorial, “House investigations,” Charleston Gazette, October 23, 1947.

34 Editorial, “Investigations and gall,” Charleston Gazette, October 26, 1947

35 Editorial. “Sheriff’s fee system,” Charleston Gazette. February 16, 1947.

36 Editorial. “The people be damned,” Charleston Gazette, February 23, 1947.

37 Less Garrett, “Ross keynotes blast at Gazette publicity,” February 25, 1947.

38 Editorial, “Are they afraid to answer?” Charleston Gazette, February 25, 1947.

39 Interview, Elizabeth Early Chilton, widow of W.E. Chilton III, Charleston, W.Va., January 29, 2009.

40 Ibid.

41 Comic strips, Chilton III Papers, Box 4, FF7, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

42 Robert A. Armstrong to William E. Chilton III, April 24, 1935, Chilton III Papers. Box 4, FF8, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

43 Ernest L. Bailey to William E. Chilton III, April 18, 1935, Chilton III Papers. Box 4, FF8, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

44 W.E. “Ned” Chilton III biography. Gazette microfiche. The newspaper, in the mid-1980s, began putting many of its paper morgue files on microfiche. These included some unpublished papers dealing with managers of the newspaper.

45 Chilton III Diary (1943). Chilton III Papers. Box 4, FF2, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 J.D. “Jerry” Salinger to W.E. “Ned” Chilton III, numerous dates; William F. Buckley Jr. to W.E. “Ned” Chilton III, numerous dates, Box 2, File 7b, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

52 Staff, “Editor’s death prompts messages of condolence,” Charleston Gazette. September 23, 1950.

53 Ibid.

54 John Morgan, “Gazette gains first century milestone,” Gazette, April 30, 1974.

55 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton.

56 J.D. Salinger to W.E. Chilton III, undated, Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 4, West Virginia and Regional History Collection. Chilton and Salinger went on to correspond sporadically for several more years, but the relationship cooled when Salinger became upset when Chilton suggested an aspiring author get in touch with him.

57 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton.

58 W.E. Chilton III, “Candidates for the Legislature: 1954,” Charleston Gazette microfilm.

59 Dale Casto to W.E. “Ned” Chilton III, no date, Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 7, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

60 Steve Halleck, “Fewer two newspaper cities,” St. Louis Journalism Review. September 2007, Vol. 37 (299), 24-25.

61 Chuck McGhee, “Mail, Gazette form business consolidation,” Charleston Daily Mail, January 1, 1958. 61

62 U.S. Department of Justice. Civil Action. No. 2:07-0329. The federal government filed a complaint against the Daily Gazette Co. in May 2007, alleging the Gazette violated antitrust laws when they purchased the assets of the Daily Mail and contracted with its former owner, MediaNews Group, to run the Daily Mail newsroom. A history of the Joint Operation Agreement is contained in the action.

63 John F. Kennedy to W.E. “Ned” Chilton III, April 28, 1959, Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 11, West Virginia and Regional History Collection. There is some disagreement on whether Chilton actually went to the luncheon. After Kennedy’s assassination, he told an oral historian for the newly formed Kennedy Library in New York that he attended the event briefly but didn’t remember meeting Kennedy. His wife said Chilton did not attend, believing Kennedy was too young and brash.

64 Chilton Biography, Charleston Gazette microfiche.

65 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton.

Chapter 3: A Traitor to His Class

Chilton welcomed into his office at the newspaper the principal of Garnett,

Kanawha County’s all-black high school, with grace. Freshly elected to the state’s

legislature as a Democratic delegate and still learning the intricacies of the daily

newspaper game, as the Gazette’s lead public relations man it was his job to be

welcoming, a skill many would say had left him by the time he was named publisher a

decade later. Principal Harry E. Dennis had a complaint. Why, he wanted to know, were

his students barred from competing in the Gazette Relays, a major track meet held every

spring sponsored by the newspaper, when athletes from some integrated high schools in

neighboring Ohio were allowed to compete. The visit was before the historic 1954 Brown

vs. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that mandated public school

integration.1

At the time, as in many other states, African Americans lived separate lives from

whites in West Virginia. Most schools, and many neighborhoods, department stores, restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, and entertainment venues either offered separate services for blacks or refused them service altogether. West Virginia’s Constitution mandated segregated schools, and many towns and cities had ordinances forbidding a mixing of the races. In 1940, the black population in the state was 117,000, or about 5.7 percent of the total. By 1950, that number had fallen to 114,000, a trend that would continue until 1990, when African Americans made up just 56,000 of the state’s 1.793 million people, or 3.3 percent.2 Attracted in the first half of the twentieth century to jobs

in the coal mines, most black centers of population were not in core urban areas such as

Charleston and Huntington but in the coal-producing counties of southern West Virginia.

At the time of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, the population of McDowell

County, for instance, was 23 percent African American. Before the decision, West

Virginia had a mixed record of racial tolerance, an issue that displayed the state’s wide

regional differences and a tangle of roots that stretched back to the antebellum South and

its defection from the Old Dominion. In 1880, West Virginia lost a landmark case in the

U.S. Supreme Court in which the state sought to keep intact a law barring blacks from

serving on juries. The high court, in an opinion by Justice William Strong, issued a

stinging rebuke:

The statute of West Virginia which, in effect, singles out and denies to colored citizens the right and privilege of participating in the administration of the law as jurors because of their color, though qualified in all other respects, is, practically, a brand upon them, and a discrimination against them which is forbidden by the [14th] amendment.3

Yet, West Virginia University opened its agricultural extension classes to African

Americans in the mid-1920s, and graduate and professional schools were opened in 1938.

In 1948, the West Virginia attorney general’s office issued an opinion that it was not illegal to teach both races in nursing schools, which was interpreted to mean all private schools. Blacks subsequently were admitted to several private colleges, Alderson-

Broaddus, Wesleyan, Bethany, and Davis & Elkins.4

Chilton related the story of Principal Dennis visiting him in his office to a crowd

at West Virginia State College in 1984. It had granted Chilton an honorary doctorate of

humanities in 1966 for his virulent stands in favor of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and

subsequent civil rights legislation. Chilton, always attune to charges of his own

hypocrisy, acknowledged he should have responded quicker to the principal’s request:

I would like to be able to say this ridiculous inequity was corrected at once, but such wasn’t the case. . . . It was corrected the next year. As he was about to leave, I told him that I thought it was wonderful of him, a white man, to champion blacks. He looked at me with astonishment and said, “Mr. Chilton, I’m a Negro.” At that time, Charleston’s theaters barred blacks. Not even a special section was available, although Charleston’s Municipal Auditorium sold tickets, first come, first served. Anytime Principal Dennis wished to see a movie, which wasn’t very often, he had no trouble passing.

Figure 3. Southern West Virginia. .

When the Brown decision was handed down, West Virginia Governor William

Marland, backed by both the attorney general and the state superintendent of schools, issued a statement that all public schools would be integrated “quickly and smoothly.”5

The state’s newspapers and congressional delegation, including the Gazette, generally supported him. But Marland had no direct authority over local schools and the issue languished, although all universities and colleges in the state were opened to both blacks

and whites and the following year all but Glenville College had at least some African-

American students and formerly all black schools had at least some white students.6

Some in the state thought West Virginia’s most difficult social issues had less to do with race than class. The dangerous, dirty work of dragging coal from the earth was seen as a leveler of the human experience.7 While it was true that black men and whites

worked side by side in the gray, shadow world of the mine shaft, the brotherhood of the

union and of the shovel dissolved top side. McDowell County, West Virginia, whose county seat of Welch was slightly more than 100 miles southeast of Charleston, was typical of the larger coal-producing counties. In 1950, 65 percent of the workers in the county worked in a coal-related job. The county school system was split into five magisterial districts, four of which had both a black and a white high school. The remaining district did not have enough black students to support a high school, and those pupils were bused two hours across winding dirt roads to Kimball.

The county supported several newspapers, including the largest, the Welch Daily

News, which ran pictures only of white athletes in the districts. While twenty-five of the state’s fifty-five school systems began implementing integration plans in the months after the high court ruling, McDowell County was not among them. In responding to a Gazette survey of school administrators across the state, a McDowell supervisor wrote: “There has been no desire, demand, or interest in the integration issue. It’s awfully hard to answer about possible problems of integration protests. They could come.”8 The district

began to integrate after a suit by the local chapter of the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was settled after the Brown II decision in

1955, but in 1958, black students were still being bused to Kimball.9

As in most of the rest of the state, other venues, such as restaurants and theaters,

remained closed to African Americans. A white miner interviewed for a race relations

study in 1953 noted the difference between working with black men and living with

them:

I eat with 2 or 3 niggers every day [in the mines]. I don’t object to doing it, in fact I never thought about it much. I don’t say that I would go to a nigger’s house and eat and I don’t say I would let one come to mine to eat, but that’s different. As far as I am concerned, eating with a nigger on the job is just like working with him; he’s there, he has to eat the same as I do, so I don’t pay attention to it.10

Racial tensions built as many white authorities across the nation and in West

Virginia either ignored, partially implemented, or outright defied the U.S. Supreme Court order. Blacks, led by such civil rights leaders as The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., demanded not just swifter action in classrooms but equal access and treatment across society. Simmering since the end of World War II, the issue burst to the forefront in West

Virginia in 1959 when National Basketball Association star Elgin Baylor visited

Charleston on January 16. Despite ice and a near zero temperature, a crowd of 2,300 came to see the game between the Minneapolis Lakers and the Cincinnati Royals, which was sponsored by Charleston’s American Business Club and was held to kick off the city’s new auditorium. Baylor and two other African American Lakers players were turned away by a Charleston hotel. The team moved to a hotel that would accept them, but Baylor refused to dress for the game as a protest, sitting on the bench with his teammates in street clothes.11 The protest made national headlines, and a year later – with

West Virginia seen as a key battleground for Democratic presidential aspirant Kennedy –

King visited Charleston on January 24, 1960, to deliver a sermon at a local church, where

he told an overflow crowd that an “old order is dying and new one is being born.” He told a television reporter that civil rights legislation, in some form was inevitable.12

Those closest to Chilton can not pinpoint the motivation for what would become in the next few years an increasingly strident campaign for racial equality in West

Virginia, virulently addressing integration of schools, hotels, restaurants, and housing as well as employment and government contracts. With family roots that stretched back two centuries to Virginia, wealth that eclipsed most in West Virginia, and attendance at traditional all-white boarding schools and the rarified atmosphere of Yale University,

Chilton could be expected to tepidly support the Democratic Party platform as many newspapers did. James Haught, a longtime reporter and eventually editor for the Gazette and perhaps his closest and longest acquaintance on the newspaper staff, noted that he sometimes told a story from his days in the Army at the South Georgia training base.

Black United States soldiers were kept waiting at a restaurant while white German prisoners of war were served ahead of them. This, he told Haught, was simply wrong and demonstrated the need for change.13 His wife suggested that he “had very strong beliefs about politics, about race. People felt he was a traitor to his upbringing; they thought one way, and he felt another.”14 A longtime friend and the Charleston lawyer who later would fight repeated court battles for Chilton against libel suits and prying open government records, Rudolph L. DTrapano, believed the Gazette publisher was among the rare breed who put beliefs and principles above friends. “I’ve never met another man like him. No doubt, he was a traitor to his class.”15 His speech two decades later at West Virginia

State College provided no clues to his own motivations, though he recounted several personal incidents in which his views on race clashed with those in his circle. Among

them was a telephone call from the manager of Charleston’s Diamond Department Store, a large advertiser for the Gazette:

Following an editorial in which the Gazette chastised the Diamond for senseless sales practices, offering merchandise to blacks while limiting services to them, I received, late one afternoon at home, a telephone call from the department store’s president. After remonstrating with me about the editorial, he asked the question, “How would your wife like having her hair done in a beauty parlor also serving blacks?” I said, “Wait a minute. I’ll ask her.” So I asked her, and she said that prospect didn’t bother her, but if I didn’t get off the telephone and get ready for a party to which we were invited, I would be in a lot of trouble. The president heard our exchange, and when he said goodbye, I could tell he felt my wife had let him down.16

Chilton outlined his – and by extension the Gazette’s – overall view on racial equality in an editorial in the summer of 1963, prestaging what would become the historic civil rights battle in Congress waged by President Lyndon Johnson after

Kennedy’s assassination. Though involved in the newsroom and editorial policy as associate publisher, Chilton became undisputed leader of the Gazette in 1962. Using a

Newsweek survey of black Americans as the springboard, the Gazette rejected arguments made by some southern segregationist leaders that the drive for civil rights was a “a communist plot” and that, in fact, the average American black was opposed to the civil rights movement that was being fomented by “radicals and troublemakers.” He wrote:

He [the Negro] wants full equality – not just a share that the whites are willing to give him. He wants the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He simply wants to be a citizen in the full meaning of the privilege. In the name of justice, who can deny him these wants and these rights? And, if the Negro feels it necessary to rise up and demand them – by any means at his command – the fault lies not with the Negro, but with the whites who seek to suppress and oppress him.17

Never the scene of the violent southern protests that erupted in Mississippi and

Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s, the crescendo for reform hit West Virginia as the

debate began in Congress over Kennedy’s proposed civil rights legislation that would

allow the federal government to enforce desegregation, intervene in employment discrimination, and set up equal housing provisions. Bluefield, West Virginia, became a target of the state NAACP, whose president, the Reverend C. Anderson Davis, called for a boycott of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph in an announcement on July 18, 1963. Davis said the newspaper “had a policy throughout the years of printing all types of news that might show the Negro in a bad light, but very seldom does it print news that would be favorable to civil rights or bring about equality of all peoples.”18 He suggested boycotting

readers pick up The Charleston Gazette as an alternative.19

The Daily Telegraph was purchased near the turn of the century by the powerful

and archly Republican Shott family, whose scion, Hugh Ike Shott, served in the United

States Senate and whose ancestors would face the ire of the federal Justice Department

for their tight grip on the media in the county. Davis, in his announcement, explained

why the newspaper was among the first businesses to be targeted: “It encourages, and is

the main cause for, much of the general practice of segregation and discrimination in this

vicinity. The press is the most important factor in molding public sentiment. This

particular paper is all enemy to the cause of freedom and justice for the Negro.”20 Less than two weeks later, he expanded the call for a boycott to all businesses in the city that discriminated.21

Bluefield is the Mercer County seat, sharing a border with Virginia. More genteel

than its neighboring counties in the southern West Virginia coalfields, the area was

largely white and largely conservative, despite the local college being established in 1895

as an all-black teacher’s college. The school was integrated in 1954 as part of the overall

integration of West Virginia’s colleges.22 Davis called the Bluefield area a “cesspool of

segregation and hatred. It’s the worst of all cities in West Virginia when it comes to

discrimination.”23 The Gazette ridiculed the city’s nomination as a finalist for the “All-

American City” designation in a December 14, 1964, editorial, noting the arrest of

protestors seeking to integrate the city’s YMCA: “It is the last community in West

Virginia to cling to the old immorality of the South. Its pathetic posturing is accented by

the chance fact that one of the final blows to be struck in the state against brotherhood

was struck by a ‘Christian organization.’”24 The Daily Telegraph hit back with an

editorial that accused local college students, some faculty, and the Gazette of painting

the city as one of “racism and bigotry.” The editorial sparked rain-drenched pickets

outside Daily Telegraph offices by students, who said they were protesting overall

editorial policies of the newspaper.25 In addressing a planned march earlier in the year that had been called off by state NAACP leaders and then reinstated by local activists, the

Telegraph stated its overall position on the race issue: “The great majority of Bluefield and area residents who have no wish to deny the Negro any genuine legal or moral right are correct, in this newspaper’s opinion, in bitterly resenting the antics of this lunatic fringe in the civil rights movement.”26

Chilton’s assault against Bluefield was overblown, leaving the fiery publisher

open to charges of hypocrisy for failing to use the same standard in attacking

discriminatory practices elsewhere in the state, including Charleston. Although Bluefield

was perhaps the most vocal of the communities struggling with racial equality and the

earliest target of the NAACP, many communities in the state continued discriminatory and segregated practices as the Civil Rights Act was being debated in Congress.

Charleston and Kanawha County, for instance, came under fire by the NAACP for school discrimination in March 1964, and the city’s popular Skateland roller rink was not integrated until late in 1967 when thirty people, both whites and African Americans, were arrested for staging a protest.27

The difference between Chilton and most of his brethren in the publishing

industry was his willingness to meet the demands of the issue and a rising vehemence

rather than cutting back editorial rhetoric for change. In 1963 and much of 1964, the

Gazette relied on the state Associated Press to report incidents such as those in Bluefield

but, toward the end of 1964, he assigned reporter K.W. Lee, one of the few minority

reporters working in the state, to cover the civil rights issue full-time, and his by-line

began to appear on stories dealing with race issues across the state. The Gazette

frequently gave prominent, front-page display to news stories on racial unrest and

charges of discrimination, including accusations by the NAACP that Kanawha County

schools had fewer black administrators in 1964 than in 1954, that black students were

discouraged from taking part in extra-curricular activities, and that school textbooks and

curriculum failed to include prominent black leaders or culture “except perhaps the

Southern white’s favorite Negro, Booker T. Washington.”28 (A decade later, the textbook

issue, though initially wrapped in religious overtones, would erupt into a national issue

and put Chilton in the uncomfortable position of supporting the local school board

against many of his readers.)

As the debate surged back and forth in Congress in 1963 over the historic legislation,

West Virginia’s junior senator, Robert Byrd, became a focal point as renewed allegations swirled that he was racist, reviving stories of his membership in the Ku Klux Klan. The

Gazette first broke the news of Byrd’s membership in the KKK a week before the state’s

May 1952 primary election after three affidavits were delivered to Governor Okey

Patteson, a fellow Democrat and the head of the party in the state. The affidavits, signed by three men in Byrd’s native Raleigh County, accused him of “soliciting membership to the Klan and participating in Klan activities in the Crab Orchard vicinity about 1944 and

1945.”29 He was running against three opponents for the Democratic Party nomination for United States House of Representatives from the sixth district, which covered portions of several southern coal field counties of which his native Raleigh was the largest. The owner and operator of a small Sophia market, Byrd was elected to the West

Virginia House of Delegates in 1946, and served two terms before being elected in 1950 to the state Senate. Patteson was supporting Byrd in the primary as part of his candidate slate.

Figure 4. Robert Byrd in 1970s.

Byrd issued a lengthy statement addressing the allegations, acknowledging he joined the Klan as a twenty-four-year-old because it offered “excitement” and was

“opposed to Communism,”30 but the affidavits had the dates wrong. He said he was a

member of the Klan from 1942 until early 1943. He said he worked in defense plants in

Baltimore, Maryland, and Tampa Bay, Florida, in 1944 and 1945. The KKK issue, he

charged, was being leveled by a “Republican Negro lawyer and by one of my

opponents.” The affidavits were given to Patteson by Ned H. Ragland, the Raleigh

County prosecutor who also was seeking the primary nomination for Congress. Byrd

accused the men of cowardice for attempting to have the governor withdraw his support,

rather than going directly to the press. He said no one could point to any prejudicial

actions on his part and “the colored voters of my county do not need to be told of his

[Ragland’s] treatment in cases involving Negroes.”31 He wrote of his involvement in the

Klan:

After about a year, I became disinterested, quit paying dues, dropping my membership in the organization. During the nine years that followed, I have never been interested in the Klan, but, on the other hand, I have directed my energies toward the upbuilding of my community, my church, and my fellow citizens of every race, creed and color.32

Patteson, asked whether he would continue to support Byrd’s candidacy, replied that the

KKK had been used as a “whisper campaign” against Byrd in previous elections. “Why he’d get mixed up in an affair of that kind I don’t know but, of course, I don’t see that it will have any bearing on my position in the matter at all.”33

Byrd won the hard-fought primary but lost Patteson’s support in October when

new affidavits were released during a Republican Party rally in Beckley, the seat of

Raleigh County. The new charges included a letter purportedly written by Byrd to the

“Hon. Samuel Green” of Atlanta, Georgia, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux

Klan. Dated April 8, 1946, it urged the formation of Klan headquarters in Beckley, and

noted: “The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here

in West Virginia. It is necessary that the Order be promoted immediately and in every

state in the Union. Will you please inform me as to the possibilities of rebuilding the

Klan in the realm of West Virginia.”34

Byrd immediately issued a statement, saying the “Klan is a dead issue.” He did

not question the authenticity of the letter, but said he did “not recall having written this

letter in 1946, nor do I recall having had any connection with the Klan after 1943.”35 The

letter sparked a late-evening confrontation between Byrd and Patteson on October 11,

1952. Patteson had been on a hunting trip in North Carolina and hurried back to the state

when the new revelations broke. He called Frank A. Knight, the managing editor of the

Gazette, to tell him that he intended that evening to ask for Byrd’s withdrawal as the

Democratic Party’s nominee. At 11:30 p.m., after an hour-long conference in the governor’s office, Patteson called Knight again, with Byrd still sitting across from his desk, and said, “I am no longer endorsing or supporting his candidacy.”36 Byrd had

refused to withdraw. Knight asked the governor to put Byrd on the telephone, and the governor handed him the receiver. Knight asked him whether he had anything to say.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, Byrd asked whether the newspaper would continue to accept his political ads for the few weeks remaining before the general election. Knight replied the decision ultimately would be made by advertising executives, but he could see

no reason why they would refuse his ads. “Then you will assure me the same courtesy as

anyone else?” Byrd asked.37

Two days later, the evening Charleston Daily Mail reported in a story labeled

“late bulletin” on an appearance by Byrd at the Kiwanis Club luncheon in Charleston, where he said he would not withdraw “regardless of developments.” The story carried no byline and reported confidential sources in the Democratic Party that the Klan issue was being raised as part of a conspiracy within the party to “get right” with the incumbent, E.

H. Hedrick of Beckley, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in the Democratic primary.

Based on journalistic conventions of the day and the ongoing antipathy between the Mail and Gazette, it is reasonable to surmise that the Mail’s “confidential sources” likely consisted of Byrd, who “confirmed the rumors” in an interview with the Mail after the luncheon. The ongoing controversy presented the Mail with the opportunity to subtly swipe at both the Gazette and the Democrats. The Mail noted in its front page story that downplayed Byrd’s connection to the Klan:

His friends, apparently thinking that Hedrick can now provide a measure of harmony in a party considerably shaken by recent results, have purportedly been building a fire under authorities to reconsider their stand. The Daily Mail’s sources said this consideration of the “Hedrick situation” was the real reason for the governor’s special conference with Byrd on Saturday. They argue that the Ku Klux Klan was only a screen to hide the meeting’s real purpose.38

Byrd won the race for the House seat, beginning an unprecedented fifty-seven

year run in Congress. He would never be seriously challenged again in his home state,

and won his bid for the United States Senate against a Republican incumbent in 1960. His

ties to the Klan were revived when he bolted from the rest of the West Virginia

delegation, including Senate stalwart Jennings Randolph, to join twenty-two senators

who had formed the Southern bloc to fight against Kennedy’s proposed Civil Rights

Act.39 The debate raged in Congress throughout 1963, and Chilton sent longtime staffer

Thomas F. Stafford to Washington to cover representatives from the state NAACP as they solicited support for the legislation and for the planned August 28 march on

Washington from the state’s congressional delegation.40 While some members were more

enthusiastic than others, all but Byrd supported Kennedy’s legislation, though none

committed to taking part in the national protest. Stafford, in remarkable detail, related

Byrd’s exchange with the NAACP’s fiery Davis:

Byrd: I don’t agree with the general idea [of federal government involvement in job discrimination]. I feel the Negro should have the opportunity to advance and be employed. But like everybody else, he should advance on the basis of merit. I want every man, white or nonwhite, to have his just rights and privileges. I don’t want to infringe on one group’s rights in the process. Davis: But there is discrimination. The Negro is the last to be hired and the first to be fired. Byrd: These conditions are on the decline. I don’t believe they exist in the degree some people say. I’m not in accord with discrimination against the Negro or white person, but I do feel the employer has rights and privileges, too. He is in a better position to know what the realities of the situation are in his community and what the feelings of his employees are. Davis: We don’t want people employed who aren’t capable, but we feel the Negro needs equal opportunity.41

The civil rights legislation stalled. Kennedy’s assassination that November

allowed Johnson to renew the push in the spring of 1964. Editorially, Chilton separated

the issue of equality from the actual legislation, lamenting that humankind must be forced

by government to do what was right. The legislation “imposes a kind of tyranny in order

to combat tyranny” putting “unusual privilege in the hands of the attorney general.” Yet,

he noted, the Senate’s duty was to pass the bill:

It is one thing to philosophize about the impossibility of legislating morality. It is quite another thing to sit and wait, and wait, and wait, for the people to acquire morality. If, within a reasonable period, the people themselves could be expected to grant from their own hearts the freedom now being withheld from the Negro, we would oppose this bill. Under the obvious contrary circumstances, the civil rights bill has our complete support.42

Those familiar with Chilton’s later work, and his insistence on naming names and

calling for direct accountability, could be puzzled by his seeming reluctance to call out

Byrd, specifically, in an editorial addressing the Senate version of the bill. This could be

explained two ways. First, the civil rights issue was his first major battle as publisher, and

his style likely was influenced by the management and staff of the Gazette at the time,

most of whom had been there for years under the steady – if far more sedate – leadership

of Smith. In coming years, Chilton would have more influence on the staff than they on

him. Indeed, he would populate the reporting ranks and fill top editor positions with

those, like Don Marsh and James Haught, who had served with him and agreed with his

crusading philosophy. Second, his views on journalism still were being formed and it

would be another nineteen years before he articulated his theory of sustained outrage,

institutional memory, and direct accountability.

Stafford joined the Gazette in 1956 after serving as editor of the Register in

Beckley and knew Byrd and his connections to the Klan, which he viewed as youthful indiscretion that had been politically exploited.43 In his weekly Gazette column on

politics, he reported that Byrd was opposed to three main provisions of the civil rights

legislation: federal enforcement of public accommodations, equal hiring opportunities,

and non-discrimination in federal assistance programs. While some critics suggested

Byrd’s Klan allegiance was resurfacing and he was a “Negro hater,” Stafford suggested,

in a bit of twisted logic, the more likely motivation was maintaining senatorial influence:

We have known him for more than 20 years and have followed his work throughout that period and we cannot go along with this viewpoint. We believe that Byrd’s opposition to the civil rights bill is intimately involved with his Capitol Hill associations, and he cannot support it without putting his senatorial influence in danger.

Byrd joined the Southern conservative bloc when he first went to the Senate and in so doing won appointment to such important committees as appropriations, rules and armed forces. If he should now break with the Southerners on this issue, which to them is the new Fort Sumter, they would brand him a renegade and a scoundrel.44

Yet, Chilton was not reluctant to address the issue directly with others. For

instance, he chastised New York Times columnist Russell Baker in a letter in June 1963 for failing to mention Byrd’s connections to the Ku Klux Klan when he wrote a column

about Senate opposition to Kennedy’s welfare program. Baker wrote back,

acknowledging that his “judgment was poor” and now “I am, like you, fairly well convinced that Byrd’s motivation on welfare here is fundamentally – perhaps subconsciously – racial.”45 In May 1964, Chilton asked Randolph to support his bid as a

delegate to the national Democratic Party convention that summer, and as an aside

demanded to know when the civil rights legislation would pass. Randolph replied:

The publisher of the Gazette, who has been understanding and helpful, deserves and will receive the maximum support this Senator can muster. You have asked: When is the Civil Rights going to pass? Frankly, I wish I had the answer. There remain many imponderables – but I am hopeful the result will be favorable and earlier than the most optimistic forecasts.46

The debate reached its zenith in Congress in June 1964, with Byrd speaking for

more than fourteen hours as the final actor of the Southern bloc, which staged an historic and ultimately failed filibuster against the legislation.47 The new law, however, marked

only the beginning of racial strife and ongoing protests against discrimination. Chilton

never relented, with the Gazette offering its readers numerous front-page updates on

efforts in West Virginia to desegregate restaurants, hotels, and movie houses. In 1965,

Chilton enthusiastically backed a local ministerial alliance that pledged to preach

tolerance and integration to their flocks as part of a “Good Neighbor Program.” The idea

was to get congregation members to sign pledges accepting “Negro neighbors,” and these

would be forwarded to the Clearing House for Open Occupancy Selection, which would

presumably make the information available to local realtors. The program was announced

in a front-page story under a four-column, two-line headline.48 Two days later, Chilton

wrote in an editorial that the program would restore the reputation and image of the

church (something no one, at least in Charleston, could be found to have said needed

repair): “Sanctimoniousness, shallow piety, blue-nosed Puritanism, social clubbishness

and other distasteful qualities that have gradually tarnished the image of the church may

be abruptly rubbed away by this one real act of compassion and concern.”49 Gazette

articles followed the program closely, reporting every time a new church signed up.50

In 1967, Chilton’s ire was piqued when the West Virginia Association of Realtors fiercely fought against giving the West Virginia Human Rights Commission power to enforce equal housing. Although formed several years before, the commission largely acted as a lobbying and investigative group and had no authority to sanction government agencies or businesses that discriminated. By then, Stafford had left the Gazette, and

other longtime managers and reporters were planning their exits, partly because of

Chilton’s increasing demands and gruff management style.51 Chilton, finding his voice and reaching toward what would become his trademark energy in editorializing, was no longer reticent about government enforcing equality, lambasting state realtors and by extension hundreds of advertisers:

Reacting as predictably as Pavlov’s dog, the West Virginia Association of Realtors has aligned itself with the cause of fear, hostility, bigotry and small-minded apprehension. Forced housing is the cry raised against the open occupancy portion of the proposed state civil rights law and state Realtor President B.Y. Chalfant of Parkersburg chants the liturgy: ‘We are in favor of open housing, but are opposed to legislation that denies the property owners the right of choice.’ What Mr. Chalfant means is that all- white neighborhoods must be ensured the right to wall out those whose complexion isn’t quite socially acceptable.

What he means is that “respectable” white families must be guaranteed the privilege of teaching their children that Negroes are inferior, without the danger of any Negro moving close enough for the children to see otherwise. What he means is that brotherhood and empathy are alien words in a land where class prestige and real estate values are the true ideals. Mr. Chalfant knows that a great many West Virginians still harbor the same petty suspicions, the same cheap little hates.52

The drive to give teeth to the state Human Rights Commission was successful, but

West Virginia was not immune to the protests that stormed through the nation in the turbulent months of 1968 as the nation wept in the aftermath of the murders of King and

Robert Kennedy. “Black youths” in Wheeling threw rocks and bottles at police, protesting what they called a lack of respect for King’s death.53 More than 300 demonstrators marched on the Capitol in Charleston to protest continued discrimination at Bluefield State College.54 Through it all, Chilton kept up a consistent stream of news coverage and editorials, often decrying violence but always upholding the rights of

protestors and clamoring for change and equality. In addition, the Gazette letters to the

editor page offered voice to all perspectives. For instance, the March 21, 1964, edition

had two letters from residents of Hinton in Summers County. In the first, under the

headline “Summers Negroes Resent Klan,” Harry E. Jones described himself as a Boy

Scout leader and a church officeholder. He wrote he felt the Negroes’ “place is any place

under the Stars and Stripes,” and residents should ignore the newly formed local chapter of the KKK and the “leadership of these peddlers of bigotry and hate.” Below the letter, under a headline in much smaller type – “Protect both races” – Noah J. Palmer, who described himself as the imperial wizard of the Hinton Klan, wrote that the races should be equal but separate “in order for both races to survive.”55

In the aftermath of race riots in some of the nation’s largest cities in 1967, the

Johnson administration established the Kerner Commission to examine what sparked the

riots and how community leaders handled them. Much of the attention was focused on the media, with many local officials saying the media exasperated the problems by exaggerating events and, on occasion, inventing turmoil. The Kerner Commission, in fact, concluded, at least partially, the opposite. A content analysis of news coverage in the most affected cities showed the majority of news in the papers and on television was restrained and tended to show the aftermath of the riots, including clean-up efforts and prevention efforts, rather than scenes of actual rioting. What the commission did find was that the mainstream press systematically and fundamentally failed to cover the plight of the “Negro in the ghetto” and provided no forum for exchanging ideas and information.

In fact, African Americans were far more likely to get news from word of mouth and short radio snippets on black stations than from the mainstream press, which tended to

cover such issues, if at all, only from the white perspective. The result was a widening

gulf between whites and blacks. The idea was that if African Americans could trust the

major media, information the media provided could be helpful in preventing future riots

and advancing the cause of peace and equality. The Commission noted: “The

commission’s major concern with the news media is not in riot reporting as such, but in

the failure to report adequately on race relations and ghetto problems and to bring

Negroes into journalism.”56

Chilton’s vehement stands on equality caused the local country club to

“blackball” him as well as many uncomfortable moments at cocktail parties.57 The Rev.

Homer Davis, a well-known Charleston civil rights leader who personally led demonstrations that resulted in the integration of a popular local swimming pool in the

1960s, was among the attendees at the ceremony at West Virginia State College where

Chilton received the honorary doctorate for his support of the civil rights movement.

Speaking years later, Davis echoed the findings of the Kerner Commission. While social change no doubt would have come with or without the Gazette, Chilton’s insistence on providing news coverage that was as open (some would say more so) to African

American leaders as to white leaders and repeated, fierce editorials that framed the issue in stark terms of simple human dignity dramatically affected the tenor and timing of the change. Davis had met Chilton a few times but would not characterize him even as an acquaintance. He was, however, deeply familiar with the Gazette’s civil rights reporter,

K.W. Lee, who was a “very, very good reporter and very helpful and beneficial to the

African American community.” Chilton was not a civil rights leader, just a good

publisher. Without a newspaper “of that circulation size that offered that kind of support”

the “[the civil rights struggle] would have been much more difficult.”58

By the time Chilton addressed the crowd at West Virginia State in 1984, the

extreme emotion of the period had passed. He either forgot, or ignored, his opinion of

twenty years prior about Bluefield being the last West Virginia bastion of Southern

“immorality.” In his speech, he quoted an editorial in the Daily Telegraph immediately

after the 1954 Brown decision that said while it may take a year or two for integration to

be complete, “Right or wrong, the Supreme Court is the highest authority in a national

government by law. It is the last word. We must abide by the decision.”59

The good vibes from Chilton’s speech were a blip. By that fall, now in his early

60s and ever ready for battle, Chilton ordered up a campaign against the West Virginia

Human Rights Commission, which had been armed with enforcement powers – at his urging – in 1967. The agency was mucking it up, he stormed in an editorial, allowing a backlog of 1,672 complaints to sit unattended despite a special federal grant to hire more workers to deal with the problem:

Justice delayed is justice denied. Who but the commission’s leadership should be blamed for its 17 years of blundering stagnation? All hands, including Executive Director [Howard] Kenney, should tender their resignations . . . and the governor should accept [them] on the spot and look for competent replacements.60

Chilton’s rising venom and sustained outrage on the race issue could have served

as a portent of the angry clouds that would form over state politics in the coming years.

Attentive readers, as they watched Chilton’s maturation, could catch glimpses of what

was to come. But no one could foresee his upcoming crusades against the nation’s

highest law enforcement agency, the state’s most popular Republican politician, and the historic wealth and spending that would mark West Virginia’s most hotly contested political races.

Notes

1 W.E. Chilton III, speech delivered in spring 1984 to a gathering at West Virginia State College to mark the 30th anniversary of the court decision. The original speech is among papers compiled and kept by James A. Haught, the current editor of the Gazette.

2 U.S. Census Bureau. Table 63. West Virginia – Race and Hispanic Origin: 1790 to1990, at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0056/tab63.pdf. (Accessed June 30, 2009).

3 Strauder v. West Virginia – 1880. Law Library: Great American Legal Information. Great American Court Cases. Vol. 7, at http://law.jrank.org/pages/12916/Strauder-v-West-Virginia.html#ixzz0JpQwLCyP&D. (Accessed June 30, 2009). The Fourteenth Amendment mandated equal protection. While Strauder won the case, it would be many decades before blacks were welcome to serve on juries and be called as witnesses in West Virginia courts.

4 Chilton speech, spring 1984, West Virginia State College.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid. In his speech, Chilton credited Fred Glazer, director of the West Virginia Library Systems, Elizabeth Scobell of the West Virginia State Library, and Lawrence V. Jordan, a former teaching supervisor at West Virginia State, with gathering the facts for his talk.

7 Alice Carter. “Segregation and Integration in the Appalachian Coalfields: McDowell County responds to the Brown decision.” West Virginia History. Vol. 54 (1995), 78-104.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 West Virginia Department of Culture and History. Time Trail – West Virginia, at http://www.wvculture.org/hiStory/timetrl/ttjan.html. (Accessed June 29, 2009).

12 Ibid.

13 Interview, James Haught, Charleston, W.Va., January 19, 2009.

14 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton, Charleston, W.Va., January 19, 2009.

15 Interview, Rudolph L. DiTrapano, Charleston, W.Va., June 16, 2009.

16 W.E. Chilton III speech delivered in spring 1984 at West Virginia State College.

17 Editorial, “The Negro wants only what is rightfully his,” Charleston Gazette, August 1, 1963.

18 Associated Press, “Bluefield paper target of boycott,” Charleston Gazette, July 19, 1963.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Associated Press, “Bluefield negro boycott argued,” Charleston Gazette, August 3, 1963.

22 BSC History, at http://www.bluefieldstate.edu/aboutBSC.htm. (Accessed July 1, 2009).

23 Associated Press, “Bluefield negro boycott argued,” Charleston Gazette, August 3, 1963.

24 Editorial, “Bluefield – All American?,” Charleston Gazette, December 14, 1964.

25 Associated Press, “Newspaper picketed,” Charleston Gazette, December 18, 1964.

26 Editorial, “A changed march,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, February 12, 1964.

27 George Steele, “30 arrested at Skateland,” Charleston Gazette, January 7, 1967.

28 K.W. Lee, “Racial inequities cited in schools,” Charleston Gazette, March 23, 1964.

29 Staff, “Byrd admits joining Klan for ‘excitement,’” Charleston Gazette, May 9, 1952.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Frank A. Knight, “Governor declines further support after Klan mixup,” Charleston Gazette, Oct. 12, 1952.

35 Staff, “Can’t recall letter, Byrd claims,” Charleston Daily Mail, October 10, 1952. The newspaper reported that the Beckley Post-Herald and the Gazette had printed the letter in full as photographs. The Mail printed the letter in that edition on page 19.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid. Knight seemed stunned by Byrd’s calm reaction. He related his conversations and the events of the evening in a copyrighted story on the front page. Knight wrote after relating Byrd’s advertising question: “In his out-and-out defiance of the governor, the titular head of the Democratic Party in West Virginia, Byrd immediately was entirely on his own as a candidate.”

38 Staff, “Explosion due if Byrd sticks,” Charleston Daily Mail, Oct. 14, 1952.

39 Art and History, United States Senate, at http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Civil_Rights_Filibuster_Ended.htm (Accessed July 2, 2009).

40 Thomas F. Stafford, “NAACP finds state backing: All but Byrd,” Charleston Gazette, August 9, 1963.

41 Ibid.

42 Editorial, “Civil Rights bill our only choice,” Charleston Gazette, March 13, 1964.

43 Thomas Stafford. Afflicting the comfortable: Journalism and politics in West Virginia. (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2005), 37-39.

44 Thomas F. Stafford, “Byrd out of step on civil rights,” Charleston Gazette, March 29, 1964.

45 Russell Baker to W.E. Chilton III, June 17, 1963, Chilton III Papers. A&M 3020 Addendum, Box 1, File 16, West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University, Morgantown.

46 United States Senator Jennings Randolph to W.E. Chilton III, May 6, 1964, Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 17, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

47 Art and History, United States Senate, at http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Civil_Rights_Filibuster_Ended.htm. (Accessed July 2, 2009).

48 James A. Haught, “Ministers ask welcome for negro neighbors,” Charleston Gazette, October 6, 1965.

49 Editorial, “City ministers due praise for bold, significant step,” Charleston Gazette, October 8, 1965.

50 See, for instance, staff, “Ministers in Dunbar join ‘Good Neighbor’ campaign,” Charleston Gazette, October 21, 1965.

51 Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable, 135.

52 Editorial, “Realtor cry raised anew: Tragedy is they may win,” Charleston Gazette, February 18, 1967.

53 Associated Press, “Wheeling hit anew by racial violence,” Charleston Gazette, April 9, 1968.

54 K.W. Lee, “300 marchers issue demonstrations vow,” Charleston Gazette, February 18, 1968.

55 Readers Forum, “Summers negroes resent Klan,” Harry E. Jones; “Protect both races,” Noah J. Palmer, Charleston Gazette, March 21, 1964.

56 Thomas J. Hrach, “Media in the Riot City: How the November 1967 Kerner Commission media conference blamed the messenger,” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington, DC, August 8, 2007, at http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p202532_index.html. (Accessed July 29, 2009).

57 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton, Charleston, W.Va., January 19, 2009. Noted Mrs. Chilton: “[Other issues] weren’t as bad as the civil rights. We were blackballed at the country club because of his stance; our families had been members for years.”

58 Interview, the Rev. Homer Davis, by telephone, July 1, 2009.

59 W.E. Chilton III, speech delivered in 1984 to a gathering at West Virginia State College.

60 Editorial, “Human rights,” Charleston Gazette. September 18, 1984.

Chapter 4: An Offense to Conventional Wisdom

A casual conversation between United States Representative Ken Hechler, a West

Virginia Democrat, a Princeton University doctorate and a World War II historian, and

Chilton early in 1976 resulted in the nation learning that the Federal Bureau of

Investigation kept extensive files on some newspapers, their editors, and their owners.

Including Chilton and the Gazette. Hechler had heard from a colleague that the FBI

appeared to maintain files on at least some congressmen, and on a whim submitted a

Freedom of Information request for his file. After some bickering and delay, Hechler received about fifty pages of documents, some of which were heavily redacted, that included an astonishingly detailed report on his trip in 1968 to the Czechoslovakian embassy in Washington, D.C., to get a visa. The FBI compared the photograph of an

“unidentified white male” seen entering the embassy with Hechler’s passport picture and confirmed the man was the congressman, who had been critical of the FBI’s surveillance of civil rights groups during hearings and made speeches warning that the agency “was turning our free nation toward a police state” by investigating those critical of the government.1 Laughing about it, Hechler told Chilton that he was sure the FBI had a file

on him, too.

Chilton, both intrigued and outraged, quickly sent in a request to the agency for

any “information or documents” relating to him, the Gazette or any of its editors.2 What came back nine months later, after two follow-up letters, sent a shudder and more than a few chuckles through the nation’s press. The FBI not only had a voluminous file on the

Gazette stretching back to the 1930s, but at one point Director J. Edgar Hoover had sent agents into the newsroom to identify editors unfriendly to the bureau. The files revealed

numerous memos and letters from agents to Hoover and his office about editorials in the

Gazette and included profiles on Editor Harry Hoffman, who was described as a

“scurrilous character” who would not be open to reform, and Chilton, who was noted for

writing editorials in “praise of Red China” and “highly critical of . . . the FBI.”3 The file

noted the Gazette in the 1930s and early 1940s was friendly to the FBI, in one editorial

labeling Hoover as the nation’s “policeman No. 1.”4 That began to change in the late

1940s when Chilton Jr., Chilton III’s father, launched attacks on the Communist hunt in

Hollywood. Then in 1953, when Chilton was the Gazette’s promotional director,

Hoffman wrote an editorial critical of Hoover’s congressional testimony attacking

President Harry S Truman. Since then, the FBI noted, the Gazette had grown increasingly

critical of the bureau, including criticizing its performance in investigating the deaths of

civil rights activists in Mississippi and Alabama. When African American reporter Ed

Peeks called the Atlanta, Georgia, FBI bureau in June 1964 as part of a Gazette probe

into complaints by local civil rights activists that the agency was lax in responding to

complaints about police brutality, Hoover issued an order that no assistance should be

given to the newspaper because it had been “consistently hostile to the bureau over the

years.”

Hoover was apoplectic in 1959 when the special agent based in Charleston took

four days to forward to his office a critical Gazette editorial, sending a blistering letter to

the supervisor in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, office, demanding he “immediately submit

an explanation as to why the editorial of October 26, 1959 . . . wasn’t brought to the

bureau’s attention until October 30. Not only should a full explanation be furnished, but

your recommendation as to appropriate administrative action should also be included.”5 It

turned out that Hoover’s fury was unneeded. The editorial mistakenly attributed testimony about the FBI seeking the names of “liberals” when actually it was a

Communist organizer seeking the names. Hoover sent a letter asking for a correction.6

Gazette investigative reporter James Haught wrote an extensive report on the files and Chilton’s efforts to get them. The Associated Press sent out the story under his own byline, an unusual practice for the wire service, and New York Times reporter Ben A.

Franklin did an article that moved on the Times’ wire service. Both stories received wide play, including large headlines in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution and The

(Nashville) Tennessean. Franklin noted that “so far as it can be learned from the FBI and through a check of other newspapers by the Associated Press, the Gazette is the first such publication to avail itself of . . . disclosure provisions . . . establishing that the bureau kept files not only on individual journalists but also on publishing organizations.”7

The response in the press industry was one of bemused outrage. The fact Hoover would be so personally interested in the Gazette, with a circulation at the time of the release of the files in 1976 of about 80,000 on Sunday and about 50,000 in 1953, raised interest not only in what other newspaper owners the FBI had probed but exactly how far the investigations went. For instance, while the files released noted that “Mr. and Mrs.

Chilton” had not been investigated, a letter from then FBI Director Clarence Kelley said the files had been “edited” and that as many as eight pages would never be released because they concerned national security, violated privacy provisions, or revealed FBI techniques.8 Editor & Publisher, the industry’s oldest and best-read trade journal, said the

files represented “a police-state mentality and attitude that has no place in our society.”9

The Nation magazine wrote that the files told of a “love story gone sour” and revealed

Hoover and the bureau as “so full of vanity and slapstick, pettiness and bureaucratic low comedy that one is tempted to cast Oliver Hardy in the role of the director.” Yet, the magazine said, “this was no laughing matter and the FBI . . . is still under no effective control by our elected representatives.”10 The Daily Mail called the FBI’s activities

“madness:”

As its faithful readers complain now and then, the Gazette is sometimes an offense to good sense and the conventional wisdom – and rather inordinately proud of its reputation in this department. But a threat to domestic tranquility and national security worth a moment’s serious consideration by the district constable? Hardly.

There are a couple of deeply disturbing questions about what the FBI was trying to do. Did it think, perhaps, by this grab bag of chitchat and opinion to cultivate in the Gazette a more respectable attitude toward the mythification of the FBI? Or, conceivably, was it preparing for some apocalyptic Der Tag when at the need to separate the sheep from the goats, Ned Chilton and Harry Hoffman would take early retirement in some new- found Siberia and the rest of us could take refuge in the protective custody of the FBI?

The 1976 fight for his files was not Chilton’s first direct contact with the FBI. In a

letter dated January 26, 1953, which was not mentioned in any of the coverage twenty-

three years later, Hoover sent Chilton a response to what apparently had been a request

for information. Hoover declined: “I would like to point out also that this agency is

strictly a fact-finding agency, and it is not within the limits of its prescribed functions to

draw conclusions or make evaluations as to the character or integrity of any organization

or individual.”11 The group or individual was not named in Hoover’s letter, and there is

nothing on the record or in the recollections of those closest to the publisher about what the request concerned. Also absent from the documents released by the FBI in 1976 and

coverage of the issue was Chilton’s extensive travel in Europe and the Soviet bloc in the

1960s. He and his wife, Elizabeth, visited the Far East in 1962 as part of an extended newspaper study tour; in 1965, they traveled through all Eastern European satellites, save

Albania, as part of a similar program; and in 1968, they spent several weeks in the Soviet

Union as members of the American Study Mission.12 The fact that FBI interest in Hechler ramped up after his visit to the Czech embassy13 and the fact Chilton’s extensive travel in

Communist countries was not mentioned in the released file is more intriguing because

the issue of the extensive redactions and missing pages.

What presents no mystery, however, was Chilton’s political philosophy. He felt, vehemently and publicly, that Communism was not the threat to American government, ideals or industry that many in Washington had claimed it to be. An irrational fear of the red threat, Chilton wrote in 1972, “is an error responsible for more than 25 years of wrong American foreign policy.”14 He was a lifelong Democrat, in the tradition of his

grandfather, the United States senator who fought for Woodrow Wilson’s agenda, and his

father, who had adamantly supported Franklin Roosevelt. In addition to serving eight

years as Democratic member of the House of Delegates, Chilton was as a delegate to the

Democratic national convention in 1960 and in 1964 helped write the national platform.15

While no one would ever question his allegiance to the party, no one could count on the

Gazette’s support for any particular issue or candidate. Both Johnson and Kennedy had unsuccessfully tried to woo him, with Johnson at one point sending him a plaintive note asking whether “you have any suggestions as to how we can work more effectively together.”16

Chilton was a liberal in the classic definition, examining each candidate and issue

on their own merits from the angle of whether the person or policy supported those

without power against those with power. His stands were stark. Either something was wrong or it was not, and he had little patience for debating nuance. He vehemently opposed, for instance, capital punishment, calling it “legal murder” that was anathema to a society that considered itself “humanitarian” and struggling to “improve itself.”17 When

two state senators suggested reinstating the death penalty in 1969, the Gazette suggested the new law should include a mandate that the executions be televised since “too few of those upon whom the dread punishment is supposed to have such a salutary impact will be able to witness the gory proceedings.”18 He supported expanded welfare programs but

only those that led to “returning the welfare client to a gainful, constructive existence.”19

He consistently called for a convention to rewrite the state’s Constitution to conform with

what he considered modern society, such as allowing women to serve on juries (an

amendment the voters approved in 1954) and allowing interracial couples to marry.20 The

Gazette pushed for environmental reform, becoming an early voice in the state for laws

controlling strip mining; combining local governmental units to save money and provide

better services; and consumer law reform that gave buyers more information and

government more power to hold violators accountable. As early as 1963, he was praised

by controversial national radio host Robert St. John for leading “America’s most

outspoken liberal newspaper.”21

Historically, the Gazette rarely endorsed Republican candidates and generally

supported Democratic officeholders, at one point in its history raising eyebrows around

the state when it offered only tepid coverage, and no commentary, on a Daily Mail

investigation in 1942 into Democratic Governor M.M. Neely’s involvement in

questionable land deals and Walter E. Clark’s front-page editorials condemning the

governor.22 The only modern exception to endorsing Democrats for high office was in the

1956 governor’s race, when the Gazette endorsed Republican Cecil H. Underwood. The

previous governor, William Marland, though lauded for his handling of the school

desegregation issue, was tossed aside by the Democratic Party in 1956, with his mentor,

former Governor Okey Patteson, saying he had made a “tragic mistake,” wrongly

believing Marland to be “honest, trustworthy, highly efficient and strictly sober.”23

Among Marland’s transgressions was sparking an ultimately failed fight with the state legislature over imposing a coal excise tax.

Yet, even while part of, and coming from, a Democratic family tradition, Chilton was in the process of carving his own place in West Virginia and national politics and in journalism as an independent thinker and liberal maverick who would take on issues regardless of party. Or business relationship, or acquaintance, or friendship. One morning, early in his dealings as Chilton’s lawyer, Charleston attorney Rudolph L.

DiTrapano awoke to find the Gazette had named him in an editorial as one of several legal leaders in Kanawha County notorious “for slopping judges,”24 the practice of

attorneys donating to judicial political campaigns. Time-honored and accepted as a routine part of being in the West Virginia bar, Chilton believed the tradition was a legal pay-off system that gave well-heeled attorneys an unfair advantage in the courtroom.

DiTrapano, a firebrand and a second-generation immigrant whose family bounced around the southern West Virginia coalfields and who graduated from the University of Notre

Dame Law School, found Chilton at the local country club, where he was playing his usual Saturday morning tennis match. He did not deny making donations of $1,000 or so to each of the judges, but he told Chilton that he had no pending cases in Kanawha

County and, in fact, practiced little in the local circuit courts except for when Chilton either wanted to get government records through the state’s sunshine laws or was defending a libel suit. “I told him I wanted a correction; that it wasn’t right. I was hopping mad.” Chilton told him to “go screw” himself.25 R.S. Wehrle, a bridge partner

and a supporter of Chilton’s runs for the House of Delegates, complained bitterly about a

tepid endorsement in the Gazette for his successful run for the Kanawha County Board of

Education that called him “mildly qualified.” He said he would still be Chilton’s friend

“personally” but “politically, you are not.”26 Chilton fired back a letter on the same day, setting out what would become his trademark independence, both politically and in the broader world of journalism:

Although it is not explicitly stated, there is an implication in your letter that I might use the Gazette to promote the interest of a friend. So long as I am associated with the Gazette, I have no intention of making it an organ for those people I know, socially, politically, or in the business community. Congratulations on your sterling triumph, for which you can give full credit to yourself and your enthusiastic supporters.27

An early indicator of Chilton’s independence was in the 1960 Democratic primary

in West Virginia, which was one of the few times where he stood on the wrong side of

history. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Democratic warhorse Adlai Stevenson were

running for the party nomination, with Kennedy seen as a national favorite but beatable.

Kennedy early on figured West Virginia was central to his nomination and commissioned

Louis Harris to conduct several polls. The results were encouraging. In a hypothetical

race with Richard Nixon, Kennedy would win the state by fourteen points. In a

nomination race with Humphrey, he had what seemed like an insurmountable lead.28 The

Wisconsin primary, however, showed Kennedy’s weakness among rural, Protestant

voters, and attention switched to West Virginia, which many in the nation’s media elite and even party leaders believed would serve as a litmus test on whether primarily white,

Protestant voters would put a Catholic in the White House.29

At the time, Chilton was upset with the premise – that West Virginians were too ignorant and too prejudiced to vote for a Catholic – and thought the national press was

“overdramatizing” the issue.30 He supported Stevenson in the race for the nomination

although the former Illinois governor was not a candidate in the West Virginia primary.

The Gazette became a hub for visiting national reporters sent to cover the primary, with

Chilton frequently offering his staff, such as City Editor L.T. Anderson, as guides to take

them out in the field to talk to potential voters. He helped organize the only debate

between Humphrey and Kennedy, held in a Beckley radio station near the heart of the

southern West Virginia coalfields, and served as one of three questioners on the panel.

The young senator from Massachusetts was impressive during the debate – as he would

be during his televised battles with Nixon – at one point thrusting out a can of baked

beans as an example of the kind of diet available to many West Virginians who lived in

the poorer counties.31

Kennedy won the state, and nine months after his assassination an oral historian from the newly formed Kennedy Memorial Library in New York sat with Chilton in the

Daniel Boone Hotel in Charleston to talk about the race. He had rejected pressure during the primary from his wife, Elizabeth, who saw Kennedy as a “bright face on a dull

screen”32 and others close to him to support the handsome politician with the beautiful

spouse. He told the historian he came to see Kennedy as a “magnificent president” whose

promise to address Appalachian poverty was the right issue at the right time. Like his

dealings with the principal of Garnett High School before the height of the civil rights battle, he had rethought his impressions and looked inside himself, questioning “whether the anti-Catholicism, the fact that I do have reservations about the Catholic Church, whether this subconsciously caused me to vote (against) Kennedy or not? I just can’t say.”33 Kennedy’s deepest impact on the state, he felt, was not the national attention or

the religious issue but the president’s straightforward examination of the economic and

social issues facing West Virginia:

I think for those West Virginians who have given any thought to it or who think seriously about these things, I think Kennedy coming down here and pointing out our problems, our disappointments, has meant a great deal. It’s given us a chance to take a second look at ourselves, which we should take. We’ve made many, many mistakes. We’ve got some wonderful things going for us, but we’ve made bad mistakes through our history. We’ve been a state that unfortunately has been owned by outside interests, and we’ve allowed these interests to kick us about, to use our magnificent resources, a factor which Kennedy brought out.34

If Chilton missed the mark on Kennedy’s election, he was among a tiny portion of

American journalists to challenge the premise of the Vietnam War. The war crept into

American politics on soft shoes. President Dwight Eisenhower began United States

involvement with financial support and military advisers in 1955. Kennedy dramatically increased U.S. presence through more advisers and air support. On August 4, 1964,

Johnson announced to the nation that United States warships had been attacked by North

Vietnamese forces in the Gulf of Tonkin, and that he had ordered retaliatory strikes against military targets in the area. Two American aircraft were shot down in the ensuing fight. On August 5, he asked Congress for a vote (what came to be called the Gulf of

Tonkin Resolution) to approve his actions and “take all necessary measures to repel any

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armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”35

At the Gazette, where most of the attention for the past year had been on the ongoing debate in Congress over civil rights legislation and the battle for equal rights in West

Virginia, Johnson’s request required a bit of pondering.

As what would become the Vietnam War escalated, the vast majority of editors in

West Virginia and nationally, sensing the mood of their readers, supported the president and the escalation of hostilities in Southeast Asia.36 It would be another six to eight years

before the nation’s leading journalists and news outlets, picking up on rising student

protests and congressional questioning, would seriously examine the Gulf of Tonkin

incident and Johnson’s arguments for rising involvement in Southeast Asia.37 For

Chilton, it took seven days. On August 12, 1964, the Gazette printed an editorial that

would later be quoted in the Congressional Record as part of an examination of press

failings and an example of how there was another perspective, even at the start of the

war:

There is an air of unreality about the recent U.S.-North Viet Nam skirmishes in the Gulf of Tonkin. Gunboats versus destroyers hardly constitutes a threat to America’s bristling war capacity in that part of the world. Furthermore, the gunboat attack on the destroyer Maddox may well have been in reprisal for South Vietnamese naval strikes against two tiny isles off the North Vietnamese coast. And the fact that the attack was on the water, rather than from the land, where the North Vietnamese have obvious superiority, suggests a warning more than a desire to escalate the hostilities.38

With astonishing prescience, the Gazette noted military options to solve conflicts

in the region were limited and ultimately doomed:

It should be increasingly apparent to all parties that the dangerous situation in what used to be Indo-China isn’t likely to be resolved on the

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battlefield. The possibilities of a U.S. victory . . . without full-scale war and the employment of nuclear weaponry are nil. The risks attendant upon either of these actions to stamp out guerilla activity are as militarily inadvisable as they are humanistically unthinkable.39

Chilton never relented. In hundreds of editorials over the next decade, he

hammered on what he called the folly of a “containment policy” in Southeast Asia that

assumed the fall of South Vietnam would start a domino effect of other countries coming under communist sway. Early on he supported peaceful student protests, noting the right of dissent was the foundation of the First Amendment and that, “Heaven help us the day

[when] only the brave dare exercise the right.”40 In the month of April 1967 alone, the

Gazette printed nine editorials slamming the war from every angle:

Execution: “Despite brave words to the contrary, our position today in that war-

torn land is to all purposes exactly where it was when we started pouring in combat

advisers – except we now have 425,000 troops mired . . . some 10,000 dead . . . to show

for our pains and incredible stupidity.”41

Anti-draft: “The frequently heard charge [that a volunteer army is akin] to an

army of mercenaries – which conjures up visions of stolid Hessians fighting for King

George – and would constitute some sort of national threat to civilian authority is a pack

of rubbish.”42

Anti-fallout shelters: Ridiculing a local program that asked residents to send in

the dimensions of their basements so a computer program could determine how much

radiation protection they would provide in the event of a nuclear attack, the Gazette

suggested, “You will be doing yourself a better service by taking the measure of your

alleged public servants who favor the Johnson administration’s Vietnam policy.”43

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Figure 5. John “Jay” Rockefeller IV.

Chilton believed the war was being fought by the poor and minorities who could

not “escape the whole thing by going to college.”44 Invited to speak to the West Virginia

Political Science Association in 1968, he told the students and professors that there was

“no honorable out in Vietnam” and that the U.S. presidential election would make no

difference since “they [North Vietnamese] have no intention of quitting this fight before

we quit it.”45 United States Senator Jennings Randolph, evidencing a growing

relationship with the publisher, used the time in a car ride to attend his brother-in-law’s

funeral to jot a note to Chilton that accompanied a copy of a speech he had given the previous week, ending the letter with, “You and I want – and we must work – for Peace.

Always, Jennings.”46

For Chilton, politics was about public philosophy and not personalities, a view of

the world that placed government, though limited depending on the issue, at the center of fixing social and economic problems. He found an ally in a young oil heir who was three years past his Harvard University degree in Asian studies and working as a special

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assistant to Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver.47 At twenty-seven, John “Jay” D.

Rockefeller IV was looking for a place to make his mark, ending up as a VISTA

(Volunteers in Service to America) worker in tiny, rural Emmons, West Virginia, in

1964. He became acquainted with Charles Peters, a former Charleston attorney and

longtime friend of Chilton, when both worked at the Peace Corps in Washington. Peters,

who went on to found and lead the highly influential, liberal publication The Washington

Monthly, was persuaded West Virginia would offer the challenges that Rockefeller was

seeking and convinced him to explore this for himself.48 Many native West Virginians

have wondered how calculated this decision was, with whispers and outright accusations of “carpet bagger” and political cynicism dogging his later political campaigns. It seems probable that deciding to come to West Virginia was both a sincere desire to help the underprivileged, and a thoughtful decision about a political future. In his first note to

Chilton, written after they had met at one of several coming-out parties Rockefeller attended in Charleston when first considering the idea of coming to West Virginia, he asked for Chilton’s help in understanding the culture and geography of the state and mentioned the availability of “opportunity in many ways” beyond the war on poverty.49

Rockefeller certainly knew of the state’s long history as a Democratic stronghold since

Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose programs aided union membership and expanded public service programs throughout Appalachia.50 In addition, although mentioning

“opportunities” in the plural, Rockefeller is not known to have entertained any other

thoughts for the long term than politics, and immediately after his two-year stint as a

VISTA volunteer won a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1966.

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Chilton and Rockefeller developed a deep and warm friendship. When

Rockefeller first arrived in West Virginia he spent nine months living in the guest suite in the basement of Chilton’s home in South Hills, a wealthy neighborhood carved from the hills overlooking Charleston and minutes from the Gazette. Elizabeth Chilton remembers

Jay as a younger brother, who raided the refrigerator and popped in and out unexpectedly.51 When Rockefeller married the former Sharon Percy, the daughter of

Illinois United States Senator Charles Percy, the Gazette ran a four-column, front-page

photograph of the couple descending the steps of a Chicago church.52 The two families

occasionally traveled together and exchanged notes and letters for the next two decades.

Though philosophically attuned, Chilton and Rockefeller had opposite styles. The former was energetic, bounding up stairs and stalking rapidly from place to place, prone to

yelling and pointing his finger when making a point, and tending to see issues as right or

wrong. Rockefeller was soft spoken behind horn-rimmed glasses and moved deliberately,

framing arguments most often in terms of policy and programs rather than in moral or

ethical terms. However, they shared privileged backgrounds, Ivy League educations, and

a dedication to improving the world around them. The fact they approached the latter in

different ways would eventually distance them and make Chilton more than once an issue

in Rockefeller’s coming races.

Rockefeller ran successfully for secretary of state in 1968, the same year that

Arch Moore took the governor’s mansion for the first time after six terms in Congress

from northern West Virginia. The Gazette, as expected, endorsed the Democrats that

year, but in an interview with the Morgantown Dominion-News, Chilton rejected any

suggestions that he was interested in statewide office and correctly predicted Moore’s

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victory, saying he would “be sorry to see Moore win” but the “Democrats have ruled this state like Chinese warlords. I could sympathize with a Republican who would say, ‘Let’s clean this whole mess out.’”53 He was referring to ongoing corruption revelations relating to the W.W. Barron administration. Barron, popularly referred to as “Wally,” served from

1960 to 1964, and his successor C. Huelett Smith was the executive director of his

Department of Commerce. Thirteen officials who were part of Barron’s or Smith’s administrations and five of their relatives and friends were convicted on a wide range of corruption charges. Barron was sentenced to five years in prison on a charge of tampering with a jury, but Smith, his 1960 primary opponent, was never personally tainted with the scandal.54

Figure 6. West Virginia Governor W.W. “Wally” Barron

Gazette reporter Thomas Stafford was instrumental in ferreting out Barron’s

corruption, spending months sifting through documents, clandestinely meeting with

sources, and traveling to several states not only with Chilton’s blessing but his insistence

to research the story, which – much to the publisher’s loud chagrin – was broken first by

the Daily Mail. Stafford had been following rumors and allegations of sweetheart deals

with Barron’s friends and associates, including breaking the story that the governor’s 106

former law partner intended to set up an office in the Capitol on the floor beneath the governor’s suite, when he got wind of the Invest Right Corporation, which ostensibly was based in Ohio, but had tendrils in several other states, including Florida and Virginia.55

Stafford had just returned from Columbus, Ohio, where he had found out that Invest

Right had been incorporated by A.W. Schroth of Clarksburg, West Virginia, a close associate of West Virginia Finance Commissioner Truman Gore, who in turn was a close friend of Bonn Brown, Barron’s former law partner. Invest Right was suspected of receiving pay-off money from several state vendors who had obtained lucrative contracts.

Chilton and Gazette Editor Hoffman not only wanted to know what he had found out, but

Chilton demanded the story immediately, urging Stafford to write it that afternoon. “I don’t have anything yet but the name of the company, its officers, and tons of suspicion,”

Stafford told him. Chilton exploded. “Christ Tommy. A corporation by the name of

Invest Right with its headquarters in Tuppers Plains, Ohio, with direct links to the

Capitol? The whole thing smells.”56 Stafford held his ground, thinking that a story at that

point would tip off the operators to hide their tracks as well as alert all of the other

Statehouse reporters.

He kept digging and several weeks later sent out fifty letters to state vendors seeking

information about their dealings with Invest Right. Soon afterward, the Daily Mail

launched an investigative series with Invest Right at its center, laying out the facts much

as Stafford had done in his letter to the vendors. Although calling it “one of the least

informative examples of investigative writing” he had ever seen, Stafford nonetheless

knew he had been beaten. “I was embarrassed and troubled. Chilton had seen the leading

edge of a good story slip away to our toughest competitor, and he let me know about

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it.”57 Rather than let the story go as one lost to the competition by a hard-headed reporter

who refused to take good advice, Chilton insisted Stafford keep digging. In time, he

uncovered an astonishing tangle of payoffs and coverups, eventually leading to the

indictment and the conviction of the officials and their friends and relatives.

Figure 7. Arch A. Moore Jr.

Moore used the Barron scandal to his advantage in his 1968 race, and became the

only Republican officeholder on the statewide level. Clouds formed, however, toward the

end of his term, when word leaked that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service was

considering an indictment against him for tax evasion involving unspecified campaign

contributions. The allegations fizzled, but Chilton’s ire was raised and the Gazette began

what would become a two-decade obsession with the charismatic politician who

addressed crowds with a preacher’s cadence and rocked back on his heels when making a

point. The publisher was convinced he was a crook.

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In 1972, Rockefeller, who was safely ensconced as secretary of state, decided to eschew re-election and run against Moore in hopes of blocking a second term. Whether and how much Chilton influenced this decision is not readily apparent from the record.58

One of Rockefeller’s top issues, however, was strip mining in the state, telling a

gathering of reporters, “I am convinced, reluctantly but strongly, that strip-mining coal

must be prohibited by law.”59 Chilton had championed the issue several years before as part of a task force set up by Huelett Smith’s administration. As the election neared, the

Gazette pummeled Moore, including statehouse reporter Fanny Seiler breaking the story on October 12 that the governor and some of his top aides had spent $150,000 using state aircraft, of which $5,691 was used for trips that Moore made as chairman of the National

Governor’s Conference.60 Three days later, a Sunday, reporter John Morgan explored the

power Moore had at his disposal as an incumbent, noting that Rockefeller had just

twenty-three state employees in his office while Moore had as many as 32,000.61 The

Republican Moore easily won the race, collecting 123,000 more votes than Rockefeller,

despite voter registration in the state running 2-1 in favor of the Democrats.

While Rockefeller became president of private Wesleyan College in West

Virginia, Chilton kept after Moore. In 1973, investigative reporter Haught reignited the

tax invasion issue, printing a quotation from Moore’s attorney, who called the tax evasion

case “a turkey . . . that should never have been brought. We got it thrown out.”62 Haught later said the idea behind the story was to anger the West Virginia IRS agents who had done the investigation. It worked, and Haught agreed to meet an agent in the tiny town of

Washington, West Virginia, near Parkersburg on the Ohio River. The agent told him that not only did the case involve about $80,000 in campaign donations converted to personal

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use, but as a private attorney Moore was serving as executor of an estate for a “crotchety old hermit” when he found blank stock certificates in a bank box. The agent alleged

Moore had filled in the stock numbers and assigned himself 900 shares of Exxon, worth more than $100,000 at the time.63 When he wrote the story, Haught cited “Washington”

sources, a tweak of journalistic ethics that protected the West Virginia agent.

Further revelations followed. Moore’s banking commissioner, George Jordan, was indicted but not convicted for falsifying state expense accounts after the Gazette reported he had been entertained by a company seeking a state bank charter. In 1975,

Ashland Oil executives told the federal Securities and Exchange Commission that they had taken $20,000 in cash, tucked inside a briefcase, to Moore at his capitol office, which the governor later said he accepted as a campaign donation and had no idea it was from the company and not the executives as individuals. Moore was indicted in 1975 on charges stemming from Jordan’s dealings with Diversified Mountaineer, accused of accepting a $25,000 payoff.64 He was acquitted. After he left office at the end of his

second term, the Gazette revealed that he had released Pittston Coal Co. from liability for

a flood caused by a break in the company’s Buffalo Creek dam. The crushing wall of

water killed 125 people and destroyed 4,000 homes in Logan County. The company

agreed to pay $1 million, but the U.S. Corps of Engineers had sent the state a bill for $3.7 million for its emergency clean-up work.65 Moore became so incensed with the Gazette

that he refused to talk to its reporters and routinely referred to the paper as “The Morning

Sick Call.”

Rockefeller left his college presidency in 1975 to once again run for governor.

The state Constitution restricts the governor’s office to two consecutive terms, which

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barred Moore from entering the race. Having seen the light on the value of coal and the thousands of jobs strip mining created in the state, Rockefeller easily defeated seven

Democratic opponents in the primary and the Republican challenger, the former governor

Smith. His term was highlighted by the worst winter on record in West Virginia, freezing for the first time its navigable rivers, which blocked coal shipments to power plants, and the onset of a 111-day coal strike that between the strikers and related industries put more than 100,000 people out of work.66

In 1980, he decided to run for re-election. Moore, after sitting out the required

four years, announced he would run, too. The race attracted national attention with some

speculating that Rockefeller was preparing for an eventual run for the presidency. The

Gazette hammered on Moore’s “integrity issue.” In an October editorial, for instance, the

Gazette noted a recent poll that found most West Virginians “couldn’t care less if a

candidate for high political office within their state is slightly larcenous.” Still, the

editorial said, Moore had failed to answer the many questions about his finances and

dealings during his first two terms:

The people of West Virginia don’t want to ask him embarrassing questions and don’t want their representatives in the news media to ask them either. What tommyrot. So far Moore has ducked all nasty questions about his integrity with three stock answers: 1. his federal trial answered that question with an innocent verdict. 2. only The Charleston Gazette asks him that question and he doesn’t talk to that newspaper; 3. that’s a Gazette question and he doesn’t respond to its questions.

Moore, not this newspaper, wants to be governor, and the questions Moore is declining to answer are questions of concern not just to the Gazette to all West Virginians fed up with corrupt government and corrupt public officials.67

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Chilton became an issue, himself, in October when he told a visiting Washington

Post reporter that Rockefeller’s spending in the race was “outrageous” and that “in effect, he’s trying to buy the state.” The comment gave the Daily Mail gleeful grist for two weeks, including several columns and editorials, most of which implied Chilton was hypocritical for editorially supporting Rockefeller but being critical of him in remarks to a national reporter. Finally, three days before the election, Chilton felt compelled to respond, writing a column that addressed his comment to the Post:

I perceive no difference in Moore’s again running for governor from Richard Nixon’s again running for president. Those who by incomplete quotation place me beside a candidate for public office who has in the observance of his sacred trust made Benedict Arnold resemble a steadfast patriot badly abuse me.

Because I support Rockefeller doesn’t mean, as apparently is the case with the Charleston Daily Mail in its support of Moore, I can’t criticize conduct of Rockefeller I regard as unwise and unbecoming. But as between Rockefeller and Moore, the choice is between an honest man and a dishonest man. . . . It strikes me, although it manifestly doesn’t the Mail, that I would much rather vote for and have as my governor a man trying to buy the state with his own money than vote for and have as my governor a man willing to sell the state … to a coal company responsible for the Buffalo Creek catastrophe.68

Rockefeller won the race by more than 60,000 votes, spending a record $11 million, much of it his own money.69 But Chilton was stung, and Rockefeller’s personal wealth and his willingness to use it to finance his political campaigns became an increasingly bitter issue until he faced no serious opposition in his re-election campaigns for United States Senate beginning in 1988. As a one-time candidate himself and deeply familiar with the state’s political figures as well as his own family’s history that included an unproven allegation of bribery, Chilton understood how money flowed at election

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time. He famously told Neal R. Pearce, author of The Border South States, which

explored the Kennedy election and rumors of vote-buying in West Virginia, that JFK

“bought a landslide, not an election.”70 In spring 1981, after Rockefeller’s election,

Chilton ordered Haught to examine the system. What resulted was a three-part

investigation called “Readin’, ’riting & politickin.’” The first installment questioned

Rockefeller sending $10,000 to Wyoming County School Superintendent James Pizzino

“to pay precinct workers on election day” in 1976.71 Rockefeller gave his brother, Jack

Pizzino, who served as both the county purchasing director and the civil defense chief,

$17,300 for precinct workers in the 1980 election. The expenditures came to light in a

report from a Wyoming County grand jury that listed sixty indictments and noted that

“Democrats for Unity,” with ties to the Pizzinos and the schools, held the “dominant

position in [local] political life.”72 Haught also reported that Rockefeller had sent $20,000 to Lincoln County school bus Director Johnnie Adkins in 1980. In response, Rockefeller simply said those people were identified as political leaders in their counties and

therefore were designated as “fiscal agents.”73

In 1984, Rockefeller ran for the United States Senate seat vacated by an ailing

Jennings Randolph, and Moore again tried for the governor’s mansion. Chilton would not

leave himself open to attacks that he ignored Rockefeller’s “outrageous” spending out of

political affinity or personal friendship. Rockfeller faced John Raese, a virulent

Republican whose family owned the Morgantown Dominion-Post newspaper and several other businesses in Monongalia County. He was wealthy, but nowhere near Rockefeller’s status. Readers of the Gazette could rightly be confused by the newspaper’s stridency against both candidates. In a biting editorial directly attacking Rockefeller’s spending,

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Chilton invoked muckraker Ida Tarbell’s famous 1902 series for McClure’s magazine that exposed the political influence and corruption that helped to build Standard Oil, the fount of the Rockefeller family wealth. Chilton wrote: “Ironic isn’t it that the vast fortune

the original Rockefeller stole and cheated to stockpile in secret is the basis for another

Rockefeller’s arrogant abuse of money in politics?” The editorial noted that his opponent

was a lightweight with “powers of logic . . . that would have a kindergarten class rolling

on the floor” yet Rockefeller “continues to shell out the dough shamelessly.” His spending was close to reaching the point where state residents would gag and “vow to

vote against the attempt to purchase political office” and ultimately the lavish spending

was not good politics: “If, as some say, Rockefeller is playing for the presidency, he soon

will learn that neither he nor his great-grandfather’s pilfered treasure is enough to buy

that office.”74

At the same time, Chilton continued the onslaught against Moore, reviving the

previous screeds of corruption. At one point, he noted that even Richard Nixon’s

campaign returned $100,000 to Ashland Oil after a Securities and Exchange Commission

investigation and resulting indictment of company officials, but Moore never did,

continuing his penchant for “cache[ing] campaign funds with the same fervor that

Abscam members of Congress squirreled away bribes from fictitious shieks.”75 The

establishment was becoming frustrated with his repeated attacks. United States Attorney

Robert B. King told a Gazette reporter sent to interrogate him about why Moore had not

been charged in a liquor scandal stemming from his second term in office that if Chilton

“wanted to prosecute on surmise and conjecture, he’ll have to get himself appointed

prosecutor.”76 Rockefeller beat Raese after spending a record $12 million. Raese was

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upset with what he perceived as Chilton’s relentless battering with such editorials as one headlined “Ridiculous Raese,” in which the Gazette chided him for his seemingly waffling on whether he was for or against a right-to-work law in the state. The issue was widely seen as the main cause for his defeat, with the heavily union West Virginia voters

disinclined to take a chance on someone who might disadvantage the union.77

Moore easily won his third gubernatorial term against the Gazette-supported

House Speaker Clyde See, a Hardy County Democrat who could match neither the

former governor’s campaign account nor his charismatic personality. In 1988, while a federal investigation was underway without public knowledge into Moore’s administration, he sought a fourth term. But, his charisma and energy had run its course,

no doubt aided by the Gazette’s relentless battering, and the state, once again mired in a

recession, was ready for a change. Democratic Charleston insurance executive Gaston

Caperton, who spent $3 million of his own money, easily defeated him, taking all of West

Virginia’s counties except the twelve in the north, Moore’s traditional stronghold.78

Moore abruptly pleaded guilty in 1990 to a wide array of charges, including

extorting $573,721 from the president of Maben Energy in exchange for a $2.3 million

refund from the state’s Black Lung Fund. While the Gazette reported with glee and

Editor Don Marsh popped a magnum of champagne to toast Chilton’s decades-long battle

against Moore, the Daily Mail was bitter about the former governor: “He has shamed his

wife and children. He has betrayed all those who admire his intelligence and believed his protestations of innocence.”79

Exactly what the reporting and editorializing did for the relationship between

Chilton and Rockefeller is not entirely clear, although the record reveals that Sharon

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Rockefeller and Elizabeth Chilton remained close, exchanging holiday cards and keeping each other informed of their children’s progress. An editorial accusing Rockefeller, who as governor was head of the Democratic Party, of being a “pussyfooter” for failing to attack Moore’s corruption during the 1984 campaign hints that the men remained in contact, if not as close as they once were: “Interestingly, in private Rockefeller doesn’t hesitate a moment to condemn Moore in the strongest language imaginable and makes no bones about detesting his predecessor.”80 Decades later, Elizabeth Chilton said her

husband “respected Jay” and they were friends. “He had no respect for Moore; none at

all.”81 Rockefeller, questioned twenty-three years later about his relationship with the

publisher, called him a “dear friend and civic ally for the people of the Kanawha Valley

and the entire state of West Virginia.”82

Chilton maintained relationships with most of the state’s leading political figures.

He was more closely aligned to Randolph than U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, though Byrd was twice named as the Sunday Gazette-Mail’s “Man of the Year” during Chilton’s tenure. Haught, who spent an ugly seven months with Byrd as a senatorial aide in 1959, explained the change:

Slowly, as decades turned, a remarkable change developed. Byrd grew in stature and wisdom, steadily distancing himself from the mountain prejudices of his boyhood. He began funneling millions in federal projects and jobs to West Virginia. He became the state’s best economic development machine.83

Chilton corresponded with Hubert Humphrey for some time after the failed West

Virginia primary, and with Illinois Senator Charles Percy, whom he met through Sharon

Rockefeller. Ken Hechler, the United States congressman, sent Chilton a gentle note in

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1960, saying he was glad to “learn that you haven’t really gone over to the Kennedy camp as they report,” and two years later he told him that he disagreed that the house Un-

American Activities Committee was “all wet” and he was trying to “hit the middle road” between him and McCarthy. In 1964, he chided him for failing to contact him for a comment about the space program, noting he had been trying to interest the publisher in

NASA since 1959. “P.S.,” Hechler wrote, “I do not intend to retire after my third term in order to spread my idiocy and incompetence around. Sorry.”84

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Notes

1 James A. Haught, “FBI has file on Gazette,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, November 28, 1976.

2 Interview, James A. Haught, Charleston, W.Va., June 9, 2009.

3 James A. Haught, “FBI has file on Gazette,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, November 28, 1976.

4 Ibid.

5 James A. Haught, “Ex-Communist asked about Gazette,” Charleston Gazette, January 14, 1978.

6 Ibid.

7 Ben A. Franklin, New York Times News Service, “Files show paper critical of FBI monitored,” The (Nashville) Tennessean, November 28, 1976.

8 James A. Haught, for the Associated Press, “Big Brother: FBI’s files on newspaper finally see light of day,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, November 28, 1976.

9 Editorial, “FBI check of newspapers,” Editor & Publisher, December 4, 1976.

10 Editorial, “FBI follies,” The Nation, December 11, 1976.

11 J. Edgar Hoover to W.E. Chilton III, January 26, 1953, Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 5, A&M 3020 Addendum, West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Library, Morgantown.

12 W.E. “Ned” Chilton III biography. Gazette morgue microfiche. Years later, Elizabeth Chilton said the trips “were wonderful” and were part of her husband’s fascination with the world at large.

13 Hechler had written a best-selling book, The Bridge at Remagen, about a World War II battle that was being turned into a movie by United Artists. The movie was being filmed in Czechoslovakia, and Hechler had been hired as technical consultant.

14 Editorial, “If only the U.S. understood,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, December 10, 1972.

15 Chilton III biography. Gazette morgue microfiche.

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16 Lyndon B. Johnson to W.E. Chilton III. Chilton III Papers. Box 1, File 13. West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

17 Editorial, “Practice of legal murder subsidies,” Charleston Gazette, February 3, 1969.

18 Editorial, “Show it on TV, that’ll do the trick,” Charleston Gazette, February 14, 1969.

19 Editorial, “New welfare program beginning to pay off,” Charleston Gazette, August 21, 1964.

20 See, for instance, “New Constitution needed by state,” Charleston Gazette, March 2, 1964.

21 Robert St. John to W.E. Chilton III. Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 13, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

22 See, editorial, “Neely’s Old Sweet Springs Deal,” Charleston Daily Mail, March 20, 1942.

23 Otis K. Rice and Stephen W. Brown. West Virginia: A history. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 278.

24 Interview, Rudolph L. DiTrapano, Charleston, W.Va., June 16, 2009.

25 Ibid. Noted DiTrapano: “I never got the correction.”

26 R.S. Werhle to W.E. Chilton III, May 10, 1966, Chilton III Papers. Box 1, File 19a, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

27 Ibid., Chilton to Wehrle, May 10, 1966.

28 Theodore White, The Making of the President 1960 (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1988), 97-114.

29 Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and the Election of 1960: A Project of The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, ed. by Allida Black, June Hopkins, John Sears, Christopher Alhambra, Mary Jo Binker, Christopher Brick, John S. Emrich, Eugenia Gusev, Kristen E. Gwinn, and Bryan D. Peery (Columbia, S.C.: Model Editions Partnership, 2003). Electronic version based on unpublished letters, at http://adh.sc.edu (Accessed July 5, 2009).

30 W.E. “Ned” Chilton III Oral History transcript. July 14, 1964, Charleston, W.VA. Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 18a, West Virginia and Regional History Collection. 119

31 Ibid.

32 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton, Charleston, W.VA., January 19, 2009.

33 W.E. “Ned” Chilton III Oral History transcript. July 14, 1964, Charleston, W.VA., Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 18a, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

34 Ibid.

35 Joint Resolution of Congress H.J. RES 1145, August 7, 1964. Only senators Morse from Oregon and Gruening from Alaska voted against the resolution. Both feared the hazy language would permit escalation of U.S. involvement without further action from Congress.

36 Craig Houston. “The Charleston Gazette's Editorial Response to the Vietnam War, 1963-1965.” West Virginia History. Vol. 51 (1992), 15-28. In his well-researched paper, Houston suggests the Gazette’s main editorial impetus behind opposition to the war was Editor Harry Hoffman and City Editor L.T. Anderson, who wrote some of the newspaper’s editorials and wrote columns against the war. On the surface that’s true; they did write some of the Gazette’s editorials and certainly weighed in on editorial policy, but by 1963 and 1964, Chilton was firmly in control and was establishing the stands the newspaper would take, including writing many of the editorials. A few phrases in the editorial argue for Chilton’s direct involvement, if not authorship, such as “humanistically unthinkable” and the use of “furthermore” and “therefore” as transitions, which were classic early Chilton.

37 Daniel C. Hallin, “The Media, the War in Vietnam, and Political Support: A Critique of the Thesis of an Oppositional Media.” Journal of Politics (1984) Vol. 46, 1, 2.

38 Editorial, “Conference Table Best Viet Nam Battleground,” Charleston Gazette, August 12, 1964; see Congressional Record February 2, 1971, “What should have been asked by Don Stillman.”

39 Ibid.

40 Editorial, “Policy criticism American right,” Charleston Gazette, October 20, 1965.

41 Editorial, “White man against yellow Asian – This is the present state of Viet war,” Charleston Gazette, April 2, 1967.

42 Editorial, “Mercenaries view is invalid,” Charleston Gazette, April 9, 1967.

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43 Editorial, “Path to fallout shelter isn’t the one to peace,” Charleston Gazette, April 29, 1967.

44 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton.

45 Chilton speech to the West Virginia Political Science Association, October 4, 1968, Chilton III Papers, Box 4, File 5, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

46 Jennings Randolph to W.E. Chilton III, October 10, 1968, Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 21b, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

47 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 285.

48 Thomas Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable: Journalism and Politics in West Virginia. (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2005), 256-257.

49 John “Jay” Rockefeller IV to W.E. Chilton III, April 27, 1964, Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 17, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

50 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 282.

51 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton.

52 Associated Press, “Tears, joy, gloom mark wedding of Miss Percy, Rockefeller,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, April 2, 1967. The tears and gloom refer to the death of Sharon Percy’s stepgrandmother on the day of the wedding.

53 Associated Press, “Gazette’s publisher sees Moore victory,” Charleston Daily Mail, Sept. 21, 1968. The story was a pick-up by the AP from an interview first published in the Morgantown newspaper.

54 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 282.

55 Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable, 110-112.

56 Ibid., 113.

57 Ibid., 114.

58 Jay Rockefeller declined to be interviewed for this project, but agreed to send a statement addressing Chilton’s legacy.

59 Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable, 258.

60 Fanny Seiler, “Moore plane tab $5,691 while conference chief,” Charleston Gazette, October 12, 1972. Seiler was a longtime statehouse reporter for United Press 121

International in West Virginia. Moore had complained to the bureau chief that Seiler was not objective, and the bureau chief threatened to reassign her to the downtown bureau, which often involved night shifts and early morning “broadcast” shifts. Seiler called Chilton, who, it is said, immediately hired her.

61 John G. Morgan, “Governor has much going for him,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, October 15, 1972.

62 James Haught, Fascinating West Virginia (Charleston, W.Va.: The Printing Press Ltd., 2008), 103-105.

63 Ibid., 103-105.

64 Ibid., 106.

65 Ibid., 107.

66 Ibid., 164.

67 Editorial, “The integrity issue,” Charleston Gazette, October 10, 1980.

68 W.E. Chilton III, “Choice facing voters: honesty vs. dishonesty,” Charleston Gazette, November 1, 1980.

69 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 286.

70 Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable, 76.

71 James A. Haught, “In Wyoming, politics deeply rooted in schools,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, May 31, 1981.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Editorial, “Corrupting elections,” Charleston Gazette, September 29, 1984.

75 Editorial, “What did he say?” Charleston Gazette, September 25, 1984. The Abscam reference refers to an FBI sting operation in Washington, D.C., that caught several members of Congress accepting cash from agents posing as Middle Eastern oil barrons.

76 Rosalie Earle, “Evidence against Moore was lacking, King says,” Charleston Gazette, September 12, 1984. King said the main issue was establishing “intent.” Even if those offering the bribes intended an illegal act, accepting the money was not a crime unless prosecutors could prove a quid pro quo in which the politician knew the money 122

was meant as a payoff. Chilton never bought the theory, believing Moore oozed criminal intent.

77 Editorial, “Ridiculous Raese,” Charleston Gazette, September 15, 1984.

78 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 293.

79 Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable, 315.

80 Editorial, “Leader or pussyfooter?” Charleston Gazette, September 15, 1984.

81 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton.

82 John “Jay” Rockefeller IV to author, July 27, 2009, by e-mail.

83 Haught, Fascinating West Virginia, 161. Haught worked for Byrd in Washington, D.C. in 1959, lured, he said, by an offer of double his salary as a religion and general assignment reporter for the Gazette and the idea of hobnobbing with the likes of Jennings Randolph, JFK, and other figures. Haught said he gained 30 pounds, developed an ulcer, and concluded that, “Capitol Hill life is a charade. Staff aides are lackeys who hover at the elbows of Congress members, doing everything possible to make them look leaderly.”

84 Ken Hechler to W.E. Chilton III, August 4, 1963, Chilton III Papers, Box 1, File 16, West Virginia and Regional History Collection; see also files 13 and 15.

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Chapter 5: More News Space

Chilton’s motivation behind sending his investigative reporter, James Haught, to investigate some of the Gazette’s largest advertisers in 1978 is a bit cloudy. “He saw it somewhere and wanted us to do it,” Haught recalled.1 Just as likely was the ongoing saga

with a new Dodge Aspen purchased from a Nitro, West Virginia, car dealer by City

Editor Nelson Sorah for his wife. Over two years, the car was back at the dealer 20 times

for repairs and spent a total of four months in the shop.2 Regardless of its source,

Haught’s seven-part series resulted in government penalties against several car repair

shops and dealers, changes in state bidding practices, a suddenly attentive West Virginia attorney general, and gladdened hearts of frustrated readers dealing with Detroit vagaries.

The reaction downstairs in the advertising department was less gleeful, as auto dealers began pulling their ads. Gazette Editor Don Marsh said he became aware of the situation only when General Manager Robert L. Smith Jr. asked him, perhaps rhetorically, whether he had noticed that there was “more news space on the first classified page.”3

Chilton’s attitude toward money was well known. He liked it, but was not

obsessed with it. Chilton was aware of and informed about the business side of the

newspaper, but largely left the finances to Smith Jr.,4 the son of the former publisher who

died in 1962, and others who managed the joint operating agreement with the Daily Mail.

He launched a New Year’s Eve tradition for Gazette employees of lavish banquets and a

West Virginia ham for each worker when he was both amused and chagrined by a dull,

conservative Daily Mail party that consisted of “cookies and punch.”5 One Gazette holiday feat featured a whole roasted pig, including the traditional apple in the snout.

When longtime reporter Sandy Wells became pregnant, before maternity leaves became

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common, Chilton told her to take four weeks off and to not worry about anything.6 He spent thousands on lawsuits for open records and defending libel suits, and would send reporters wherever needed to get the stories he was interested in. In 1979, for instance, after watching the PTL Club on local television, Chilton became convinced that Jim

Bakker, founder and leader of the religious organization, was bilking his congregation.

He ordered Haught to North Carolina, telling him to book himself into one of the PTL

Club villas and find out how much money was being collected and where it went. The result was “Gospel Millions,” a four-part series that dismantled televangelism. He noted the PTL Club daily talk/variety show was the most popular religious program in southern

West Virginia. An editor’s note on the series cautioned “well-meaning followers that, in some cases, their money may be misused.”7

Personally, Chilton, never described as a spendthrift, spent money on what he liked, including tailored clothes from London, thousands of books, and memberships to the South Hills Country Club and the local squash and tennis club. He also kept a summer home in the Bahamas, for which he would pack a light carrying case of shorts, t- shirts, and sandals, and a trunk full of books, magazines, and newspapers.8 He traveled

frequently, including taking his wife on a round-the-world trip to celebrate their 25th

wedding anniversary.9 His cars were interesting, but not necessarily flashy. In 1978, the

Daily Mail reported that thieves had “an easy time” making off with Chilton’s mustard- colored, 1970 MGB that was parked in the newspaper’s employee lot. The Daily Mail,

which rarely included car thefts in its daily crime report, attributed to Chilton the facts

that the car “was unlocked and the keys left in it.”10

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Aside from his experience in the U.S. Army Air Corps, when he occasionally wrote to his father asking for a bit of cash, and when he once rented himself out for $5 for a shift of KP duty,11 there is no indication money worries were a significant factor in

Chilton’s life. In the first years of the 1950s, Chilton was busy with other matters.

Shaking off the wild strains of his youth, he was running for the first time for the House

of Delegates; wooing his wife-to-be, a Republican several years his junior who would

surprise him by changing her voter registration so she could vote for him; and learning the nuts and bolts of newspapering as the promotions man for the Gazette after the

untimely death of his father. Elizabeth and Ned Chilton, like most young affluent couples in the Ozzie and Harriet world of the early Eisenhower years, talked of their coming life

together in glowing terms, a shining road stretching before them of accomplishment,

family, home, travel, entertaining the scions of industry and politics, dinners at the local

country club. “We thought it would be wonderful,” Elizabeth Chilton said, “and it was.”12

The rosy expectations were understandable. America of the 1950s was a time of immense growth. From 1950 to 1980, the American population doubled; whole new

industries, such as computing, sprang up. Men like Chilton, fresh from the war and

college, were creating new families and rushing out of the cities to suburbia, where they

would demand shopping centers rather than small dime stores. American industry was

muscular and cocksure, churning out all manner of new products to satisfy the growing

desires of a new middle class.13

Chilton’s experience, however, was not the common one in West Virginia, which

was largely left behind in the tidal wave of economic prosperity. Mechanization had decimated mining employment. Between 1947 and 1954, coal production in the state

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plunged from 173 million tons to 113 million tons, while the per man-day production rate leaped from 5.57 tons to 10.05 tons. The workforce dropped from 117,104 in 1948 – by far the largest private working group in the state – to 42,557 in 1961.14 By 2005, when

Haught was editor of the Gazette, the number of workers had dipped to fewer than

15,000. While populations in most other states were rising, West Virginia’s was falling.

Between 1950 and 1960, West Virginia’s population fell from 2,005,552 to 1,860,421.15

West Virginia Governor William Marland, a former attorney general who had worked in

the southern coal mines of Wyoming County before getting his law degree, stunned the

state Legislature on January 22, 1953, by suggesting a steep excise tax on coal, gas and

timber, for the first time suggesting direct action to address the gulf between the owners

of the resources and the people who worked to extract them. The move was supported by

powerful United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis, but opposed by coal interests.

United States Senator Matthew Neely, a previous governor of the state, fought for

Marland’s proposal against Republican opposition, the State Chamber of Commerce and

the Gazette, all of whom agreed with the state’s business interests that the tax would, in

effect, give Lewis control of the coal industry and, therefore, state government. Neely

argued the fight was not for control of state politics but “largely between absentee

captains of industry on the one hand and the men, women and children of West Virginia

on the other.”16 The excise tax failed in both the state Senate and House, establishing a

rift between Marland and the Legislature from which he would never recover.

Eight years after the coal tax fight, when Chilton became publisher in 1962, one

of his first acts was to dismantle the outside editorial board that influenced newspaper

policy that had been put together by Frank Knight, the newspaper’s colorful managing

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editor. Knight was elevated from the promotions manager position when Chilton returned from Yale, and began work at the Gazette. The outside board, in addition to

Knight, consisted of two local businessmen and a state government middle manager.

Chilton composed the new board entirely of Gazette managers, including Editor Harry

Hoffman, Vice President Bob Smith, Executive Editor Dallas Higbee, City Editor L.T.

Anderson and political and investigative writer Thomas Stafford.17 In making the change,

Chilton took each member of the board to the local country club for lunch and explained

the rules. He wanted open discussion with people who would disagree with him. To

Stafford, he told him he was free to write what he wished in his column, but that on the

occasions when he wrote editorials he would be expected to follow the board’s guidance.

Disagreeing with Chilton was never an easy task. A ferocious debater once

praised by friend and political columnist William F. Buckley Jr. as a writer of “wonderful

narrative power,” Chilton had a prodigious, energetic mind.18 He delighted, as Stafford

would write later, in rhetorical combat, cornering opponents by seeming

acknowledgement of their points and then springing a trap that would force them to his

position. Hoffman frequently complained before editorial board meetings that he “just

(didn’t) know how to deal with Chilton.”19 Few did. The editorial board, itself, would have increasingly diminishing influence as Chilton took over direct control of editorial policy, and would be confined primarily to political endorsements and naming the

Sunday Gazette-Mail’s person of the year. Haught, when he was later named editorial

page editor and was ostensibly responsible for the editorials, once described himself to a reporter doing a profile on the publisher as “Chilton’s stenographer.” When Chilton read

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it, he roared, “Haught, you knucklehead!”20 Never again under Chilton’s tenure would the Gazette side so ardently with business as it did during the excise tax debate.

As the coal industry hired fewer and fewer workers, other manufacturing

industries began to pick up, but would never replace the thousands of jobs lost in the

coalfields. Chemical plants sprouted along the Ohio and Kanawha rivers after imports dried up as a result of World War II. The new operations included a federally sponsored explosives plant in Nitro, West Virginia, in Kanawha County, less than 10 miles from

Charleston.21 The area soon attracted industrial giants like DuPont and Union Carbide.

By 1976, more than 25,000 West Virginians were working in chemical plants. Hardwood

timber and natural gas production continued to provide manufacturing jobs, while steel

and iron plants along the Ohio River near Wheeling and Weirton reached a peak

employment of just under 25,000 in the early 1970s. Two decades later, about 19,500

West Virginians worked in steel plants.22 As elsewhere, most of West Virginia’s heavy

industry was unionized, though by 2006 just 15 percent of the entire workforce was

represented by a union23, and the influence of the UMWA had declined dramatically in

direct proportion to its membership and ability to affect elections.24

Chilton’s attitude toward unions was one of mild support, unless it directly affected the Gazette and the umbrella Charleston Newspapers Agency (CNA). An organization attempt in the early 1970s by the Teamsters union directed at the drivers, printers and mechanical workers resulted in a bitter strike that included several instances of rock-throwing, smashed truck windows, and other violence. Eventually, CNA fired the workers, sparking Democratic West Virginia Attorney General Chauncey Browning, during a feud with Chilton over a Haught story that accused him of shenanigans

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involving his wife being on the state payroll, to call the Gazette a “scab newspaper” and

“scandal sheet.”25 A later effort by the Newspaper Guild to organize the editorial workers

came to nothing when the organizers, Stafford noted, “got a look at the salary scale and

benefits” and concluded they had “nothing better to offer.”26

Chilton would be accused of being late to the debate over establishing a Black

Lung fund for state coal miners in 1969. The issue was raised by three West Virginia doctors, one each from Charleston, Beckley and Morgantown, who insisted the coal dust the workers were breathing in during the mining process was killing them at a far greater rate than cave-ins or explosions. The doctors spoke at rallies around the state, and United

States Representative Ken Hechler took up the call, at one point flailing a large bologna

to indicate what he thought of the opposition’s arguments during a 3,000-miner rally in

Charleston.27 Chilton and the Gazette covered and editorialized about the issue, but

without the flame or frequency that would indicate it was high on the publisher’s agenda.

The issue centered on whether coal companies should be taxed to create a state Black

Lung Fund that would compensate sick and disabled miners, and whether, in fact, it

should be presumed that miners who became ill with lung diseases contracted the

condition on the job. After a contentious, six-hour debate in the Legislature, a Gazette

editorial supported passage of the black lung legislation, suggesting it was reasonable to

assume that “when a man encounters difficulty breathing after working in a mine 10

years or longer … his condition has something to do with the inhalation of coal dust.”

Yet, the most lawmakers could hope to do was to “weigh the overall evidence and, as

best it can, make a judgment.”28

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The United Mine Workers of America, under the iron grip of hard-boiled

President Tony Boyle, did not support the West Virginia miners, with Boyle at one point calling Hechler a “fink” for his stridency on the issue.29 The miners continued the assault

on Charleston, and eventually staged a wildcat strike that effectively shut down the

state’s coal industry and put 43,000 miners on picket lines. The Gazette chided the miners

for breaking their contracts, union leadership for ignoring the issue, and lawmakers for

allowing the black lung debate to continue without a resolution. After decades of strife,

violence, and sacrifice, the Gazette noted, the miners had won a better-than-living wage,

but now faced extinction without health reform:

Among miners today are evident a pervasive disgust and discontent with employers and their union hierarchy. The pocketbook has become secondary to safety and to health. Over the years these twin concerns have been ignored by labor leaders and management while both pointed proudly to the handsome hourly wage. Handsome as it is, wage is no longer relevant to the issues roiling the industry. Safety and health of the individual are now paramount.30

Unlike most issues, where Chilton established black and white positions that left no doubt, his attitude toward major industry was far more textured. He generally favored

economic development efforts toward bringing in new industry, but not at the expense of existing companies or public policy that favored social and environmental protections over business handouts. Underlying the debate over West Virginia’s ongoing economic woes was a feeling that the state had been typecast as poor Appalachians, little educated, prejudiced, and unwilling to break from their mountaineer pasts. The issue of image stemmed nearly from the state’s founding, when national attention focused on the rugged hills only during times of intense tragedy, such as mining disasters like the explosion at

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Layland in Fayette County that killed 112 miners,31 and union wars like the Matewan

Massacre.32 Late in the Nineteenth Century, the Hatfield and McCoy feud, pitting a

southern West Virginia family against a Kentucky family, drew national attention.

Magazine and newspaper articles poked fun at hillbillies, and painted West Virginians as

violent and refusing to adopt modern ways.33 In the midst of the Great Depression,

Eleanor Roosevelt made portions of the state a central theme in her campaign against

poverty. The Kennedy campaign’s highlighting the extreme conditions in some formerly

vibrant coalfields raised new concerns about image. In a famous article, the Saturday

Evening Post in 1960 devoted several pages and photographs to an article called “The

strange case of West Virginia: Poverty amid splendor.” The article pointed out the

difference between conditions in the coalfields and the magnificent Greenbrier Resort, a

posh retreat in White Sulphur Springs set amid the flowing valleys of beautiful

Greenbrier County that frequently attracted the nation’s political and industrial elite. The

article caused such a stir that West Virginia Governor Cecil Underwood directly

addressed it, saying the magazine was not “objective in portraying a true picture of the

state.”34 The political corruption of the Barron and Moore administrations only deepened

the shadows.

A Presbyterian minister from New York was sent to Colcord, in Raleigh County,

in 1952 as part of the denomination’s “Mountain Mission.” The Reverend Jack Weller

found the people friendly and inviting, but at the same time distant. The mind of the

mountaineer, he concluded in a well-read book, was formed by an unyielding topography that forced self-reliance; a century of abuse at the hands of out-of-state industrialists who

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owned the mineral rights and treated the people as vassals, and a focus on the past rather than the future. The result was a clannishness that resisted change.35

At the time, it was popular to frown upon those who it was perceived failed to fully embrace the coming Space Age, and the surge of commercialism that would engulf the nation. Thirty years later, in updating the book, Weller found that West Virginians

had been “integrated into the American scene,” though they retained many of the

attributes he had found so puzzling three decades before but now found refreshing:

As they moved into the mainstream of society, they have brought with them many lovely attributes – their closeness and caring for family, the genuineness of their concern for their neighbors, and their willingness to share with others even though they may be poor themselves. In a way it is sad to see the passing of a subculture that was unique. Yesterday’s People. They have enriched us by their lives and their love. They are indeed now a part of the “melting pot” of our nation, and they have brought to us a significant part of themselves to add to the “global village that is the United States.36

Few were in better position than Chilton to offer perspective on West Virginia

and its economic plight. He spent his youth apart from the inviting hills that claimed so

many native hearts, and he gained broad experience in the wider world through his time

at boarding schools, in the Army, at Yale and then as a world traveler. Yet, there was

never any question that he would return to West Virginia to work at the family newspaper

and that Charleston would be his home.37 As a young legislator, Chilton favored

increased funding for the West Virginia Publicity Commission so that “more tourism

dollars can be lured to West Virginia and even more important, so that sound industries

can be brought here to take up the present coal slack.”38 Chilton later changed his mind,

arguing that, first, the stereotypes of West Virginia were simply wrong and, second, that

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the best way to fix the state’s image, if it needed fixing at all, was to, as Kennedy suggested, directly address the problems confronting the state. When West Virginia

Commerce Commissioner Angus Peyton lobbied lawmakers in 1969 for a $690,000 advertising campaign to “correct” the state’s national reputation, Chilton called the proposal “flapdoodle.” He noted that the Saturday Evening Post, whose portrayal of the state as ignorantly impoverished had raised so much ire nine years before, “is dead, while

West Virginia survives.” The real issue, he wrote, was “the largest and most widely held inferiority complex in recorded history,” and the best solution was to “concentrate upon tackling a few of West Virginia’s recognizable faults.” If that were done, the “state’s image will take care of itself quite satisfactorily.”39 Unnecessary angst over the state’s image was a continuous theme for Chilton, who intoned to the Charleston Rotary Club in

1981 that West Virginia was held “in no worse and no better” esteem in the eyes of

average Americans than any other individual state:

Indeed, in one respect this state is very, very fortunate. People pollution – a change which has so disturbed our urban centers – hasn’t occurred here. And if demographic prophecies are accurate, West Virginia is in no danger of experiencing people pollution for the foreseeable future.40

In time, Chilton would come to be seen as a West Virginia knight, placing himself

and the Gazette repeatedly between forces – whether native or outsider – that would seek

to take advantage of the powerless, a voice that he felt had been missing during the

state’s formative years, when capricious industrialists and scheming residents contrived

to sell the state’s vast resources to interests outside its borders. Chilton refused to see

himself or the Gazette as anything less than a national player in journalism and politics,

and he saw no reason why West Virginia should not see itself the same way. Thus, he

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mustered little sympathy for miners who failed to control their own union, whose power during its peak was unquestionable. Neither did he mind a presidential candidate standing on ramshackle porches in West Virginia “hollers” to decry America’s inattention to the poor – a real issue he felt needed addressing. Nor, did he see any need for his own workers, whom he felt were paid well for their skills, to seek protection beyond what he afforded, an issue that represented a patrician arrogance he rarely exhibited in matters that did not directly affect the Gazette and, therefore, himself. Yet, the land, itself, in those turbulent years of the 1960s, seemed to have no champion, and Chilton picked up the gauntlet, beginning what would turn into decades of fighting commercial interests for those who had few weapons.

As early as 1964, Chilton began agitating for stricter water, air, and strip mining regulations. The Gazette chastised natural gas drillers in Roane County, who dumped brine water into the Pocatalico River and made “life unbearable for the 3,000 users of water from the Sissonville Public Service District.”41 In rejecting the idea of still another state-sponsored study to determine air quality in the Kanawha Valley, the Gazette noted

“anyone suffering from chronic or acute … catarrh – and that includes every living resident [near the chemical plants] – is well aware of this valley’s smoke pollution problem.” After a local senator obligingly agreed with the Charleston Chamber of

Commerce that there was no air pollution issue, the politician found out at the next election “that thousands of housewives disagreed with both of them.”42

Chilton hammered on the ongoing practice of strip mining in the state, pointing out in 1964 that a federal study in Kentucky concluded that the practice there created

large “areas of land that were denuded, and left with toxic materials.” At some point,

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West Virginians “would wonder, as they gaze upon bleak, stripped hills, if free enterprise ought to be quite so free.”43 Chilton equated with murder the industry’s practice of

stripping away vegetation, trees, and topsoil in order to get to the coal underneath.

Surface mining, he wrote, was “slaughter of nature.” “Erosion, desolation, and stream

and river pollution are the crowning infamies of a cruel, cruel business: strip mining.”44

He argued the state’s extraction industries, including coal mining, natural gas drilling, and limestone quarrying, should be forced to adopt practices to protect wells and streams.

He wanted regulation to rest with the Department of Natural Resources, a state agency charged with caring for the environment, rather than the Department of Mines. A key change, he argued, would be allowing citizens to appeal a permit, not just the company seeking one.45

Chilton was among the earliest to attack strip mining, which up until the early

1950s and the adoption of massive earth-moving equipment by the coal companies made

up a relatively small percentage of the coal produced in the state. The state Legislature

began debating a new strip mining law in 1967, based upon recommendations by a task force set up by Underwood. Chilton was appointed a member, as was Leo Vecellio, president of the West Virginia Surface Mine Association and an executive in two coal companies. Chilton was a loud advocate on the task force for fundamental and historic change. If the practice could not be outright banned, he wanted the strictest possible

regulations.46 Vecellio went on the attack almost immediately, telling a legislative committee that “90 to 95 percent of surface mining would be wiped out by three lines in the bill.” The provision in the proposed legislation mandated that no surface mining could be conducted within 500 feet of any public road, stream or other public property.47

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Several legislators said they feared state regulations reaching into private lands would be declared unconstitutional. Chilton said it was worth the risk.48 A House of Delegates

committee reduced the mining limits to 100 feet, and the bill was passed and signed into

law. By April, dozens of strip mining companies submitted applications for new permits

in hopes of beating the effective date of the new law.49

Chilton continued the onslaught against industry that violated the land and water, and the extraction industries that provided much of the state’s revenue continued to do it,

finding loopholes in the law and compliant state regulators. In 1977, Congress moved to

tighten strip mining across the country, but in 2007 the Gazette reported the law was only

minimally effective.50 The West Virginia law passed in 1967 failed to fulfill Chilton’s

hopes, as legislatures in later years did not provide adequate funding for inspections and

enforcement. In 1980, strip mining accounted for 20.7 percent of the more than 100

million tons of coal produced in the state, up from just 8 percent in 1950.51 Still, the fight

continued on all fronts. When two Gazette reporters and a photographer traveled through

the chemical-plant rich town of Nitro on a “beautiful, balmy” October morning in 1980, a

sulphur-like smell assaulted them. When they returned by the same route that afternoon,

there was no smell. “Shouldn’t we infer from this,” the Gazette editorialized, “that the

Nitro Stench doesn’t have to be? That the West Virginia Air Pollution Commission

could, if it so desired, command the offending plant to stop stinking up Nitro’s immediate

neighborhood?”52 The same day the editorial appeared, a representative from the

commission hand-delivered to Monsanto Chemical Co. in Nitro an order to stem the smell, which apparently had been emanating from its waste water treatment ponds. A

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Monsanto spokesman told the Gazette that “we are aware of the odors … and are not insensitive to the situation.”53

Few areas of business were outside Chilton’s sights when commerce, as in mining

and drilling, intersected with the public. After reading a book that challenged the

insurance industry’s cry for tort reform in 1986, Chilton ordered reporter Paul Nyden to

investigate potential links between the insurance industry, the Rand Corporation and

asbestos litigation. Rand had recently issued a study on the rising amount of jury awards,

sounding a warning that out-of-control juries could cause serious harm to conglomerates

such as chemical giant Union Carbide, which had extensive operations in the Kanawha

Valley and was facing dozens of lawsuits involving its manufacture of asbestos. Nyden found a variety of links between Rand and the insurance industry, including shared board members and research grants.54 As was Chilton’s normal practice, he gave Nyden’s story

to United Press International prior to its scheduled publication in the Sunday Gazette-

Mail. The wire service moved the story on a Thursday. Rand attorneys telephoned Editor

Don Marsh, demanding that Nyden’s investigation be killed and threatening a libel suit.

UPI sent an editor’s note to its members, saying that Rand was “deeply concerned” about

the piece. The Sunday Gazette-Mail ran the story, and Nyden later followed up with an

article saying that Rand had destroyed some of the data used in its litigation study.55

Chilton also was concerned about aluminum siding companies, termite exterminators, stock promoters, and many others.56

Few investigations caused the kind of uproar as did Haught’s probe into car

dealers and auto repair shops. Simply called “Ripoff?,” the series examined a wide range

of issues from shoddy repairs to poor service on new cars that experienced problems. In

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his first installment, Haught traced six deputy cruisers that the Kanawha County Sheriff’s

Department had traded in at two local car dealers. The cruisers had mileage ranging from

80,000 to 120,000. The dealers sold them to used car lots lower in the retail chain, and showed Haught paperwork proving that the mileage was reported correctly when the vehicles left their lots. “Later, however, most found a fountain of youth.”57 A St. Albans

man bought seven of the cruisers for $950 each, and sold one of them, listed as a 1975

Bel-Air with 58,000 miles, to a woman for $1,700. She later sued and got her money

back, though she lost $500 in repairs. A federal law was passed in 1972 making it a crime

punishable by a year in jail and a $50,000 fine for tampering with odometers. The law

was little used, but had some deterrence effect. “In the old days, no car had more than

39,000 miles,” a dealer told Haught. “But you see a lot of higher mileage now. It’s

private owners who still roll them back.”58

Haught worked with Gail Roberts, a young female reporter with “a guileless

face,” to test the honesty of local repair shops. She pulled a spark plug wire on a

“smooth-running, well-tuned car” and took it to several auto repair shops with a

complaint that there was a slight miss in the engine. She left the car at each shop, asking

for a telephone call before any major repairs were made. She gave them Haught’s number

at the Gazette. The responses ranged from a mechanic who called back in 20 minutes and

charged $2 for reattaching the plug wire to estimates of “$50 or $60” for a major tune-up

on the car that “won’t hardly run.”59 Haught rounded up a series of lawsuits that had been filed against dealers and repair shops, including one in which the father of the Logan

County prosecutor twice called local police when the shop refused to let him take his truck, and finally sued, alleging the shop “maliciously, wickedly, cruelly and criminally

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blockaded the truck.”60 He also searched files with the Better Business Bureau,

Charleston’s consumer complaint division, and noted that the Consumer Protection

Division of the state attorney general’s office refused to turn over its records, citing a state law that prohibited releasing the names of companies under investigation. Haught used the information to create a list of local dealers that “cause the most grief” for buyers, including fifty-two complaints filed against a single Dodge dealership, and fifty-four against several dealerships run by the same family. Among the complaints was one from a Rensford man who said he paid $130 for rust proofing his new truck and eighteen months later a large rust spot was sprouting. A factory inspector concluded the vehicle had never had the treatment.61 The last three parts of the series informed readers how to

fight dealers and repair shops,62 examined efforts to reform the auto repair business that would become increasingly vital as vehicles became more sophisticated,63 and chastised

the Consumer Protection Division of the West Virginia attorney general’s office for

failing to address thousands of complaints.64 Four years after its formation, Haught

wrote, the division under Attorney General Browning had failed to write rules for dealing

with car repair complaints and had filed no lawsuits against dealers or repair shops, nor

issued a single cease and desist order. Of the 6,210 written complaints and the 13,000

telephone calls received by the division, car issues topped the list.65

Readers relished the series, some calling in their own tales of vehicle horrors,

some of which Haught wrote up as small sidebars in the latter part of the series. Letter

writers peppered both the Gazette and the Mail with praise for the investigation,

including one that said, “The articles on car dealers by James Haught should qualify for

the award of investigative reporting of the century.”66 The Gazette followed for nearly a

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year the case of a West Virginia Technical College student from Iran who had complained in a letter to the editor that he was left without transportation when a car dealer refused to return keys to a disputed Buick.67

Advertisers were less enthusiastic. Editor Marsh reported in his column a week

after the series concluded that some car dealers were “boycotting” Charleston

Newspapers.68 As part of the Joint Operating Agreement with the Daily Mail, not only did the same ad staff sell for both newspapers, but advertising contracts provided steep discounts for placing ads in both newspapers.69 In addition, the dealers knew that

attempting to punish the Gazette by switching their print ads to the Daily Mail would be a

meaningless gesture, since the newspapers shared profits and the higher prices for

advertising only in the Mail would make up most of the Gazette’s loss. When Chilton

later turned his sights on the state’s newspaper industry, the power of the JOA would be

cited by some of his critics. It was easier for Chilton to grandstand against advertisers,

they reasoned, since local advertisers had no true alternative. It was a hollow criticism,

since by the 1980s no town in West Virginia except Charleston had competing dailies

owned by separate companies, with or without a JOA. Still, the episode was painful.

Charleston Newspapers Advertising Manager Al Starr was stoic, and no one

downstairs had even mentioned the series to the newsroom. “Well, I don’t think they

should,” he told Marsh. “And anyway, they knew it wouldn’t do any good.” Marsh

named four large dealers who had pulled their advertising the first week, worth about

$13,700, and six who had not. Citing an Aspen, Colorado, weekly newspaper’s motto that

declared the publication was “as independent as finances permit,” Marsh told readers the

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difference between the Gazette and many other newspapers was that “ours permit more.

Ask any car dealer.”70

The battle attracted the attention of the trade journal Editor & Publisher, which quoted Marsh’s columns and interviewed the editor. He told reporter John Consoli that

Chilton was outraged over the dealers’ reaction to the series and seriously considered filing an antitrust lawsuit against them. Marsh noted that executives at the Mail were

“maintaining a pained silence.”71 By late December of 1978, the car dealers had returned, having withheld more than $120,000 in the interim. Marsh told readers that Chilton, who

was never known to discuss the newspaper’s business side in the newsroom, appeared to

be more concerned about the dealers coming back than going out in the first place:

As far as I could tell, W.E. Chilton III, the Gazette publisher, was most troubled by implications of the boycott. Chilton said he believes that readers would be justified in assuming that we had made editorial concessions to lure back defectors. His inclination was to take a much harder line than that favored by the other three members of the board that guides Charleston Newspapers.72

He said no concessions had been made, and that the dealers were in the “awkward

position of a Siamese twin who is mad enough to cut his brother’s throat” but couldn’t do

it without hurting himself more.73

Without directly citing Haught’s series, state and federal bureaucracies began to

move. A Bluefield automobile shop was indicted by a federal grand jury in November

1978;74 the state Department of Finance and Administration suspended the bidding

privileges of a Charleston dealer,75 and the state Department of Motor Vehicles asked

lawmakers for legislation that would make it illegal to fail to put a vehicle’s true mileage

on the title when it was sold.76 Attorney General Browning, continuing an ongoing feud

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with Chilton, reported in a long interview with the Daily Mail that during the year 1978 his consumer protection division received “and acted upon 22,000 complaints,” and that his office took part in a multi-state suit against General Motors Corporation that resulted in 687 West Virginians getting $200 each and new 36,000-mile warranties.77

Apparently having found new insight into the state’s consumer protection laws,

Browning instigated a flurry of activity after the Ripoff? series. The AG’s Consumer

Protection Division reached a settlement that resulted in $3,000 being returned to eight individuals and the town of Mason, all of which had purchased the Kanawha County deputy cruisers with rolled-back mileage. Haught had quoted Ron Reed, director of the division, in September as saying the reason his division had taken no action on car

complaints is that he had no authority to actively investigate. Three months later, Reed made no such claim to Gazette reporter Fanny Seiler, who reported the deal over the

sheriff’s cruisers and quoted a settlement document that an attorney general’s

investigation had concluded the resellers engaged in “unfair methods of competition and

unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”78 Other AG actions included suing one of

Charleston’s largest car dealers for alleged fraud by reselling Fiestas damaged in a

Virginia hurricane;79 leading to a crackdown on state garages that failed to properly

inspect vehicles before issuing valid inspection stickers,80 and filing several suits alleging

odometer fraud.81 Browning was not directly quoted in any of the Gazette coverage.

The National Press Club awarded Haught and the Gazette its consumer reporting

award for 1978. Started just six years earlier, the Gazette had won two of the six awards,

capturing the 1974 honor for a Haught investigation into two home-siding promoters that led to federal prison terms for the operators.82 If Chilton was only mildly interested in

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union issues and his attention to underground mining paled in relation to his screeds against surface mining, Chilton’s attention to the fate of West Virginia consumers would never flag. His efforts to tackle the state legal profession and what he perceived as the

West Virginia Bar’s failure to protect their own clients would eventually attract national attention, spawn a new movement in the printing industry, and pit himself against an attorney whose arrogance and combative nature was matched only by his own.

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Notes

1 Interview, James Haught, Charleston, W.Va., June 19, 2009.

2 Staff, “Case history of car a virtual nightmare,” Charleston Gazette, September 29, 1978.

3 John Consoli, “Auto dealers trim ads in Charleston newspapers,” Editor & Publisher, October 28, 1978.

4 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton, Charleston, W.Va., Janurary 29, 2009.

5 Thomas Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable: Journalism and Politics in West Virginia. (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2005), 134.

6 Interview, Sandy Wells, Charleston, W.Va., January 19, 2009.

7 Haught, “Superslick production hides cult atmosphere at PTL Club,” The Sunday Gazette-Mail, September 9, 1979. Jim Bakker was later caught up in a sex and financial scandal, largely uncovered by the Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer, which toppled his church empire.

8 Elizabeth Chilton, interview.

9 W.E. Chilton III. “Bumps, goosebumps – A ride on the Concorde,” The Charleston Gazette, May 7, 1977.

10 Staff, “Gazette publisher car theft victim,” Charleston Daily Mail, August 8, 1978.

11 Chilton Diary. Chilton III Papers, Box 4, FF2, A&M 3020 Addendum, West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Library, Morgantown.

12 Elizabeth Chilton, interview.

13 Charles A. Murry. Losing Ground: American social policy, 1950-1980. (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 14.

14 Otis K. Rice and Stephen W. Brown. West Virginia: A History (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 192.

15 Rice and Brown. West Virginia, 280.

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16 Ibid., 276.

17 Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable, 133-134.

18 William F. Buckley Jr. to W.E. Chilton III, July 26, 1977, Chilton III Papers, Box 2, File 7b, West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

19 Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable, 134.

20 Interview, Haught.

21 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 199-201.

22 Ibid., 202.

23 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Union membership in 2006,” at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/union2_01252007.pdf (Accessed July 14, 2009).

24 James A. Haught, Fascinating West Virginia (Charleston, W.Va.: The Printing Press, Lt., 2008), 129.

25 Staff, “Dirty: ‘We’ve done nothing wrong,’ Browning answers Gazette,” Charleston Gazette, October 8, 1972.

26 Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable, 134.

27 Haught, Fascinating West Virginia, 129.

28 Editorial, “The time is long overdue for action on black lung,” Charleston Gazette, February 13, 1969.

29 Haught, Fascinating West Virginia, 127.

30 Editorial, “Unless miner protected, bleak times are coming,” Charleston Gazette, February 28, 1969.

31 West Virginia Office of Miners Health, Safety and Training, “Important dates in West Virginia’s mining history,” at http://www.wvminesafety.org/HISTORY.HTM (Accessed December 18, 2008).

32 West Virginia Department of Culture and History, “Timeline,” at http://www.wvculture.org/history/wvmemory/timelineresults.aspx?Year=1920&Month=&Day=&Desc=Ma tewan%20Massacre&Ref=&See=&NumRec=50. (Accessed July 15, 2009). The town’s mayor, two townspeople, and seven Baldwin-Felts detectives were killed in a shootout that sparked months of violence in the southern coalfields. The town’s police chief, Sid

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Hatfield, sided with the miners and was acquitted after a two-month trial on murder charges.

33 West Virginia Department of Culture and History. “Time Trail,” at http://www.wvculture.org/history/timetrl/ttjan.html#0101. (Accessed July 15, 2009). The feud, which had been going on for years, attracted national attention when the Hatfields attacked the McCoys in 1888 in a late-night raid, setting fire to Randolph McCoy’s home, killing two children and seriously injuring McCoy’s wife. West Virginia state historians noted: “Although more deadly feuds occurred throughout the country in the late 1800s, the national media made the Hatfields and McCoys the most famous. One year after the New Year’s incident, New York reporter T. C. Crawford used the Hatfield-McCoy feud to brand Appalachians as barbaric.”

34 West Virginia Department of Culture and History. “Time Trail,” at http://www.wvculture.org/hiStory/timetrl/ttfeb.html (Accessed July 15, 2009). The article was printed in the February 6, 1960, edition, and was followed up by a New York Post article.

35 Jack Weller, Yesterday’s People. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), 4-5.

36 Jack Weller, Yesterday’s People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965/1995), Preface, VIII.

37 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton. Indeed, there is no hint in thousands of pages of documents in the Chilton III papers at West Virginia University, or in any of his writings that he ever pondered a professional life outside the state.

38 W.E. Chilton III. Questionnaire for political candidates, 1954. The questionnaire is contained in the Gazette morgue on microfiche as part of the newspaper’s official file on Chilton.

39 Editorial, “No amount of flapdoodle will repair state image,” Charleston Gazette, February 8, 1969.

40 Staff, “Technology, society present new challenges, Chilton says,” Charleston Gazette, September 26, 1981.

41 Editorial, “Drillers need to read policy,” Charleston Gazette, April 4, 1967.

42 Editorial, “Another smoke study unneeded,” Charleston Gazette, August 7, 1964.

43 Editorial, “Strip mining results shocking: Mountains scarred, rivers polluted,” Charleston Gazette, August 2, 1964.

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44 Editorial, “Destruction of nature desirable,” Charleston Gazette, December 13, 1964.

45 Editorial, “Water pollution proposal lacks critical safeguards,” Charleston Gazette, February 19, 1969.

46 Interview, David Callaghan by telephone, December 28, 2008. Callaghan, an administrator for Governor Cecil H. Underwood, served as chair of the group that made the legislative recommendations. “Oh, he [Chilton] was very vocal,” Callaghan said.

47 John Morgan, “Strip miners voice fear of extinction,” Charleston Gazette, February 1, 1967.

48 Editorial, “Strip mining bill sentiment obvious to legislature,” Charleston Gazette, February 10, 1967.

49 John Morgan, “Many strip mine permits issued,” Charleston Gazette, April 25, 1967.

50 Mark Ward, “30 years later mine law’s success debate,” Charleston Gazette, July 22, 2007.

51 Rice and Brown, West Virginia, 192.

52 Editorial, “The Nitro stench,” Charleston Gazette, October 3, 1980.

53 Skip Johnson, “Clean up Nitro stink, state tells Monsanto,” Charleston Gazette, October 4, 1980.

54 Robert Sherrill, “One paper that wouldn’t shut up,” The Nation, May 17, 1986.

55 Ibid.

56 Haught, Fascinating West Virginia, 112.

57 Haught, “Odometer fraud persists despite federal law,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, September 24, 1978.

58 Ibid.

59 Haught, “Plant car draws erratic diagnoses from city garages,” Charleston Gazette, September 25, 1978.

60 Haught, “Frequency of auto lawsuits may indicate trend,” Charleston Gazette, September 26, 1978. 148

61 Haught, “Which car dealers cause most grief?” Charleston Gazette, September 27, 1978.

62 Haught, “It’s possible to fight car dealers and win,” Charleston Gazette, September 28, 1978.

63 Haught, “Auto repair reform will come slowly,” Charleston Gazette, September 30, 1978.

64 Haught, “Consumer Protection Division doing little to help car owners,” Charleston Gazette, September 29, 1978.

65 Ibid.

66 Readers Forum, “Award of Century,” Charleston Gazette, October 21, 1978.

67 Staff, “Jury awards Iranian student $1,500 for car,” Charleston Gazette, January 30, 1979. Mohammad Ahanghardezfooli had sued the dealer, and the jury spent less than five minutes deliberating before awarding him the money.

68 Don Marsh, “As independent as finances permit,” Charleston Gazette, October 6, 1978.

69 Staff, “Combined newspapers called greedy,” Charleston Gazette, September 18, 1980. The un-bylined article was part of Chilton’s first assault against the state’s newspapers. The investigation is fully explored in Chapter 7.

70 Marsh, “As independent as finances permit,” Charleston Gazette, October 6, 1978.

71 Consoli, “Auto dealers trim ads in Charleston newspapers,” Editor & Publisher, October 28, 1978.

72 Marsh, “Car ads back because they sell,” Charleston Gazette, December 19, 1978.

73 Ibid.

74 Staff, “Indictment cites false repair bills,” Charleston Gazette, November 15, 1978.

75 United Press International, “Car firm suspended from state bidding,” Charleston Gazette, November 30, 1978.

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76 Fanny Seiler, “Odometer fraud, dealers licensing in DMV’s legislative packaging,” Charleston Gazette, January 3, 1979.

77 Richard Grimes, “Car owners seek GM engine switch pay,” Charleston Daily Mail, December 19, 1978.

78 Seiler, “$4,200 settlement reached in mileage rollback case,” Charleston Gazette, January 4, 1979.

79 Warren Fiske, “State sues Wolfe in sale of damaged Fords,” Charleston Gazette, January 30, 1979.

80 Staff, “State police stage auto inspection crackdown,” Charleston Daily Mail, February 14, 1979.

81 See, for instance, Associated Press, “Odometer tampering charge brought,” Charleston Gazette, March 21, 1979.

82 Staff, “Car repair series wins national award,” Charleston Gazette, October 16, 1979.

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Chapter 6: “Towering Law Reforms”

At forty-nine, his thick, unruly hair turning to gray, his familiar bowties permanently askew, and a toddler daughter at home, Chilton was coming into his own.

He had seen first-hand the power of his newspaper to create change and light the sparks of controversy that would consume political and financial careers. In the spring of 1971, just as the trees blanketing the hills around Charleston were returning to their full glory, his well-known temper flared to white hot. Charleston attorney Stanley Preiser, well on his way to establishing what would become a national reputation for defending his clients at any cost and at any decibel level, had poked the tiger by suggesting the Gazette had traded its integrity for a personal vendetta against a few city police officers. Chilton, by then, was accustomed to attacks, both veiled and frontal, about his proclivities toward activism that jarred the journalism establishment. But Preiser had overstepped the rules of engagement by implying that newly promoted investigative reporter James Haught and other Gazette journalists had colluded with Charleston and Kanawha County law enforcers. Chilton would have none of it.

Haught knew little of vice. He was a gentle man who wore thick glasses, listened to classical music, lived on a quiet lake, and greatly admired Chilton for a personal intensity he could never match. He preferred books to booze and would rather spend time with his family than with most of the people in the newsroom or those he met as the fiery publisher’s main weapon. He was forced to prowl the seedy side of Charleston, however, when Kanawha County’s chief deputy, Howard Parks, slipped him a report on police corruption that he had compiled at the request of county Prosecutor Pat Casey. The

implications were dire: a few city police officers might be taking money to look the other

way while pimps ran prostitutes, illegal taverns operated, and numbers runners from

Beckley operated an unlawful lottery. A city police captain offered further tips, and

Haught began to gather information from prostitutes and a variety of what he called

“seedy characters straight out of The Three Penny Opera.”1 His first article created a

firestorm, and police Chief Dallas Bias, Vice Squad Captain Bob Crouse, and Vice

Detective Peter J. Biagi immediately filed $1 million libel suits, even though they had not

been named in the story.2 Bias resigned to run for mayor, and the new acting chief, Van

Brown, suspended the officers.3

Crouse and Biagi hired Preiser to defend them. When the Police Civil Service

Commission on March 31, 1971, ordered their reinstatement, he accused the Gazette of

working behind the scenes to convict the men, a charge that incensed Chilton and spurred

him to directly address his readers in an unusual column headlined “A statement by the

publisher” and which concluded with a rendition of his bold signature. “These allegations

are malicious and wholly false,” he wrote.4 As he outlined them, the allegations were that

Gazette reporters gathered information at the request of the new chief, and turned over to

him what they found. He explained that the newspaper had gathered “sworn affidavits, unsworn statements, transcripts of conversations and records of various [law enforcement] investigations” as part of its defense against the libel suits. When Brown asked for the records, Chilton said he consulted with his news managers and attorney and eventually agreed to provide part of the files: “Placed in a dilemma by the acting chief’s request, the Gazette did what it conceived to be its duty.”5

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Chilton then fired his own attack against Preiser. He noted that eight years before

the Civil Service hearing, Preiser had testified in another episode involving city police

that he knew Crouse had trouble with the truth. In a 1963 case involving stolen goods,

Preiser defended four officers who ultimately were fired, telling the Civil Service

Commission that he had “heard many times questions about Bob Crouse’s truth and

veracity. It was our belief that Bob Crouse wasn’t telling the truth.”6 Chilton said Preiser

was “determined to make what is clearly an intradepartmental police investigation appear

to be a personal clash between Gazette newsmen and his clients. It is necessary,

therefore, to make this statement: The material in the possession of the Gazette alleges

both serious crimes and unwholesome activity.”7 He challenged the officers and Preiser

to “submit . . . to lie detector tests” and said that they could “designate any or all

members of the Gazette news department” who would “cheerfully” take the tests. He

offered to pay for all the tests by an independent examiner with the only proviso being

that the Gazette would publish the results. This, Chilton told readers, was not a “bluff” to

deflect criticism. “The Gazette [i.e. Chilton] means every word of it and is prepared to arrange the tests at once. Today. Now.”8

Preiser, enraged, refiled the earlier libel suits, seeking larger awards and citing

Chilton’s column as one of the offenses. Prosecutor Casey eventually decided there was not enough evidence for indictments, and it was not until a federal prosecutor impaneled a grand jury that Crouse was indicted, convicted, and sentenced to three years in prison.

Bias lost his race for mayor, and died in 1975 on his motorboat. The episode, however, touched off a sixteen-year feud between Preiser and Chilton, during which the attorney

filed at least nine libel suits that helped spur the publisher into establishing a new policy

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of suing the lawyers who sued him and helped earn him an only partially accurate label as

a hater of all lawyers.

Before Chilton III, the Gazette had a poor track record in the courts. The state

Supreme Court unanimously reversed a 1926 jury verdict in Raleigh County that had

cleared the Gazette of libel, ruling the lower judge improperly instructed the jury. West

Virginia libel laws were similar to those of most other states at the time. A holdover from

the Nineteenth Century, the statutes were meant to prevent duels and fisticuffs by those

who felt their honor had been impugned by an editor or by someone quoted in a

newspaper.9 As such, the libel statute required those being sued for libel to prove the

truth of the statements and to show that the words published were not “insults tending to

violence and breach of the peace.”10 The 1926 case, decided by the high court in 1928, involved a relatively sedate report based on information from the state police that an

escaped inmate offered to testify in a murder case if the escape charges were reduced.11

The Gazette report incorrectly listed the name of a witness to the murder, and ran an

apology several days later.

However, nothing was sedate about a libel case decided in 1958, when Chilton

was associate publisher, by two state legislators inflamed over Gazette accusations that

they were lackeys for the governor. In an editorial on August 5, 1955, the Gazette called

for an end to the practice of state legislators who also were insurance agents collecting commissions for selling fire insurance policies to the state. Citing the previous legislative

session in which lawmakers correctly barred lawmakers from getting state liquor contracts, the editorial noted:

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If they could serve their own cause and that of the electorate with equal fervor while holding state insurance contracts, all well and good. But they can’t! Their past actions in the Legislature reveal them as peons of the politicians and lackeys of the administration. We’ve watched them at work, and they follow the administration line with dutiful submission. They are the governor’s marionettes on the Senate and House floors, and they jump when ordered to – like Kukla and Ollie of television fame.

It’s easy to see that they’ve sold their votes – sold out their constituents – for a price. They’re more dedicated to their own creature comforts than to the comforts and welfare of the folks back home. So that you’ll know these legislators better, we’ll name them.12

Among the lawmakers were J. Paul England and J. Paul Bower, both of Pineville

in Wyoming County. They sued, with both men winning verdicts at the local court level.

England won a verdict for $5,000, and Bower a decision for $8,000. In part citing the

earlier 1928 decision against the Gazette that declared the offending publication had a

duty to prove what it published was factually correct, the high court unanimously ruled

that the newspaper had given up its qualified immunity to comment on public affairs by

stating as fact that the legislators had “sold their votes.”13 However “evil the practice” of the state granting insurance business to legislators might be, the high court wrote in its opinion, the newspaper could not prove the delegates, in fact, had traded their support of administration policies in exchange for the business. Absent such proof, the lower court jury verdicts must be upheld.14

The libel landscape dramatically changed in 1964 when the U.S. Supreme Court

handed down the New York Times v. Sullivan decision. The Times had run a full-page advertisement from a civil rights group that accused police in Montgomery, Alabama, of harassing activists, including the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. The director of the city’s Department of Public Safety sued, arguing that even though he had not been

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named, he had been defamed. The high court, while acknowledging that the

advertisement contained “false facts” that could have been corrected by searching the

newspaper’s archives, ruled that as a public official, L.B. Sullivan should expect to be

criticized, and that in order to prevail in a libel action he would have to prove “actual

malice.” This was defined as proving that the newspaper either knew the statements were

false and published them anyway, or acted in “reckless disregard” for the truth.15

Scholars have noted the decision unleashed the American press, resulting in ongoing

debates over whether the ultimate impact was to degrade “truth-telling standards” or to

empower those responsible for upholding First Amendment values by providing a shield

against wonton attacks.16 Chilton immediately recognized the significance of the

decision, telling readers in a 1964 editorial that “newspapers were now free to protect the

public.”17 Libel suits, he wrote, have “silenced many a newspaper that would otherwise

be willing to probe deeply into the affairs of public servants when those affairs have

bearing on the public interest. Further, newspapers have been harassed by lawsuits

growing out of mistakes, pure and simple.”18

The decision, however, failed to cool litigious fervor, and Chilton grew increasingly upset with lawyers who continued to file libel suits against him and the

Gazette, seemingly disregarding the Supreme Court ruling and the basic tenets of First

Amendment freedoms. The fight was no less than for the soul of West Virginia’s press.

The arguments were outlined in a 1974 televised debate on a Charleston television station

between him and Preiser. The attorney, in a remarkable turnaround from his earlier

accusations that the Gazette had improperly colluded with officials, suggested

newspapers should not print corruption allegations but should turn over information they

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had developed to authorities for investigation.19 Chilton cited the Washington Post’s

ongoing investigation of the Watergate scandal and the Gazette’s own crusade against

former West Virginia Governor W.W. Baron. Newspapers, he said, were often the last

resort for people frustrated by morally and ethically bankrupt bureaucracies. Preiser noted

that the press has many subtle ways of steering the news. Aside from selective editing of

the facts and being outright wrong in many cases, the press dictates what is important by

deciding where in the newspaper to publish a story. As an example he cited his own

recent remarks to the Associated Press Broadcast Association’s convention, which the

Gazette printed “on the page between the comics and the want ads.” Chilton

acknowledged papers sometimes made factual mistakes and could “subtly slant” the news

by placement decisions. Neither, he said, were intentional.20

The professional banter ended in 1981, when Preiser’s ardor for battle against

Chilton and the Gazette manifested itself in a new libel suit. A former member of the board of governors for the Trial Lawyers of America and a former president of the

Melvin Belli Society, he took enormous pride in his youth boxing career and retained the

stocky stance and fierce attitude of a pugilist. Prone to flashy dress with diamond rings

and gold bracelets, he believed most vehemently in the role of an attorney as an advocate.

A case, he believed, was a cause. The National Law Journal praised him as “one hell of a

lawyer,” whose numerous million-dollar civil verdicts easily placed him in the top tier of

the nation’s lawyers, and quoted an adversary as saying that Preiser was as formidable as

“an 800-pound gorilla.”21 At the beginning of a trial, as jurors waited for proceedings to

start, he was known to stroll over to the opposing counsel’s table, place his hand on the

attorney’s shoulder, shake hands, and whisper greetings. This, opponents observed, kept

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the lawyer from standing to face Preiser, and immediately put him in the dominant

position in the courtroom in jurors’ eyes.22

The Gazette publisher, a certified SCUBA diver and a nationally ranked squash

player, was not impressed. Neither was his attorney, Rudolph L. DiTrapano, a former

sanctioned amateur boxer who had fought in the military.23 Aside from the libel suits,

Prieser had entangled himself in several of Chilton’s hot topics. He successfully defended

former Governor Arch Moore in his 1976 bribery trial and served as the outside attorney brought in by West Virginia Attorney General Chauncey Browning to pursue the state’s case against Pittston Coal Co., which stemmed from the deadly Buffalo Creek flood in

1972. Preiser, Browning, and Moore settled with Pittston for $1 million, leaving the taxpayers with a clean-up bill from the United States Army Corps of Engineers that, with interest, amounted to nearly $10 million. After the Gazette lambasted Preiser in an

editorial, suggesting the state pursue a malpractice case against him for the Pittston

settlement, he filed a libel suit against Chilton.24

The publisher had had enough, however, when Preiser filed a suit on behalf of

Steven L. Miller in 1981, and DiTrapano filed a malicious prosecution suit against

Preiser. Miller had been a candidate for appointment as U.S. Attorney for the Southern

District of West Virginia. The Gazette editorialized that he was a “second-rater,” and ran

a cartoon that depicted him as an elephant trainer with the caption, “Will she love me in

the morning?” Miller claimed the cartoon implied he practiced bestiality.25

Why, Chilton stormed to readers, “should newspapers be required to pay costs of

suits that abuse the legal processes?” The issue was not whether newspapers had wrongly

injured someone’s reputation, legitimate questions of which should be fought out in

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court, but whether an attorney failed to understand the law and uphold his own ethics

statement that called for him to “accept employment only in matters which he is or

intends to become competent.” The majority of the suits against the Gazette, he wrote,

“exhibit a shocking stupidity about [the First Amendment as a] hallmark of American

freedom.” That is why, he said, he intended henceforth to pursue attorneys who sued him

in order to recover his legal fees. 26

The idea was greeted with hearty approval by other publications. Forbes magazine called it a, “Great idea! And we’re going to do likewise.”27 Nationally

syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff, who shared a kindred spirit of liberalism with Chilton,

explained the policy as one aimed at lawyers, not the plaintiffs. “The plaintiff doesn’t

know the law,” Chilton told him, “but the lawyer should know the law. And in this kind

of case, he should know First Amendment law.”28 Editor & Publisher, the ABA Journal, the National Law Journal, even the Journal of Commerce for the Multinational Insurance

Association watched the progress of the policy with interest. 29

In filing the malicious prosecution suit, DiTrapano argued that Preiser allowed the

five libel suits that he had filed in the earlier police corruption cases to lay fallow for ten

years, proving the suits were meant as harassment rather than good-faith efforts to

address damaged reputations. The Miller case, DiTrapano argued, clearly fell in the fair

comment category of libel defense and should never have been brought. Preiser refused

to relent. In his response to the Gazette suit, he argued there was a troubling

inconsistency between a newspaper ostensibly fighting for First Amendment freedoms and then attacking lawyers who fought for the right to complain about mistreatment on

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their clients’ behalf. He suffered a heart attack after an emotional 1982 deposition in

which he railed against Chilton:

The Charleston Gazette, in my opinion, would destroy anyone to save money for Ned Chilton, because that’s his God, dollars and cents. He’s going to print whatever he can to sell newspapers and make money. He will destroy any human being. . . . That’s what he did to Crouse and Biagi [the Charleston police officers] and that’s what he’s been trying to do to me.30

Preiser later said his heart problems had nothing to do with the deposition, which he

called an act. “I give other people heart attacks, but I don’t get them,” he told the Law

Journal. The case never went to trial. As part of a serttlement in 1986, Preiser agreed to

drop his own $13 million suit against the Gazette as well as pay Chilton $12,500. The

other suits already had been dropped by the time of the settlement. Chilton and

DiTrapano had a photograph taken, smiling into the camera as they held the check

between them.31 The publisher donated the money to the Kanawha Valley Foundation, a community charity he had founded several years before with proceeds from the now defunct North-South football game. Preiser said his insurance company arranged the settlement. His attorney, John Haight, told Editor & Publisher: “Mr. Preiser has always denied liability to the Gazette and continues to deny liability. In the view of [the] insurance carrier, it was far more reasonable from a financial viewpoint to settle and end the litigation for a small sum of money, rather than continue to fight it.”32

At one point in the early 1980s, the Gazette had eleven libel suits pending against

it, including those filed by Preiser. But the threat of malicious prosecution was working.

In support of the theory that the mere suggestion of legal action had a tremendous

chilling effect, Chilton and DiTrapano used the strategy effectively to forestall or end

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several suits. These included threats by a school superintendent who objected to the use

of the word “ousted” rather than “replaced” in a news story about his school board’s

action to hire a new chief administrator,33 and one by a probation officer who was

angered by Haught’s use of the phrase “a symbol of courthouse politics” in relation to

him.34

Chilton, however, exploded again in 1984, when a former state assistant attorney

general filed a libel suit against him on behalf of state police Trooper G.R. Johnson.35

During grand jury testimony, Johnson said, “The Ku Klux Klan stands for God, country, mom and apple pie.” Grand jury testimony is normally secret but transcripts were made available to reporters as part of an appeals process. The Gazette and several other news outlets ran stories, and Editor Don Marsh later used the quotation in a column that suggested the state police administration should consider disciplinary action. Attorney

Joseph Cometti filed a libel suit against the Gazette and the other outlets, alleging his client was defamed but not suggesting the comment was inaccurately quoted. Chilton was outraged that he had to pay $2,900 to DiTrapano to fight what he considered a frivolous attempt to intimidate the newspaper for printing privileged information that anyone who bothered to go to the courthouse could read.36 He wanted DiTrapano to get attorney fees

as part of the dismissal rather than spend more time and money in a countersuit.37 A week after it was filed, the trooper’s libel suit was dismissed by the Kanawha County Circuit

Court.38

While Cometti did not object to dismissing the action, acknowledging he had

made a mistake, he did fight DiTrapano’s motion for fees. Rejected by the circuit court

because there was no precedent, DiTrapano went to the state Supreme Court. Attorney

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Richard Rundle, representing Cometti, argued the Gazette had been involved in the suit

for less than a week and had not even been served with official papers, a situation that hardly warranted an awarding of fees. Justice Richard Neely was less sure, asking whether it would not “shake up” newspaper executives to learn from a co-defendant of a

“huge libel suit.” Rundle replied: “I don’t think it would shake up W.E. Chilton III. I think he’d relish it. I think he’d love it.”39 The high court ruled 4-1 in the publisher’s

favor, establishing a precedent that a trial court could award attorneys fees in cases where

attorneys show “wontonness” or “abuse of process.”40

While inventing new strategy in the ongoing battle over libel, Chilton was

engaged in two other frontal assaults on the legal profession. One involved what he called

West Virginia’s “ghoul system,” in which attorneys served as estate commissioners and

collected large fees for little work. The other was what he labeled the state bar’s “cover-

up mentality” and its penchant for scheduling continuing education seminars in

Morgantown on weekends when the West Virginia University football team was playing.

His philosophy of sustained outrage was on full display for both issues as he railed for

years against what he perceived as attorneys failing to uphold their own ethics rules.

The West Virginia probate system stemmed from the time of the state’s founding

in 1863. County commissioners gave contracts to private attorneys to handle estates,

rather than hiring probate clerks as part of the local court system. In the vast majority of cases, the work involved looking over what estate executors, accountants, and family

attorneys had compiled and occasionally settling disputes between heirs. In exchange, the

commissioners collected fees from the estates.41 Though reforming the probate system in

West Virginia had been sporadically debated since the 1950s, it first came under direct

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examination in a mild 1977 series in the Daily Mail by reporter Jonathon Fisher Stewart.

He examined whether changes in the guidelines issued in the previous year in Kanawha

County had worked as intended to standardize attorney fees. They had not. Fisher reported that each “commissioner of accounts” averaged $30,000 a year in estate fees,

which was more than four times what was acceptable under the new guidelines.42

Haught picked up the issue at Chilton’s order in December 1979, writing a special

“analysis” that tied the issue to Arch Moore. The effort began what would be a five-year crusade that would drag in nearly every reporter on staff and raise the hackles of lawmakers. Haught noted that Moore, while in private practice, had assigned himself from the estate of a recluse without immediate family $100,000 of Exxon stock, $7,500 as attorney fees, and $7,500 as executor fees. Overall, he wrote, the probate system was mired in politics and served more to enrich the lawyers than help surviving families.43 He kept up consistent revelations, including the case of the estate of Bratton M. Samples, a postmaster-farmer-grocer in Precious in Clay County, which had been ongoing for twenty-eight years and included the sale of eighty acres to a third party for $100.44 Some lawmakers predicted a reform effort in the upcoming legislative session, with Kanawha

County’s contingent coming out in favor of a plan that would install full-time commissioners of accounts who would be paid salaries rather than collect fees as a percentage of the estates.45

The initial movement floundered, however, and was renewed in 1980. Haught

stayed with the issue, writing the following lead on a story about how probate and politics

were entwined: “Inside the Kanawha County Courthouse – where justice, taxes, deeds,

etc., simmer in a soup of politics – the probate system is part of the daily stew.”46 For

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another article, he interviewed Dennis Vaughn, a Kanawha County commissioner of

accounts, who had collected a $40,000 fee on a single estate. He acknowledged the fee

was too much and admitted he had done little to earn the money, mostly looking over

reports prepared by tax lawyers, accountants, and workers in the Kanawha Valley Bank

Trust Department. The estate was a windfall, “what every commissioner hoped would

come through the door.”47 Three reform measures passed by the state Senate, including

ending the commissioner system altogether, died when a House committee tabled all three initiatives. Haught concluded the effort during the 1980 session was torpedoed by

House Speaker Clyde See, a Hardy County Democrat and lawyer who was a commissioner of estates in his home county until January, when he resigned the position in the midst of the debate.48

Veteran reporter John Morgan, the newspaper’s unofficial historian, was thrown

into the issue, launching an examination of the “ghoul system” in all fifty-five counties in

fall 1980 in preparation for the upcoming legislative session. He advanced the political

ties to the issue by developing a scorecard in each congressional district. For instance, he

noted that in the Fourth Congressional District, which covered eight counties in

southwestern West Virginia, seventeen of thirty appointed commissioners of accounts

“either has held or now holds political office or has a relative that does.” The

commissioners included two state senators, two prosecutors, and a former sheriff.49

Chilton personally renewed the charge for reform, distributing “West Virginia

Heritage Calendars” to all state senators. Inside the calendars was a letter from Editor

Don Marsh advocating an end to the system and a pamphlet that reprinted Morgan’s five- part series.50 One state senator gave $3 to a Gazette reporter, saying the money should be

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given to Chilton as payment for the calendar. Chilton sent the money back, and the

senator sent him the calendar.51 Once again the Senate approved a measure that would have abolished the commissioners of accounts system. In praising the Senate’s action, a

Gazette editorial laid out Chilton’s reasoning behind the crusade. The issue was not whether the rich dead were being soaked (“let the lawyers have at them”) but whether

“ordinary, hard-working West Virginians who want to leave a little something to their children” were being plundered:

The present probate system fastens upon West Virginia citizens the legal obligation to contribute from their graves to the bank accounts of lawyers holding political plums. It permits commissioners of accounts, applying fee structures of their own devising, to share unashamedly in the fruits of the toil of total strangers. The system, which has caused widespread bitterness, has been retained over the years through the exertions of lawyer-legislators, some of them commissioners of accounts.52

Again, the Senate measure died in the House. See, however, was having a change

of heart, perhaps inspired by his own plans to run for statewide office. Reform was

needed, he said, and he would make it a priority in the 1982 session. One of the

provisions, he said, that must be kept, however, was for mandatory newspaper notices of

estates being settled, a lucrative business for many of the state’s newspapers, especially

smaller, weekly operations that depended on government advertising.53 Governor Jay

Rockefeller engaged the issue by calling for comprehensive probate reform in his 1982

State of the State address.

Chilton kept up a constant din of editorials, and Gazette reporters again fanned

out across the state to visit each of the fifty-five courthouses to examine estate files. The

extent of his personal involvement in the issue was not wholly clear. Aside from sending

the unusual direct appeal from Marsh and the numerous investigations and news reports,

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there is nothing in the record to indicate that he had a personal interest in the issue or

personally strong-armed legislators. The Daily Mail, however, ever vigilant for Chilton

gaffs, noted that when he was a delegate in the House, he had voted in favor of a measure

to continue the commissioners of accounts system. Enraged, he responded with a letter to

the editor in the Mail, saying the vote merely raised the number of commissioners in

Kanawha County from four to eight, which allowed families a better shot at getting a reasonable commissioner. He never favored, he wrote, the overall system:

The system stunk then; it stinks now. I didn’t approve of it then; I don’t now. Robbing widows and orphans is an enterprise at which and to which only the legal profession excels and delights. I recognize that this accusation is broad, but if the legal profession was opposed to such swindling, long since it would have urged the Legislature to change this state’s rotten, evil probate system.54

The Gazette’s editorial stridency and reporters prowling each county courthouse

had some lawmakers upset, and Chilton felt compelled to editorialize about the

newspaper’s involvement in the issue during the 1982 session, when reform finally was

being taken seriously in both houses of the Legislature. In contrite language that

apparently was unique in the publisher’s crusading history, an editorial rejected both

“allusions that there is something sinister in legislation advocated by this newspaper” and

that the “present system is working fine.” “We hope the lawmakers will accept this

respectful testimony that our campaign for probate reform is motivated by nothing more

than a desire to rid the state of a system we perceive as being hurtful to ordinary

citizens.”55 Whispers had arisen that the publisher was incensed because of his personal

involvement in the probate system, which included disentangling the estate of his

deceased sister, and his earlier astonishment at the process required to settle the estate of

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his father. Any such hints, Elizabeth Chilton insisted, were untrue.56 While the record is

replete with his personal appeals to a variety of politicians and other leaders on matters of

public concern, as well as more than one case of his personal intervention in such issues,

there is no mention of probate reform. There is, however, a tantalizing note from a

Charleston attorney, who sent the publisher a bill for $1,500 for services rendered as his

“passive lobbyist” during the 1984 legislative session.57

As part of the last-minute flurry of the 1982 session, the Legislature approved

what Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Si Boettner, a Kanawha County Democrat,

called “landmark” reform. Under the plan, counties could either hire full-time estate

clerks who would handle all estates, or split the estates by value. The latter called for

county employees to handle estates below $25,000, and estates above that amount would

continue to be handled by the contracted attorneys under the commissioners of account

system.58 Though initially enthused, Chilton sent out reporters once again to determine

the effect of the legislation. What they found was highly disturbing: All but five of West

Virginia’s fifty-five counties chose the probate system that shoveled estates to part-time

commissioners of accounts.59 In 1983, the Legislature raised the probate fee from $70 to

$90 in response to complaints that the fees were not sufficient to hire full-time probate commissioners. Now running for West Virginia attorney general, Boettner was fully on

board. He told the Gazette its latest series on the “ghoul system” had persuaded him that

the remaining counties should be forced to accept salaried commissioners rather than fee-

based contract attorneys.60 With the pressure mounting, most counties eventually adopted

the new system, causing state Supreme Court Justice Neely in an unrelated opinion to

praise the publisher’s crusade as one that resulted in “towering law reforms.”61

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Chilton’s philosophy about attorneys was simple: they were officers of the court, adjuncts to the judges elected by the people. As such, their duty to the public was as high as the judiciary’s, which was supported by tax dollars. The legal profession, he felt, cloaked itself in arcane ethics rules, investigated each other with minimal effect on raising standards, and hid behind screens of confidentiality that served no purpose other than to protect errant members. This philosophy played itself out in numerous Gazette editorial campaigns against individual lawyers and legal issues. He called “lunacy” the fact that the Kanawha County Board of Education spent $438,070 on outside lawyers between 1982 and 1984. This was sixty-three times the amount of Raleigh County schools, which was half the size of Kanawha County and used the county prosecutor’s office for the vast majority of work. “This outrage must stop,” he stormed in an editorial.

“Kanawha school board members have been guilty of misfeasance, [a] mindless waste of people’s money.”62

Among the screeds against individual lawyers was the case of Leonard Alpert, a

Weirton attorney who was investigated and cleared by the state bar’s Ethics Committee

after he was videotaped delivering $2,500 to the local sheriff “to buy illicit slot

machines” that had been taken in a raid. The information had been made public only

through a tangled series of documents in other cases. The Gazette called the Alpert

decision a “whitewash,” that pointed up the need for reform, including opening to the

public ethics complaints against attorneys.63 Under the bar system, only sanctions against

lawyers were released to the public, while supporting documents, hearing testimony, and

other information were kept secret. Chilton noted in an editorial: “[The Ethics

Committee’s] position seems to be that only the crazed and the vengeful complain about

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lawyers – therefore, the public would suffer if it knew of complaints.” Judges, he

observed, did not have the same protection.64

When the bar’s Ethics Committee rejected an Open Records request in 1984 from

a Gazette reporter, DiTrapano filed suit with the state Supreme Court. He argued the Bar

Association essentially acted as a branch of government, investigating and punishing (or

clearing) lawyers who had strayed; collecting mandatory dues (or taxes); and maintaining

standards for the profession. As such, the organization should be subject to the state’s

Open Records law. In a victory for openness that would forever change the legal landscape in the state, the high court unanimously agreed.65 The victory, while sweeping,

was a bit hollow. On the day after the ruling, the Gazette filed a request with the bar for its ethics files. The bar rejected the request, saying the ruling applied only to future cases.

DiTrapano raced back to the high court, which ruled 4-1 the bar had correctly interpreted its ruling. Opening cases retroactively, the high court said, could damage attorneys who might have done things differently had they known the records would be made public.

Justice Darryl McGraw issued a blistering dissent:

The majority’s unwarranted and insupportable decision in the present case, benefiting only unethical members of the profession, is a direct affront to the peoples’ constitutionally protected right to know the business of the courts, which includes the business of an agency of this Court performing a quasi-judicial function. Accordingly, I submit that a more appropriate syllabus for the majority’s opinion would be: ‘Brothers at the bar, if you did something wrong before December 11, 1984, it will remain ‘our little secret;’ aw, what’s the Constitution among friends?’66

Still, the bar had been chastened. When Chilton labeled as incompetent the state

bar’s counsel, Bob Davis, for failing to win sanctions against a lawyer, the attack spurred

a surge of letters to the editor from attorneys rushing to Davis’ defense. Dan O. 169

Callaghan, president of the West Virginia bar, wrote to the publisher personally. He

rejected Chilton’s suggestion that the protests had more to do with being bitter over the

newspaper’s successful campaign to pry open its ethics records than defending Davis’

character: “What we were upset about was your blatant, obvious ‘hatchet’ job on Bob

Davis. Your false accusations are the work, in my opinion, of an evil man.”67

Chilton offered no apologies in his reply:

Professor Willmore Kendal [of Yale] used to tell me in his political science class, “Chilton, your trouble is you don’t think good.” You suffer from the same affliction. Also you repeat yourself – another common disorder manifesting itself among members of your profession. Davis’s ineptitude is not an illusion. It is an established fact. Your trouble is, Dan, you just don’t . . . ah, but I begin to repeat myself and sound like a lawyer. Sincerely, WE CHILTON III.68

The irony of Chilton’s titanic battles with lawyers was that he used them so often.

Not only was he a fixture in state and local courts as a libel defendant, but he was nearly as frequently a plaintiff, as in the records case against the bar. His legacy appears throughout West Virginia and even national case law. On February 9, 1978, editors and reporters gathered around the city desk in the Gazette newsroom. Early that the day, a fifteen-year-old had shot and killed a fellow student at Hayes Junior High School in St.

Albans, a small community thirteen miles from Charleston. The evening Daily Mail thoroughly covered the incident but chose not to use the alleged shooter’s name with editors citing the state’s criminal statute against printing the names of juvenile suspects.

Chilton was not involved in the early discussions in his newsroom but was brought in to make a final ruling on the main question: should the newspaper print the name? He agreed with Don Marsh’s recommendation to print it. In its February 10 editions, the

Gazette carried both the boy’s name and his picture. The consequences of the decision

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would not be revealed for several weeks. After all, the Daily Mail ran the name after

seeing that the Gazette had done so, and it was used on several local radio stations. Both

Daily Mail and Gazette reporters had gotten the information from several sources,

including witnesses to the shooting, police, and an assistant county prosecutor.69

Kanawha County Prosecutor Cletus Hanley and Juvenile Judge Robert Smith, however, were less sanguine. Hanley criminally indicted Chilton, Marsh, Gazette reporter Les

Milan, and Daily Mail Editor Jack Maurice. The charge was a misdemeanor, punishable by fines of up to $100 and/or ten days in jail.

DiTrapano asked the state Supreme Court to toss out the indictment, arguing the criminal statute violated prohibitions against prior restraint and a newspaper’s right to publish true information. The high court unanimously agreed, saying the statute was

“repugnant to the First Amendment.”70 When the county officials appealed to the U.S.

Supreme Court, DiTrapano was replaced at the insistence of Daily Mail executives by celebrated First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams. “I wasn’t happy,” DiTrapano recalled. “It would have been my first Supreme Court case.”71 The U.S. Supreme Court

upheld the West Virginia decision, though in a much narrower sense. The high court

unanimously ruled that, indeed, the journalists could not be “punished” for printing

truthful information gathered in a legal manner through accepted practices, but it declined

to toss out the entire statute; the legislature could still make it illegal to give out the

names even if it could not punish media outlets that got them some other way.72 The case

is now standard fare in journalism legal classes.

In 1985, the Gazette and Daily Mail joined forces to open up disciplinary proceedings against physicians. A Kanawha County circuit judge, citing the state bar

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case, ordered the matters be opened, and the state Medical Board appealed. The

legislature, perhaps fearing what the high court would decide, hurriedly rewrote the rules

to broaden public information on doctor proceedings. The effort was futile. The high

court unanimously ruled the state bar case applied. The Medical Board, the justices

wrote, had misunderstood the underpinning of its earlier decision on attorneys. While it is

true that the bar is an adjunct of the court and therefore quasi-public, which could not be

said of the Medical Board, the real issue was the public’s right to know about important

matters of public concern, such as whether doctors were being disciplined.73

If physicians and lawyers under scrutiny by their governing boards could not hide

behind arcane confidentiality laws, neither could politicians and state employees cover-

up misdeeds through out-of-court settlements. In 1986, Kanawha County Sheriff Carl

Withrow denied a Gazette reporter’s request for documents dealing with an out-of-court

settlement that he had reached with a deputy. The deputy had filed a federal civil rights suit, alleging he had been wrongfully fired and his free speech rights were violated because he refused to drop a criminal investigation that included Withrow. The sheriff

told the Gazette that he did not have any papers relating to the settlement, and even if he

did they would be closed as part of the deal. The West Virginia Supreme Court

unanimously disagreed, ruling that not only were officeholders barred by the state open

records laws from withholding the provisions of settlements, regardless of confidentiality

provisions, but they had a duty to keep the records in their offices so they would be

available for public inspection.74 As in the earlier libel cases, Chilton was becoming irate

over the time and money spent on legal fees to wrest into the open what he felt were

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clearly public records. He told DiTrapano to try to get his fees from the sheriff. The high

court rejected the request.75

The intense and public wrangling over libel, probate, and public records issues

earned Chilton a reputation as a lawyer hater, a charge that he denied. He hated, he said,

the fact too many lawyers failed to understand the law.76 As with many other issues, he

was consistent. Two decades before the battle in the high court over state bar disciplinary

records, he lamented that West Virginia University fought legislative efforts to repeal the

statute that exempted the school’s Law School graduates from taking the state bar exam.

“Is [this] based on fear that a disproportionate number of graduates will flunk?” he

asked?77 The fact is, Marsh told a reporter, he and Chilton were both “frustrated

lawyers.”78 Thomas Voss, president of the University of Charleston, once joked to a

crowd that there was no truth to the rumor that it was about to announce the formation of

the “Ned Chilton Law School.”79

Chilton was invited in 1981 to address the Kanawha County Bar Association on

the topic, “What’s wrong with lawyers.” He had no trouble coming up with a long list,

and at the top was what he viewed as the profession’s failure to take the lead in solving

society’s problems, rather than profiting from them. “The system works splendidly for

the rich and the comfortable,” he told them. “Less well for the middle class. And hardly at all for the poor. Our daily lives are tangled by a need for lawyers.”80 For instance, he

said, it made no sense to make drunken driving a criminal matter that required lawyers.

“Lord, I’ve driven drunk,” he said, noting that in Scandinavian countries drunken driving

was handled administratively with punishment that was “swift and sure.”81 In a note

thanking him for appearing, Gary Triplett, a lawyer for Union Carbide and the president

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of the county bar, told him he had succeeded in uniting a normally fractious group: “If we

ever get around to electing the layman who has done the most for the Kanawha County

Bar Association, I’m going to nominate you. My . . . pitch will be: after everybody else failed, Ned Chilton brought us together.”82

Chilton did not hate all lawyers, DiTrapano recalled. “He liked me – I think. We had dinner every Wednesday.”83

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Notes

1 James Haught, Fascinating West Virginia (Charleston, W.Va.: The Printing Press Ltd., 2008), 137.

2 Ibid., 138.

3 Ibid., 139.

4 W.E. Chilton III, “A statement by the publisher,” Charleston Gazette, April 10, 1971.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 John C. Watson, 2002. “Times v. Sullivan: Landmark or Land Mine on the Road to Ethical Journalism?” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 17, No. 1: 3-19.

10 Tris Colcord v. The Gazette Publishing Co. 145 S.E. 751 (W.VA. S. Ct. 1928).

11 Ibid.

12 Editorial, “Using state insurance to buy off legislators not in public interest,” Charleston Gazette, August 5, 1955.

13 J. Paul England v. The Daily Gazette Co. 104 S.E.2d 106 (W.VA. S. Ct. 1958).

14 Ibid.

15 Thomas E. Patterson, “The United States: News in a Free Market Economy,” in Democracy and the Media, Richard Gunther and Anthony Mughan, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 242.

16 See Watson’s article cited earlier, and, Susan Dente and R. Kenton Bird. 2004. “The ad that changed libel law: Judicial realism and social activism in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.” Communication Law & Policy 9, No. 4: 489-523.

17 Editorial, “Newspapers now free to protect the public,” Charleston Gazette, March 20, 1964.

18 Ibid. 175

19 Staff, “Publisher, lawyer debate,” Charleston Gazette, July 5, 1974.

20 Ibid.

21 Staff, “West Virginia feud a tale of two strong-willed men,” Charleston Gazette, July 26, 1986, reprint from the National Law Journal.

22 Ry Rivard, “Former Charleston lawyer honored,” Charleston Daily Mail, March 24, 2009.

23 Interview, Rudolph DiTrapano, Charleston, W.Va., June 16, 2009.

24 Staff, “West Virginia feud a tale of two strong-willed men,” Charleston Gazette, July 26, 1986, reprint from the National Law Journal.

25 “Summary of cases filed against the Daily Gazette involving retaliation.” Undated. Contained in the files of the Charleston Gazette. Gazette Editor James Haught said the summary was prepared by DiTrapano in response to numerous requests by magazine and legal writers for what spurred Chilton’s strategy of suing lawyers for “malicious prosecution.” Miller never got the federal appointment.

26 Editorial, “Libel suits,” Charleston Gazette, July 24, 1984.

27 Editorial, “Great Idea! And we’re going to do likewise,” Forbes, July 24, 1984.

28 Nat Henthoff, “A newspaper that sues back,” Washington Post, November 1, 1986.

29 Staff, “Libel suit dropped in face of countersuit,” Editor & Publisher, February 26, 1983; also, staff, “Lawyer drops his $13 million libel suit, pays newspaper $12,500,” Editor & Publisher, May 24, 1986; staff, “Newspapers starting to sue back,” ABA Journal, V. 71, 1985, 17; staff, “West Virginia feud a tale of two strong-willed men,” Charleston Gazette, reprint from the National Law Journal, July 25, 1986; staff, “Limits on libel defense costs pushed,” Journal of Commerce, December 3, 1986.

30 Staff, “West Virginia feud a tale of two strong-willed men,” Charleston Gazette, July 25, 1986, reprint from the National Law Journal.

31 Interview, DiTrapano. The photo, taken as a lark, has since been lost.

32 Staff, “Lawyer drops his $13 million libel suit, pays newspaper $12,500,” Editor & Publisher, May 24, 1986.

33 “Summary of cases filed against the Daily Gazette involving retaliation.” 176

34 Staff, “Libel suit dropped in face of countersuit,” Editor & Publisher, February 26, 1983.

35 “Summary of cases filed against the Daily Gazette involving retaliation.”

36 W.E. Chilton III, “Fight frivolous libel suits by seeking restitution of newspaper’s legal fees,” Presstime, August 1984.

37 Interview, DiTrapano. DiTrapano said he was not sure what the genesis of the strategy was, only that Chilton had suggested it to him. Gazette reporter Paul Nyden, in an interview on the same day in Charleston, believed the idea came from a conversation between Chilton and a freelance journalist who had done several legal stories.

38 United Press International, “High Court hears Gazette suit,” Charleston Gazette, April 25, 1985.

39 Ibid.

40 “Summary of cases filed against the Daily Gazette involving retaliation.”

41 James Haught, “Proposed ‘bypass’ bill could end probate quarrel,” Charleston Gazette, December 2, 1979.

42 Jonathon Fisher Steward, “Commissioners are moneymakers,” Charleston Daily Mail, January 10, 1977.

43 Haught, “Proposed ‘bypass’ bill could end probate quarrel,” Charleston Gazette, December 2, 1979.

44 Haught, “Clay estate settlement drags 28 years,” Charleston Gazette, December 21, 1979.

45 Fanny Seiler, “End of commissioners accounts wins favor in county delegation,” Charleston Gazette, February 6, 1979.

46 Haught, “Courthouse steeped in probate politics,” Charleston Gazette, May 4, 1980.

47 Haught, “Commissioner admits $40,000 estate fee,” Charleston Gazette, March 8,1981.

48 Haught, “3 probate reform efforts killed by House committee,” Charleston Gazette, March 6, 1980.

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49 John Morgan, “Politics affects first district appointments,” Sunday Gazette- Mail, October 5, 1980.

50 Staff, “Gazette calendars, pamphlets given to senators,” Charleston Gazette, February 13, 1981.

51 Ibid.

52 Editorial, “A good probate bill,” Charleston Gazette, April 3, 1981.

53 Seiler, “See committed to improving probate system by next year,” Charleston Gazette, May 6, 1981.

54 W.E. Chilton III, “Publisher responds to ‘Earshot’ item,” Charleston Daily Mail, February 19, 1982.

55 Editorial, “Progress toward reform,” Charleston Gazette, February 18, 1982.

56 Elizabeth Chilton, interview by the author, Charleston, W.Va., January 9, 2009.

57 Thomas R. Goodwin to W.E. Chilton III, April 23, 1985, Chilton III Papers, Box 2, File 7a, A&M 3020 Addendum, West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Library, Morgantown.

58 John Morgan, “Probate reform act greeted with enthusiasm,” Charleston Gazette, March 21, 1982.

59 Edward Fox, “Probate Reform: New system makes inroads in Panhandle,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, June 12, 1983.

60 Staff, “Mandatory probate law adoption endorsed,” Charleston Gazette, July 12, 1983. Boettner lost the AG’s race.

61 Hinerman v. Daily Gazette Co. 423 S.E.2d 560 (W.VA. S. Ct., 1992).

62 Editorial, “Lawyer lunacy,” Charleston Gazette, September 1, 1984.

63 Editorial, “Boot the bar,” Charleston Gazette, September 14, 1984.

64 Ibid.

65 Daily Gazette Co. v. The Committee on Legal Ethics of the West Virginia State Bar. 346 S.E.2d 341 (W.VA. S. Ct., 1985).

66 Ibid., 344.

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67 Dan O. Callaghan to W.E. Chilton III, March 21, 1985, Chilton III Papers, Box 2, File 7a.

68 Chilton to Callaghan, April 4, 1985, Chilton III Papers, Box 2, File 7a.

69 State ex rel. Daily Mail Publishing Co., etc., et al. v. The Hon. Robert K. Smith, Judge, et al., etc.; Don Marsh, et al. The Daily Gazette Co., etc., et al. v. Hon. Robert K. Smith, Judge, etc. 248 S.E.2d 242 (W.VA. S. Ct., 1978).

70 Ibid., 245.

71 Interview, DiTrapano.

72 Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co. 443 U.S. 97 (1979).

73 The Daily Gazette Co., etc., v. The West Virginia Board of Medicine, 352 S.E. 2d, 66 (W.VA. S. Ct., 1986).

74 The Daily Gazette Co. v. Carl Withrow, sheriff of Kanawha County. 350 S.E.2d 248. (W.VA. S. Ct. 1986).

75 Ibid., 250.

76 Chilton, “Fight frivolous libel suits by seeking restitution of newspaper’s legal fees,” Presstime, August 1984.

77 Editorial, “No reason can justify WVU exemption rule,” Charleston Gazette, August 4, 1963.

78 Tom Miller, “Bias, excesses seen at Gazette,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, September 14, 1986.

79 Edward Peeks, “University president examines options for declining rolls,” Charleston Gazette, December 10, 1983.

80 Robin Toner, “What’s Wrong? lawyers rate low, Gazette publisher says,” Charleston Daily Mail, February 28, 1981.

81 Ibid.

82 Gary Triplett to W.E. Chilton III, undated, Chilton III Papers, Box 3, File 1.

83 Interview, DiTrapano.

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Chapter 7: The Insipid Press

In the summer of 1980, Chilton was heading out for a month-long vacation to his summer home in the Bahamas, when he called Haught into his office and ordered an in- depth probe into the state’s newspapers. Though accustomed to Chilton’s frequent

demands, he was reluctant. Haught liked “the quick hit,” wielding the dagger, drawing

blood, and then moving on, as he had done many times before.1 The multi-part investigations that the publisher wanted so often were taxing, and he was beginning to tire. Once, after a particularly grueling bout with the state Human Rights Commission that resulted in the resignation of the agency’s leaders, he told his boss that it was time he backed off. “I was past 40 by then,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Ned, I’m just going to slow down and wear out, and there is not a damn thing you can do about it because I’m over

40 and covered by age discrimination.’ He said, ‘That’s what you think, Haught. I’ve got these electrodes and I’m going to put these up your ass, and I’ve got this button on my desk and anytime I see you slow down, I’m going to hit it.’”2

Chilton had only one speed – full-throttle, straight ahead. His style was intense, focused, and demanding. While no one inside the organization would ever label him as

cruel or mean, his immense energy and personality filled the building, leaving little room

for matters that did not concern the newspaper and its many, often simultaneous,

crusades. Aside from Haught and Editor Don Marsh, few in the newsroom would label

the fiery publisher as beloved. In 1966, Gazette City Hall reporter Tom Knight threatened

to resign. He was the son of deceased Managing Editor Frank Knight, who had died at forty-six from a heart attack. In a long, emotional letter to Chilton, Tom Knight said he felt there was no longer any future for him at the Gazette. The publisher was too difficult

to deal with as a manager, an issue he attributed to “communication problems.” “Staff

members, in effect, fear you, although this quite probably is a very imprecise description.

When they wish to discuss a problem with you, you argue with them. When they disagree

with you, you yell. This, Ned, is degrading to them.”3 Chilton’s response is not known, but Knight did not follow through on his resignation. His byline appeared for another decade before he left to start a communication business, which included a free weekly newspaper in nearby Nitro, and a successful political career as a Democratic member of the West Virginia House of Delegates.

Fearful of getting a “Ned assignment,” reporters learned to keep their heads down, avoiding eye contact as he stalked through the newsroom. He once trotted to features

reporter Sandy Wells, his arms flailing, with a “great story idea.” He wanted her to investigate the sex lives of paraplegics. Just what, exactly, he wanted her to find out, did they did do for physical love? Notoriously absented-minded in some matters and prone to what became known as “Chiltonisms” that fractured the language (such as, “You’re walking on thin eggs”), he was rarely known to forget an assignment. Wells worked for weeks trying to develop sources on the sex story, eventually persuading a local doctor to put her in contact with several handicapped couples. “Ned loved it,” she recalled.4 When bypassing “channels,” as reporter and columnist Rick Steelhammer observed, he demanded that his journalists look into his requests, but he would not necessarily force a story into print. After seeing a classified advertisement seeking buyers for “vacation homes on the Coal River” in southern West Virginia, he assumed it was a scam and dispatched Steelhammer to investigate. “He always talked about having a sense of sustained outrage; I think his threshold [for being outraged] was a little lower than mine,”

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Steelhammer said, “I went out there [the Coal River] and sort of feigned interest in some

property there. They showed me around and didn’t really do anything untoward. I told

Ned, and he said OK.”5

Chilton often clashed with the managers and staff that were there when he arrived in 1951 as promotions manager, and later as associate publisher and publisher, including

Frank Knight. “He [Knight] thought it was his newspaper, and they argued a lot,”

Elizabeth Chilton recalled, adding with understandable loyalty, “Ned was almost always right.”6 The nature of the arguments have not been recorded, but it is likely he objected to

Knight’s obvious allegiance not just to the Democratic Party but to factions within the party, as evidenced by his close relationship to former Governor Patteson. Chilton came into the newspaper business during a time of transition that reflected an increasing movement toward more distant, “professional” journalists. He expressed concern, for instance, to Thomas Stafford, during his intense and ultimately successful investigation of the Invest Right Corporation and former Governor W.W. Baron, that he was getting too close to the players. Stafford protested that his attendance at many dinners, functions,

and cocktail parties with the state’s political elite were part of his investigative efforts.

Though acknowledging the publisher’s concerns were “not without foundation,” he noted

Editor Harry Hoffman did not share them. Hoffman, Stafford said, did not have a college degree and learned journalism from the street level up, while “Chilton was a Yale graduate who moved directly into an executive position.”7 Still, Stafford was a fan. While

he could be “unthinkingly rude and authoritarian,” he also turned the Gazette into a

“newspaper respected nationally for its honesty, integrity, and liberal views.”8

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While consumed with public policy on the local, state, and national levels,

Chilton also was intensely interested in the fate of newspapers and journalism. Constantly worried about the corrosive effects of television on newsgathering, politics, civic involvement, and circulation, he told readers in 1965 that famed network correspondent

Walter Cronkite was correct to fret about a recent national survey that showed 55 percent of Americans reported getting most of their information over the airwaves. Rather than blame the non-reading public, or public education that was increasingly turning toward a vocational rather than a civic curriculum, he said fault lay with the newspapers. The press, he said, “in the main [was] failing to perform to the height of its ability.”9

He was among the leading voices in the newspaper industry for increased press accountability. In 1967, the Gazette announced to its readers the formation of the

“Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play.” In rather formal language, a non-bylined story said the bureau, which apparently consisted of General Manager Robert Smith Jr., would be open daily from 9 a.m. to noon and would accept complaints from anyone who felt wronged by the newspaper, either through what was published or not published. If the complaint could not be worked out, a three-person “board of arbiters” would be appointed to decide the issue. The newspaper would abide by its decisions.10 While

Chilton would later tell Editor & Publisher that the “bureau” was rarely used, there is no

record that anyone ever brought a formal complaint. In the mid-1970s, the Gazette began

running corrections on its front page, regardless of where in the paper that the error

occurred. The move to front page corrections was accompanied by the newspaper’s “right

of response policy.” The policy, which was printed daily on its editorial page, said

anyone aggrieved by an editorial could write a “reasonably lengthed” reply that would be

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displayed as prominently as the offending editorial.11 He was a consistent supporter, both

editorially and financially, of the little used and eventually aborted National News

Council. Set up in 1973, it was designed to do on a broader scale what his local bureau of

fair play was created for: arbitrating disputes involving the news media. When it folded

in 1984, Chilton lamented its demise, noting that no “institution, even in a free society

with a constitutional amendment to support its reason for being, can be or should be

unaccountable.”12

He sincerely believed a newspaper should be as accountable to the public as the

politicians and businesses that it covered. Yet, the Gazette policies also were designed to

help inoculate him against charges of hypocrisy when it came to his own conduct, which

more than occasionally raised eyebrows in journalistic circles for his penchant for getting

directly involved in issues. When, for instance, Kanawha County Clerk of Courts

Margaret Miller was acquitted in 1980 on misdemeanor charges of ballot irregularities,

he sued to block her bid to have taxpayers pick up $211,000 in attorneys fees accrued by

her defense. He was enraged by the request, noting that she had invoked the Fifth

Amendment right against self-incrimination during the trial.13 Miller, in turn, was outraged by Chilton’s action and sued him personally in 1983 for $6 million. She argued, in part, that the publisher exhibited astounding hypocrisy by constantly raising the shield of the First Amendment in his own defense and then vehemently criticizing someone else who used a constitutional right. The case was presented by her husband, Steven L. Miller, the once-considered appointment for local federal prosecutor whom Chilton had called a second-rater. Miller’s libel case against Chilton, which was among the nine filed by

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attorney Stanley Preiser, had been dropped. His wife’s situation presented another

opportunity to chasten the arrogant Gazette publisher.

Chilton, Miller told Kanawha County Circuit Judge Andrew MacQueen, used his

newspaper as a “tool for reward or punishment.” In the case of his wife, he used it to

“destroy” her. Not only were his public editorials defamatory and hurtful, but he directed

one of his reporters to “corruptly influence grand jurors, county commissioners and

prosecutors.” As evidence, he pointed to an exchange about the disposal of documents

among the grand jurors who had indicted his wife:

Grand juror: Can you suggest what we do with these? Grand juror: Can we give them to Fanny? Grand juror: I think she has a copy of them. Grand juror: Why don’t we just put them in the wastebasket over there?14

Rebecca Baitty, an associate in Rudolph DiTrapano’s law firm, responded that even if the “Fanny” in the transcript referred to longtime Gazette reporter Fanny Seiler, there was no action implied in the conversation. In addition, she argued, the suit alleged no inaccuracies in reporting or editorializing, and it was a clear attempt to thwart

Chilton’s First Amendment rights. Miller stormed back that the allegations “went beyond libel” and were aimed at winning damages “for the use of his newspaper.”15 MacQueen

tossed out the suit, noting that however “caustic, unpleasant and painful” it might be, the

press had an absolute right to criticize government officials.16

Chilton was a frequent critic of the press’ failure to use its power to demand

change. His philosophy was that the editorial page was the heart and soul of any newspaper. Letters to the editor should reflect the diversity of opinion in the community,

and editorials should hammer on needed reforms. Though outwardly congratulatory, he

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was privately upset when Daily Mail Editor Jack Maurice in 1975 won the only Pulitzer

Prize in the history of the state for what historians Otis K. Rice and Stephen W. Brown

called “temperate” editorials on the Kanawha County textbook controversy in the

previous year.17 Chilton defined the opposite of temperate, telling the Southern

Newspaper Publishers Association in 1981 that newspapers were “timid about expressing

strong opinion, especially if it is sustained strong opinion.” Failure to fix the ongoing

issues of a national defense budget out of control, the growing gap between rich and

poor, and the slackening of anti-trust enforcement could squarely be laid at the feet of

weak-kneed newspapers: “Most newspapers are not using the editorial page as the

Founding Fathers intended. We’re not looking 10 years ahead, and we’re not looking 10

years behind. We’re sitting on our mountains of money and our tremendous power, and

we might just as well be silent for all the impact we’re having on our society.”18

Few issues illustrated more how Chilton diverged from most in the newspaper industry than the textbook controversy that stormed through his home county in 1974 and

1975. In April 1974, the Kanawha County Board of Education was preparing to approve, as a routine matter, the purchase of a new series of textbooks when board member Alice

Moore objected to the supplemental reading lists. She called the books “trashy, filthy and one-sided.”19 Her objection, overridden by a 3-2 vote of the school board, ignited long-

simmering issues on religion, race, politics, and public education. The controversy roared

through the summer. By September, thousands of parents withheld their children from

school; miners staged wildcat strikes; fundamentalist preachers breathed fire from their

pulpits; and representatives from the Ku Klux Klan showed up after the local NAACP

began a counter-movement to banning the reading list, which included such prominent

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African-American writers as Eldridge Cleaver.20 Protestors were arrested at several

schools, and a minister leading the revolt prayed that “God will kill” the three Board of

Education members who refused to relent.21 The issue attracted national attention and pitted, as on many issues, the gentle, calm, elegant, see-both-sides editorials of Maurice against Chilton’s rapid-fire pronouncements of right and wrong. For instance, on

September 4, 1974, Maurice told his readers that the flap over textbooks was really a religious protest against a public school system that was veering further and further away from traditional values:

For our part, we think this indictment is loosely and badly overdrawn and in many ways unfair. Like the larger society which they reflect, the schools, too, are laboring under the tensions of accelerated social change. We can understand the unrest and the vague sense that everything is coming apart at the seams, and it will take some doing to put it together again.22

Nonsense, Chilton fired back on the next day in a front-page editorial. The issue

was not about social change, Sunday school dogma, or the rights of select parents to keep

certain books from their children, but whether an elected school board had the right to act

on behalf of the majority of voters who had put them in office:

Anti-textbook partisans are engaged in reprehensible behavior that violates common sense, common decency, and the common law. School authorities promptly should go to court to obtain an injunction that will hold these partisans accountable for their misdeeds. Both parents who break the law [by] keeping their children out of school and leaders of the illicit boycott who urge parents to break the law should be required to explain their wrongdoing in a court of law.23

After reporters for both the Gazette and Daily Mail pointed out that leaders of the boycotting group acknowledged they had not read the books which they were protesting

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against, a splinter group from the county’s textbook review panel agreed to read them and

make a report. Eight weeks after the boycott began, the group released a 500-page

document. Among its findings: A second-grade reader on Jack and the Beanstalk was

written to “appear . . . sadistic and gruesome” with the giant “casually discussing the

eating of children.” The group suggested an alternative to a passage in one book called

the Prayers of the Monkey, Mouse and Squirrel. The prayer of the monkey was “critical

of God” by complaining, “Dear God, why have you made me so ugly with this ridiculous

face?” The author would have made the book more acceptable to the group by

accentuating the positive. The report suggested a rewrite: “Dear God, thank you for

making me so agile and able to escape danger through the trees.”24 The protest continued

through the fall, and Maurice finally suggested a way of ending it: “Let’s hold an election

and heed the verdict.”25 The issue, in fact, was decided by election, when two incumbent board members lost their seats, and two new members formed a coalition that compromised on the reading lists and put parents on the textbook selection committee.

When the Pulitzer Prize board announced Maurice’s win in 1975, Chilton was publicly sedate and congratulatory. In private he was upset. “He wasn’t happy,” Elizabeth Chilton recalled. He genuinely seemed astounded that editorials, which in his mind, took no stance and merely “explained” the issue, had been awarded journalism’s highest prize.26

It is doubtful any lingering unease over the Daily Mail’s Pulitzer had much to do with Chilton’s demand that Haught probe the state’s press. Five years after the award, the order came amidst contentious elections for several statewide offices, including the increasingly ugly governor’s race between Jay Rockefeller and Arch Moore. Chilton was persuaded that his fellow publishers were outrageously refusing to directly address

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important public issues, some of which had been unearthed by the Gazette. Though

reluctant, experience had taught Haught not to argue. A faithful and longtime admirer of

his boss, he was a native West Virginian, growing up in rural Wetzel County with no

electricity, dirt roads, and thirteen students in his high school graduating class. He started

work in 1951 as an apprentice printer for the Daily Mail. Enamored with newspapers and

journalism, he asked editors to let him work without pay as a reporter in his off hours

from the pressroom. They accepted. Two years later, the Gazette offered him a full-time

job as a reporter.27

Chilton wanted Haught’s investigative report on the state’s newspapers ready for

publication in time for the annual meeting of the West Virginia Publisher’s Association

meeting in late June.28 He met the deadline and, before Chilton returned from vacation,

launched a three-part series examining the state’s press called “All the News?” In his report, he exposed conflicting circulation numbers, a failure to challenge powerful businessmen, and what he called the “corrupt practice” of taking advantage of state legal

advertising laws by changing nameplates on a newspaper and calling one Democratic and

one Republican.

Haught kicked off the series with this: “In some parts of West Virginia, residents

may live their entire lives without reading any question raised about their

congressman.”29 He never returned to that issue in the first series. Instead, the first

installment quoted a variety of press experts and association officials, including Marshall

University Professor Ralph Turner, who concluded that state newspapers ranged from

“super to lousy” with the worst of them putting a “birthday cake on Page 1, but somebody could sell the courthouse and nobody’d know.”30 In the second installment, he

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exposed wildly optimistic circulation figures by comparing numbers reported by the West

Virginia Press Association with those contained in signed affidavits with the Secretary of

State’s office. In addition to the questionable circulation claims, some newspapers took

advantage of West Virginia law on legal advertising, which required local governments

to advertise in “two qualified newspapers of opposite politics.”31 For instance, he

reported:

The Braxton County government buys $8,000 worth of legal notices annually in the Braxton Democrat and the Braxton Central (Republican). . . . The Democrat claims 4,100 circulation. The Central lists only 170. Editor Ed Given said the Democrat and Central are word-for-word identical, printed on the same press by the same staff. During the Democrat’s press run, the name is switched and a few extra copies are called Republican, he said.32

The first series ended with installment three, “Less-than-heroic journalism means

covering up the truth.” The majority of that article was an account of a Parkersburg, West

Virginia, banker driving home after a party and killing a Vienna, West Virginia, teen-

ager. Ron Loar, the police reporter for the local newspaper, the Parkersburg News, came

across the police report. But, as he began working on the story, he quickly turned to help

from the state press, secretly calling Charleston reporters. Haught reported:

He said his editors and bank officials were engaged in a cover-up. Loar said he was told to write that Adams suffered a heart attack, and not mention alcohol or that the banker was on the wrong side of the road. Loar said he resisted, and the heart attack part wasn’t printed. The reporter said bank officers came to the newsroom to oversee his report.33

The Publishers Auxiliary, a newspaper produced by the National Newspapers

Association, carried an account of the series as its lead story on August 25, 1980. Chilton told the reporter, Suzan Richmond, that the state press too often fawned over politicians and business brokers and were at least partly responsible for ongoing corruption. “I think

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the press in West Virginia has dismally failed in its responsibility to tell people about their public servants. I think the state’s press stinks,” he told her. “I think West Virginia has had rotten, corrupt government over the years.”34 Reaction to the series at the

publishers’ meeting ranged from “bitter to indifferent” with the prevailing sentiment

being that Haught did a poor job.35 One publisher said, “If you’re doing the damn best job

you can, and some jerk comes from out of town and tells you its lousy, I’d be hotter than

hell. I’d tell them to stick it.”36

While Chilton’s reasons as he outlined them to Richmond no doubt were sincere,

there was a more specific rationale for his orders to Haught to investigate the state press:

He was upset that newspapers in the northern district of West Virginia failed to pick up

on political corruption allegations revealed during a racketeering trial of a purported

gambling operator.37 Wiretap tapes played during the trial alleged that United States

Representative Alan Mollohan, a Democrat, received “a lot of money” from the operator.

Subsequent investigation by the Gazette revealed he had become a “millionaire” while in

public office. He had wanted Haught to expose the newspapers that failed to challenge

Mollohan. Haught later acknowledged he had misunderstood his orders, and although he

defended the initial series as the best he could do with the time he had, he put up no fight

when the publisher wanted it re-done:

Ned truly believed that a newspaper had a duty to watch the local government and the local politicians and reveal any shady dealings going on. The Gazette did that, but no other paper in the state did that, or more than a little bit. He became frustrated that nobody would go after Mollohan when the Gazette exposed Mollohan and nobody else would write about it. That spurred him. . . . I did the series once and then I did it again to nail his point exactly. He wouldn’t quit pounding and pounding until he achieved the breakthrough he wanted.38

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Three months after the initial probe, Gazette readers saw three additional installments of the “resumed” series, which began by laying out the thesis that corruption in the state was linked to a “weak press.”39 In the second part of the redone series, Haught

focused on Mollohan and coverage of the trial in the two Clarksburg newspapers, the

Telegram and the Exponent, which were both owned by Cecil Highland, a wealthy city

banker that Time magazine once called the “egg bald tyrant of Clarksburg . . . who

controlled the town for years . . . by imposing a complete news blackout on people, issues

and organizations he didn’t like.”40 Haught noted the papers did not carry Associated

Press reports of Mollohan’s name surfacing in the racketeering trial, instead reporting on

their front pages that the representative “favored oil price controls.”41 In the final part of

the series, he accused the Daily Mail of colluding with Arch Moore during the 1968 West

Virginia gubernatorial race by smearing Democrat James Sprouse with innuendos of a

shady land deal: “A week before the election, the Mail printed a huge, front page ‘land-

grab’ story saying Sprouse and some partners might ‘clean up nearly $500,000’” on land

purchased near a state park.42

The last of the series ratcheted up the ongoing feud between the Daily Mail and

the Gazette, and caught the attention of the New York Times, which devoted the top half

of page A18 in its October 6, 1980, edition to the series and Chilton’s criticism of the

state press.43 Reporter Ben A. Franklin noted that while Chilton’s distaste for the

conservative-leaning Mail was well known, he had now succeeded in setting the state’s

100 other newspapers against him. Logically it might be assumed that Chilton’s antipathy

toward Moore, his clear friendship with Rockefeller, and the governorship being at stake

would indicate the press investigation was motivated by the governor’s race, rather than

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Mollohan’s alleged misdeeds. Haught, however, believed the primary motivation was

Mollohan, not Moore. Chilton’s editorial addressing the series suggested otherwise:

If Richard Nixon were to seek the presidency again, newspapers would jeer him off the campaign circuit. If Spiro Agnew ran for vice president again – ditto. Yet Arch Moore – whose scandal record is pure Nixon- Agnew – is running for governor again, and West Virginia newspapers don’t raise a murmur. That was the essential point of the Gazette’s “All the News?” series.44

Regardless, the Mail fired back editorials against the Gazette, suggesting readers could

only hope at some point that the publisher would “run out of vitriol.” Chilton’s response

was that the Mail clearly had a “new man” writing editorials: “Anyone who has been around here very long would know we have not run out of vitriol at all.”45

Chilton’s ire at the West Virginia press boiled again six years later, when in 1986 he felt the state’s newspapers failed to adequately report new Gazette revelations of government wrongdoing, including a story on the West Virginia economic development director using the state plane seventy-two times to travel from Charleston, West Virginia, to his home near Wheeling, a trip of 178 miles.46 By then, Haught was the editorial page

editor so Gazette reporter Martin Berg was drafted to do the new series. His efforts were

far more extensive, covering seven days and focusing not on the smaller papers and

weeklies but on the state’s largest circulation dailies, including frequent, sometimes

unflattering, references to Chilton. This was a series entirely different in tone and

direction than Haught’s and served more as an overall critique of press owners rather than

an expose of press abuses. Where Haught was a fan of Chilton’s, had worked with him

for decades, and shared his core philosophies, Berg had been with the Gazette for seven

years. A graduate of West Virginia University and a former “hippie,” he started working

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for the newspaper as a reporter for the newspaper’s weekly, community papers before

carving out a niche as a project and big features writer. He was reluctant to do this new investigation:

This was just a pet peeve of Chilton – that the reason West Virginia government was so corrupt, so bad, was because the press didn’t do its watchdog function. He had a thing about it. The whole thing was a little hokey to me, for one newspaper to be going around and doing stories about how bad the other newspapers were. It was like shooting fish in a barrel – lots of them didn’t even pretend to be real newspapers.47

In kicking off the series – under the logo “The Insipid Press” – on September 6,

1986, Berg took wide latitude with the assignment, addressing the rising trend of chain

ownership, failure to cover the news or challenge local politicians, and what he perceived

as a prevailing country club mentality by owners and publishers. His conclusion: “Most

West Virginia papers are so bland and toothless, they would not be significantly affected

if the First Amendment were repealed.”48 He quoted Robert Hammond, then-publisher of

the Fairmont Times-West Virginian, which was owned by the Thomson chain. He told

Berg that chains were interested in money, not politics, and newspapers should not get

involved in investigating local corruption. “That’s what we have law enforcement

officials for,” he said.49

Berg spent considerable time addressing the Gazette and Chilton. Overall, he

wrote, the publisher was the unchallenged top crusader in the state but not without his

faults. He noted that Chilton urged restraint when his friend and fellow Yale University

graduate, West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Richard Neely, came under fire for using

his taxpayer-paid secretary as a babysitter. He also reported that Chilton printed columns

from two Gazette reporters who disputed their boss on the Neely issue, an occurrence so

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unusual that the Columbia Journalism Review reported on it. Berg chastised the Gazette

for “union-busting” during the bitter, year-long battle in the “early 1950s” in which the

Gazette turned back a unionizing attempt by the national Teamsters in the circulation and press departments, as well as for failing to tackle local chemical plants and coal interests.

However, he likely mixed up his dates. The unionizing attempt that remains in the cultural memory of Charleston Newspapers Agency workers was the 1970s strike. Still, he wrote: “To his credit, Chilton at least sometimes makes use of his newspaper’s First

Amendment protection, while other publishers just pay lip-service.”50

In the second installment, Berg returned to Clarksburg, questioning the election of

Cecil Highland Jr. as president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, noting

that Highland, like his father, was a bank president and lawyer and paid little attention to

the Clarksburg Exponent or Telegram. In fact, he noted, Highland kept his office in

Empire National Bank, around the block from the newspaper building. Highland

acknowledged the newspapers were not “a horse upon which I ride my hobby.”51 Like

Chilton, he was the son of the man who owned the newspapers. Highland Jr. defended his

father’s reputation, saying Time magazine was unfair in calling the elder Highland “a

tyrant.” He also alleged Haught’s story six years before was riddled with errors, though

he did not enumerate them.52

Berg wrote that newspapers in the Ogden chain often ran identical editorials,

noting that in Elkins, West Virginia, the Inter-Mountain, an Ogden-owned newspaper,

ran unsigned stories about the controversial merging of two local hospitals.53 The stories

were written by a local public relations representative hired by the new entity that would

run the merged operation. The Ogden chain, based in Wheeling, West Virginia, owns

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forty daily newspapers and several weeklies and magazines in twelve states. The chain

has six daily newspapers in West Virginia, including evening and morning editions in

both Parkersburg and Wheeling.54 Berg, again, took a less-than-subtle shot at Chilton,

noting G. Ogden Nutting, the grandson of the newspaper chain’s founder, refused to be

interviewed for the story, “no doubt fearing a Gazette hatchet job.” But, Berg wrote:

It didn’t stop him from attending a country club bash thrown recently by Gazette Publisher Ned Chilton in honor of the new owner of UPI [United Press International]. It also didn’t keep Nutting and Chilton from sharing the UPI president’s box at the World Cup soccer match in Mexico City.

Newspaper publishers may disagree over their newspaper’s politics and policies, but they are drawn together in their appreciation of the good life. It’s a good life that few newsroom employees at Ogden Newspapers could dream of sharing, inasmuch as their beginning salaries reportedly hover near $175 a week for a reporter with no experience.55

The Dominion Post in Morgantown, West Virginia, came under the most withering scrutiny of the series. Like the Gazette, it was family-owned and personally run

by the son of the original owner, John Raese, who served as a counterpoint in the state to

Chilton. A virulent Republican, he waged a bitter and ultimately losing campaign against

Rockefeller for the United States Senate in 1984 and was state chairman of the

Republican Party when Berg was writing “The Insipid Press.”56

A graduate of Morgantown public schools and of West Virginia University, which

is based in Morgantown, with a physical education degree and a letter in baseball, Raese remained tanned, handsome, and athletic. His newspaper, he told Berg, was successful and growing in circulation with content emphasizing WVU sports, not controversy. Berg accused the Post of downplaying major stories broken by the Daily Athenaeum, WVU’s student newspaper. Those included a landlord with hundreds of violations of the city’s

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rental code, a rape case involving five WVU basketball players, and the school allegedly

bending its admission requirements for athletes. Raese did not dispute the charges, saying

the newspaper’s success spoke for itself. “In Charleston, you have the Legislature, so you

write about politics,” he said. “In Morgantown, we have WVU – so we write about

sports.”57

Raese told Berg that he was worth “about $30 million” but put most of it back

into the newspaper and the company’s other business, a gravel quarry, although Berg

noted he drove a red Porsche and vacationed in Palm Beach, Florida. During the 1984

Republican National Convention, Berg noted, the Associated Press sent out a story that

Raese lost his temper with Gazette reporter Chris Knap, grabbing him by the lapels of his

jacket and “shrieking, I buy and sell reporters like you everyday.”58 Berg’s attention to

Raese’s wealth and temper was likely a nod to Chilton’s own reputation of wealth,

Caribbean vacations, and anger directed at those who disagreed with him. Former Gazette

Sports Editor Danny Wells once suffered one of his blistering tirades in his office over

Well’s handling of a controversy involving the University of Charleston firing its

basketball coach. Chilton thought the basketball program was taking priority over

academics, and he was upset when Wells came to the coach’s defense in a column. Wells

wrote about the incident: “A few days later, Chilton placed a note on the office bulletin

board apologizing for intimidating a Gazette columnist, namely me.”59

Berg did not address the plane trips taken by the state’s economic development

director, Jack Redline, until near the end of the series. He noted that only four of the

state’s twenty-four daily newspapers ran the story, which was picked up from the Sunday

Gazette-Mail by the Associated Press. The trips cost taxpayers $23,245, and were

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defended by the governor’s spokesman as a necessary expense since Redline was

working on getting a steel company’s headquarters to relocate to Wheeling. The second

paragraph in Berg’s story stated baldly, “That shows how indifferent most state

newspapers are to abuses by public officials.”60 The Daily Mail, by then owned by the

Thomson chain, was among the indifferent. Executive Editor Sam Hindman said that AP picking up a Gazette story did not make it news. “That’s not going to dictate our news judgment,” he said.61 The other wire service in the state, UPI, failed to pick up the story

at all. The UPI bureau chief admitted it “slipped through the cracks.”62

Berg, again in a between-the-lines swipe at Chilton’s handling of his newspaper, wrote kindly of chains that had taken over newspapers in Bluefield and Huntington. He

noted both had won prestigious awards since being purchased, although both were getting

heat from community members about being owned by corporations outside the

community. The Shott family was notorious for its ironclad grip on news in Bluefield,

owning the local newspaper, radio station, and television station. The Federal

Communications Commission cited Bluefield as one of the seven worst media monopolies in the country and forced the Shotts to sell the television station in 1975.63

The Bluefield Daily Telegraph was staunchly conservative and ardently Republican under

owner Hugh Shott, the son of Republican United States Senator Hugh Ike Shott, who had

purchased the newspaper in 1893; the family acquired the broadcast media as they

developed over the decades. A local lawyer became so frustrated that he started a rival

newspaper in nearby Princeton. The Worrell chain had purchased the start-up in 1976,

and bought the Daily Telegraph in 1985. “The new owners have revamped the look of the

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Daily Telegraph and livened up its editorial page, where staunch support for right-to-

work laws nuzzles up against fierce blasts at Union Carbide,” Berg wrote.64

In Huntington, the Herald-Dispatch was maintaining but suffering from a local

downturn. Seven years before, in 1979, the Gannett chain closed the evening paper, the

Huntington Advertiser, promising the remaining newspaper would be “Bigger, Brighter,

Better.” Those promises were never fulfilled. The Advertiser’s editor, C. Donald Hatfield,

a Huntington native and a well-known figure in town, eventually was named publisher of the Dispatch and a regional vice president for Gannett. Berg noted that while the reporting staff had declined through attrition, the paper could point to several investigations, including Dispatch statehouse reporter Tom Miller’s series called “Who

Owns West Virginia,” which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.65 Hatfield

acknowledged the Dispatch never fully replaced the coverage offered by the Advertiser

but said the paper was hampered by a sluggish economy.66

As Chilton became increasingly intimate with newspaper chains through the sale

of the Daily Mail, conglomerates were rising as a favorite Chilton target. Clay

Communications, which was run by family scion Lyle Clay, owned, in addition to the

Mail, the Beckley Register-Herald newspaper and four television stations outside West

Virginia. The Clay family sold out to Thomson Newspapers in the mid 1980s. In 1978,

Chilton told the Charleston Civitan Club that chains were “nothing but money-grubbing

propositions.” He singled out the Gannett Corporation as being the worst.67 An un-

bylined article run during Haught’s “All the News?” series reported that Charleston

Newspapers collected $18 million in 1979, of which $1 million was profit split equally

between the Gazette and Daily Mail owners.68 The 6 percent profit margin was about half

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what Gannett reported in 1980. Chilton, as reported in his tax returns, drew a salary of

about $50,000 per year as publisher, although his percentage of the profits certainly was far more than that.69 The question, he said during his acceptance speech in 1982 of the

national Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award, was how much profit was enough? “No, profit

isn’t an obscene term,” he said, “but exploiting the First Amendment for the sake of

money is to profane what the authors of this article had in mind.”70

Part of the plan for “The Insipid Press” series was that Chilton would allow an

outside reporter to investigate the Gazette.71 Miller agreed to Chilton’s request to take on

the assignment. He told Miller that newspapers that did not aggressively probe and

agitate for change on the local level were simply not newspapers; they are something

else. In his report for the series, Miller dissected the trio that put together the newspaper’s

editorial page - Haught, Editor Don Marsh, and Chilton. He noted Marsh’s friendship with West Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice Darrell McGraw and his decades-long feud with the Gazette’s statehouse reporter, Fanny Seiler, a former United Press

International statehouse reporter. Miller, citing anonymous sources in the statehouse press corps (of which he was the senior member at the time), wrote that Marsh was known to steal Seiler’s information when Marsh covered the statehouse for the Gazette.

A native of Logan County, West Virginia, he had worked for the Gazette since 1952 and

became editor in 1976.72

The press corps had long suspected favored treatment by the Gazette of state

Attorney General Charlie Brown and Justice Neely not only because they were

Democrats but because they were Yale graduates like Chilton. Yet, Miller noted, Chilton was instrumental in revealing controversies about both men. The publisher tipped off

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Seiler that Neely used his court secretary as a babysitter, and a Gazette reporter broke the story that Brown had tried to solicit campaign donations from his AG employees.

Chilton was unapologetic about an ongoing feud with an editor of the Beckley

Register-Herald, Walter Massey, a one-time bulldog conservative who called welfare programs an outrageous use of public money. “Hunger,” he once wrote, “was a wonderful motivator.”73 Massey, however, had undergone a religious conversion, perhaps inspired by reader backlash, and was now far milder in his social critiques.74 Miller quoted Chilton on Massey: “He called me a communist. And I’m not a communist. I may sue him.” Massey was subdued when approached by Miller for the story, telling him, “I don’t think Ned Chilton is a communist.”75

Raese, the Dominion Post owner/publisher, admired the Gazette’s fire but said

Chilton was clearly biased and protected certain institutions while going after others. He cited his own fight to get public records involving a move at the time to turn WVU

Hospitals from a public to a private institution. He noted Chilton refused to join him:

“This story hasn’t gotten a lot of support from the Gazette. It shows the Gazette is biased.”76

Like Haught, Berg was drafted to resume the series when Chilton felt the state press again ignored an important Gazette revelation. Tucked inside a box of documents requested by reporter Paul Nyden through the state Open Records law, was a bill from the upscale Greenbrier Hotel showing Governor Moore spent $2,084 for a one-night stay that included dining and cocktails for forty-seven coal executives. Berg was not happy.

Chilton had repeatedly tried to direct the series, and he had no desire to continue quibbling with the publisher: “The whole thing was really a pain in the butt; there was a

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lot of clashing with Chilton. I was trying to do it with some [reporter] integrity, not just what Chilton wanted me to do.”77 Berg reluctantly agreed to do the story, reporting that both AP and UPI had picked up the revelation but only three newspapers chose to run it.

Keith Walters, executive editor of the Register-Herald, noted the omission was a thoughtful one: “Frankly, the Gazette has a poor reputation for credibility and accuracy.

Just because the Gazette runs a story doesn’t mean it’s news.”78 Berg noted that the

on its front page that day, one from Appleton, Wisconsin, about Harry Houdini failing to

show up at a séance, and another about a Milwaukee couple hijacked by escaped

prisoners.79

A Gazette editorial on January 17, 1987, summed up the efforts, singling out the

reviled Daily Mail for failing to report outrages uncovered by the Gazette, including one

from three years before that Berg did not mention: a paving company owner with a state

contract had bilked taxpayers out of $232,000 by having his weighmaster put his foot on the electronic scale that weighed the trucks.

In response the Charleston Daily Mail expressed dismay, saying the Gazette has “Bob Orders in its sights” and wants to get on with the “hanging.” Finally, the mess is over. President Orders pleaded his company guilty. The people were consistently robbed. Yet the Mail’s only comment was to complain about a call for accountability. That’s what “The Insipid Press” series was all about. If newspapers ignore governmental outrages, the state will continue with outrageous government.80

“The Insipid Press” failed to draw the reaction that Haught’s did six years earlier,

although the Gazette did run a request for a correction. Ruth Holmberg, publisher of the

Chattanooga Times, sent Chilton a personal note, which he published at the top of the

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letters column. Holmberg believed she had been misquoted. “You have me saying we are not in a position of evaluating each other’s newspapers, which is not even very good

English. What I said was, ‘We’re not in the business of evaluating each other’s newspapers.’ That’s quite different.”81

Though insistent on what he wanted the series to examine, Chilton never questioned or challenged Berg on what was written about him.82 The reporter, however, did not escape unscathed several weeks later when he lost patience with Chilton’s next request to investigate yet another press failure (the nature of which Berg did not recall).

In a stormy session in the publisher’s office, he refused to take the assignment. Marsh called him that evening to tell him that he had been reassigned to do a series of “canned stories” on the good works of the local Salvation Army.83

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Notes

1 Interview, James Haught, Charleston, West Virginia, January 19, 2009.

2 Ibid.

3 Tom Knight to W.E. Chilton III, May 10, 1966, Chilton III Papers. Box 1, File 19a, A&M 3020 Addendum, West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Library, Morgantown.

4 Interview, Sandy Wells, Charleston, W.Va., January 19, 2009.

5 Interview, Rick Steelhamer, Charleston, W.Va., January 19, 2009.

6 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton, Charleston,W.Va., January 19, 2009.

7 Thomas Afford, Afflicting the Comfortable: Journalism and politics in West Virginia (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2005), 120.

8 Ibid., 135.

9 Editorial, “Newspapers must improve methods to fulfill duty,” Charleston Gazette, October 4, 1965.

10 Staff, “Gazette organizes complaint bureau,” Charleston Gazette, March 13, 1967.

11 Staff, “Paper press for accountability,” Editor & Publisher, March 1974.

12 Editorial, “National news council,” Charleston Gazette, September 7, 1984.

13 James Haught, Fascinating West Virginia (Charleston, W.Va.: The Printing Press, Ltd, 2008), 112.

14 Robert Lever, “Arguments heard in Miller’s lawsuit against Chilton,” Charleston Daily Mail, January 14, 1984.

15 Ibid.

16 Jack McCarthy, “Press freedom cited as suit is dismissed,” Charleston Gazette, July 14, 1984.

17 Otis K. Rice and Stephen W. Brown, West Virginia: A history (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1993), 265.

18 W.E. Chilton III, “Hallmark of crusading journalism is sustained outrage,” Charleston Gazette, November 21, 1983. 204

19 Lynn Withrow, “Board adopts new textbooks,” Charleston Daily Mail, April 16, 1974.

20 Staff, “Klan defended: Protester raps NAACP for attack,” Charleston Daily Mail, January 22, 1975.

21 Kay Michael, “Minister ‘praying God will strike 3 . . . dead,’” Charleston Daily Mail, September 29, 1974.

22 Editorial, “Behind the ‘happening,’a protest at ‘protest,’” Charleston Daily Mail, September 4, 1974.

23 Editorial, “Illicit boycotters should be in court,” Charleston Gazette, September 5, 1974.

24 Staff, “Not all textbooks opposed,” Charleston Daily Mail, October 31, 1974.

25 Editorial, “Let’s hold an election and heed the verdict,” Charleston Daily Mail, October 3, 1974.

26 Interviews, Haught and Elizabeth Chilton.

27 Ibid.

28 Interview, Haught.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Haught, “Few newspapers get stars for good coverage of state,” Charleston Gazette, June 26, 1980.

32 Haught, “Newspaper deception involves party affiliation, circulation,” Charleston Gazette, June 27, 1980.

33 Haught, “Less-than-heroic journalism means covering up the truth,” Charleston Gazette, June 28, 1980. Lohr later left the Parkersburg News to work for the local Sheriff’s Department.

34 Suzan Richmond, “Weeklies miffed at daily’s ‘critique’ of West Virginia papers,” Publisher’s Auxiliary, August 25, 1980.

35 Ibid.

205

36 Ibid. 37 Interview, Haught.

38 Ibid.

39 Haught, “Corruption result of weak press?” Charleston Gazette, September 22, 1980.

40 Time magazine as quoted by Haught in “Egg-bald tyrant of Clarksburg’ state’s worst newspaper owner,” Charleston Gazette, September 22, 1980.

41 Haught, “Mollohan treated well in press,” Charleston Gazette, September 24, 1980.

42 Haught, “Impact of scandal cost Sprouse,” Charleston Gazette, September 25, 1980. Sprouse sued the Daily Mail for libel and won a $750,000 jury award that was reduced by the state Supreme Court to $250,000.

43 Ben A. Franklin, “Battle of two West Virginia dailies on politics seems to be expanding,” The New York Times. October 6, 1980.

44 Editorial, “Nixon-Agnew-Moore,” Charleston Gazette, September 30, 1980.

45 Franklin, “Battle of two West Virginia dailies on politics seems to be expanding,” New York Times.

46 Haught, “The Insipid Press,” Charleston Gazette, September 3, 1986. Though Haught was not reporting the series, he authored the promotional copy that was used to tease readers about the investigation before it began running in the paper. The logo wording used with “The Insipid Press” series: “How well do West Virginia newspapers perform their watchdog role to keep local government clean and to correct social wrongs? Do they improve their communities – or merely seek profits? This series explores these questions.”

47 Martin Berg, telephone interview, by the author, February 26, 2009. At the time of this study, Berg was a columnist for a Los Angeles legal newspaper.

48 Martin Berg, “Powerful have little to fear from papers,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, September 6, 1986.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

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51 Berg, “Clarksburg publisher’s office is located in bank building,” Charleston Gazette, September 8, 1986. 52 Ibid.

53 Berg, “Cheapness apparently wins out over journalism in Ogden chain,” Charleston Gazette. September 9, 1986.

54 “Ogden Newspapers,” at http://www.oweb.com/westvirginia.html (Accessed February 24, 2009).

55 Berg, “Cheapness apparently wins out over journalism in Ogden chain,” Charleston Gazette.

56 Rice and Brown. West Virginia, 287.

57 Berg, “Give them scores, not hard news, Dominion Post owner says,” Charleston Gazette. September 11, 1986.

58 Ibid.

59 Danny Wells, “Chilton also saw crusades for sports department,” Charleston Gazette, February 11, 1987.

60 Berg, “Most papers found Redline’s state plane use unnewsworthy,” Charleston Gazette, September 12, 1986.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid.

63 Berg, “The Insipid Press,” Charleston Gazette, September 13, 1986.

64 Ibid.

65 Berg, “The Insipid Press,” Charleston Gazette, September 14, 1986.

66 Ibid.

67 Staff, “Print media worry is voiced by Chilton,” Charleston Gazette, April 22, 1978.

68 Staff, “Combined newspapers called greedy,” Charleston Gazette, September 18, 1980.

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69 Staff, “Gazette publisher reveals net worth,” Charleston Daily Mail, May 13, 1974. The tax returns listed $91,413 in income, of which $51,000 was salary from the Gazette as publisher. Chilton released the returns in response to a challenge from a state politician after the publisher demanded that all statewide candidates make their tax returns available to the public. The other income was a variety of investments. An accountant’s statement showed Chilton and his wife, Elizabeth, had a net worth of $593,000. Chilton, himself, later acknowledged that the report was highly misleading, since it did not value his 24 percent interest in the Gazette, which was worth millions.

70 W.E. Chilton III, text of prepared speech, delivered November 8, 1982, Colby College, Box 4, File 8, Chilton III Papers. A&M 3020 Addendum, West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Library, Morgantown.

71 Interview, Berg.

72 Tom Miller, “Bias, excesses seen at Gazette,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, September 14, 1986.

73 Berg, “Beckley editor’s column stirs controversy,” Charleston Gazette. September 12, 1986.

74 Ibid.

75 Miller. “Bias, excesses seen at Gazette,” Sunday Gazette-Mail.

76 Ibid.

77 Interview, Berg.

78 Berg, “The Insipid Press,” Charleston Gazette, November 7, 1986.

79 Ibid.

80 Editorial, “The Insipid Press,” Charleston Gazette, January 17, 1987.

81 Ruth Holmberg, Readers Forum, Charleston Gazette, September 19, 1986.

82 Interview, Berg.

83 Ibid.

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Chapter Eight – “Ave Atque Vale”

There seems little doubt that Chilton intended to continue his tirades against his

fellow publishers, lawyers, rapacious energy corporations, car dealers, or whatever other

issue/group/individual triggered his ire. During thirty-five years working at the

newspaper, the last twenty-five as publisher, he had honed his sense of outrage to a

razor’s edge, cultivating along the way a growing conviction that the press could not

divorce itself from its constitutional responsibilities. Toward the end of 1986, he was at

the height of his powers, a vigorous, assured presence throughout the state with a

growing reputation on the national level. Rather than slowing down at sixty-five, he was

speeding up. He was known to work long hours, frequently coming in on Sundays to tap out editorials in his odd four-fingered style. He was a frequent guest on National Public

Television public affairs programs, where he interviewed, among others, former

President Jimmy Carter and 1960s poet and professor Alan Ginsberg. His warnings of a dangerous decline in newspaper readership were coming to fruition, and his worries over what this meant to democracy in a pluralistic society were now being echoed by many others.1 He was among the last of the powerful, mainstream owner/publishers in the

nation, day-to-day newsroom leaders with the authority to immediately say yes or no to issues that could dramatically affect the bottom line.

Some attributed his influence and independence to this supreme authority, and there is no doubt that was a key factor. Just as important was the presence of the Daily

Mail. Over decades of intellectual and political battle, the two papers fulfilled the best intent of the First Amendment, serving as a marketplace of information and ideas.

Without the Mail providing the other side of the argument and without the energy created

by the friction between the two, could Chilton have been himself? His arrogance and

refusal to pay attention to the niceties of polite public intercourse was, more than in part,

promoted by the Mail providing a more traditional voice. Without the Mail’s tempering

influence in the market, his style would have been seen, even more than it was, as

tyrannical, biased, and unfair. One reader in 1980 noted during the height of the publisher’s political crusade: “Each morning, I anxiously reach for your latest edition,

awaiting your most recent attack on Arch Moore, Republican candidate for governor.

You seem determined to help in the campaign against him, power of the press being what

it is, by dwelling on his integrity.”2 He was not a believer in the industry’s ongoing trend

toward “professional standards” that forced a bland sameness in the name of

“objectivity.” Since no one can be objective, he told the Charleston Kiwanis in 1986, the

question was whether an article was “fair.” “My litmus test for a story isn’t necessarily its

objectivity or subjectivity,” he said, “But an effort should be made to make it fair. I

always ask, ‘Is it fair?’”3 And by fair, he meant true. Chilton true. Despite Moore’s

record, for instance, of building roads, hospitals, and schools, he considered him to be a

crook. As such, he was due no respect, no quarter, and no forgiveness.

Yet, equally as powerful was his unpredictability. No one, not even Haught, could

guess what outrage would sound the clarion call for reform in the publisher’s mind, triggering a new round of investigations and editorials that would continue until the issue had been addressed to his satisfaction. The result was a contingent of West Virginia

public servants who constantly scanned the political skies for a potential Gazette storm, and business leaders who no doubt “anxiously reached” for the morning paper to see what new assault they had to counter.4 Readers, too, were not exempted from jarring

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disruptions to their sensibilities. A mass protest in 1986, for instance, resulted when the

Gazette added sex therapist Ruth Westheimer as a columnist. He thought the criticism

was puritanical nonsense: “That seems to be an organized effort by, in my opinion, a

know-nothing group.”5

Chilton defied the patterns of press criticism that equated the rise of the industrial newspaper business with declining allegiance to First Amendment values. Though his rhetoric often was heated, direct, and intended to inflame rather than soothe, he eschewed the “ballyhoo” that Silas Bent so lamented. He focused his “vitriol,” as he told the New

York Times, on policies, issues, and people whom he felt betrayed the public trust rather than focusing on a changing definition of “news” that helped turn the energy of journalists from exploring public issues to selling tales of crime and adventure. In

supporting efforts such as the National News Council and establishing his own policies

for the Gazette of openness and accountability, Chilton demonstrated an understanding

that newspapers, at least the best ones, operated in the busy intersection of the freedom to

make money and the responsibility to serve the public interest. The fact that he saw the two ideas, profit and public service, were not mutually exclusive is a rare example of

enlightened self-interest that belongs in the debate over the future of journalism.

If the fiery publisher could resist the waves of debilitating change in the news

industry, he could not hold back the hand of fate. In the first week of February 1987,

Chilton, his wife, Elizabeth, and eighteen-year-old daughter, Susan, planned to fly to

Washington, D.C., where he would compete in the sixty-five and older division of the

28th Annual Woodruff Nee, a national squash tournament. In the 1982-83 rankings, he

had been ranked eleventh in the nation in the sixty-plus division. On February 6, he

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reached the quarterfinals but lost his match to a clearly superior player. He cheerfully left

the court, congratulating his opponent by swatting him playfully on the rump with his racquet. Moments later, he collapsed, dead of a massive coronary.6

His wife and daughter were in shock. As a child, Susan Chilton knew her father as

a tower of strength who had to be dealt with carefully. If trouble involving her brewed at

home, it was important to get to her father before her mother. Otherwise, she knew her

version of whatever transgression was being discussed would have little effect. She

would embarrass her mother but win praise from her father when she blurted out opinions

at social events. Though he frequently worked at the Gazette long past her bedtime, on

the occasions he did arrive home when she was still awake, she was treated with an

adventure tale featuring the “Mugglewumps,” a band of fairy creatures made up by her

father. He sometimes took her with him on lazy Sunday afternoons to the office, where

she would watch the reporters and editors with wide-eyed wonder. Once, Charleston Zoo

managers brought in animals for a photo shoot, and she was smitten with a lion cub.7

Jay Rockefeller, a freshman United States senator, was spending the weekend at

his 3,000-acre estate in Pocahontas County when he got a call that Chilton had died. He

immediately flew to Washington, where he and longtime friend Charles Peters took

control, driving the Chilton women to the hospital and helping to make arrangements

to return his body to Charleston.8

His death was greeted with tears in liberal quarters, with The Nation saying those who followed “his colorful career judged him to be the best newspaper publisher in the

United States. Certainly, there was none other like him.”9 Consumer advocate Ralph

Nader praised him as a defender of the true role of the press: “All people who believe in

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an independent and free press that concentrates on community issues, as well as global subjects, will mourn the passing of Ned Chilton.”10 The sheriff of Kanawha County, a

Democrat, told the Gazette: “If it had not been for Ned Chilton, the politicians would have carried away the Statehouse, the Courthouse and City Hall.”11

For many who loved the verdant hills, flowing streams, and unique culture of

West Virginia, the first thoughts on hearing of Chilton’s death were not of his family, the

newspaper, or strong journalism, but the fate of the state. Margot, the daughter of former

Gazette reporter Thomas Stafford, slumped with sadness at the news and asked her

father, “Oh, Daddy, what’s going to happen to West Virginia now?”12 Former Gazette reporter Tom Knight, any ill-will long forgotten, called the publisher “the most progressive force” in the state during the past two decades. “It is difficult to imagine where West Virginia would be today had it not been for Chilton – and just as difficult to imagine where we will be without him.”13 Andrew Gallagher, the main statehouse

reporter in West Virginia for the Associated Press, predicted his death would come to

mean more as his absence was increasingly felt: “All of you who love and hate the

Gazette, who loved and hated Chilton, are going to miss him. He was the fire of that

paper, the driving soul of this state to correct the wrong and set it right. Much of our

public consciousness winked out when Ned Chilton died. I never thought he would.”14

West Virginia publishers were less kindly. Raese, the Dominion Post owner/publisher and a former U.S. Senate candidate, believed Chilton ran a “vicious” paper: “When you’re that vicious and that blind, you lose credibility.”15 F. Page Burdette,

the editor of the Martinsburg Evening News, resented Chilton’s presumed role as the

conscious of the state press.16

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The West Virginia House of Delegates quietly passed a resolution honoring

Chilton, noting, “To the end, he was an unrelenting voice for justice and equality.”17

When it came time for Senate Majority Leader Si Boettner to schedule a similar vote, he started checking with other senators. What he found was that many were not only quietly opposed to the idea, but might vote against it. He never brought the resolution up for a vote.18 Three years later, he pleaded guilty to tax evasion for taking $4,000 from state

gambling interests.19

Berg was working a weekend cops reporter shift, not yet fully back in Chilton’s

good graces after his refusal to continue the Insipid Press series, when he learned of the

publisher’s death:

I went out for lunch and I came back; I was working with this guy named Fergus – there was always a lot of joking around in the newsroom; some of it pretty mean – and he told me Ned Chilton had died. I said no he didn’t. He said he died playing squash. Then [Gazette Editor Don] Marsh came in and he said, “You know, Berg, you and that goddamn series – that’s what killed him.”20

Marsh immediately recognized the significance of the publisher’s loss, noting he

“had no superior, no one he had to call for consultation before he made a decision. I

wouldn’t be able to do that. Chilton was a power unto himself and there ain’t no

replacement.”21 Indeed, Marsh soon came under fire from Robert Smith Jr., who had

been named publisher after Chilton’s death. Elizabeth Chilton stepped in to save his job:

“Bob got mad at Don once, really mad, and he wanted to fire him. Don was a good man; he was a really tough, good newspaperman.”22

Chilton’s significance, like so many other prominent figures who charted their

own paths, became clear only in hindsight. Though enshrined in West Virginia through

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the legal opinions and court fights that set precedent or overturned secrecy rules, he also was entwined in the fabric of his community. He helped found the Greater Kanawha

Valley Foundation, a charitable organization that as of 2007 had more than $153 million in assets and annually gives out more than $5 million in grants.23 Chilton left $100,000 to the group and was the driving force behind its creation in 1964 with a $45,000 donation from the defunct North-South high school football game, which the newspaper sponsored and which he organized as promotions manager. In dedicating its 1988 annual report to the publisher, the foundation noted: “Ned not only made the initial gift that helped start the foundation, but he helped the foundation gain respect and grow through his strong

editorial support.”24 On a warm spring day in 2005, Kanawha County Commissioner

Kent Carper invoked “sustained outrage” in dedicating the county’s new 911 dispatch

operation as the “Chilton Center.” The county and the city of Charleston, after many

editorials by the Gazette calling for combined metro government services, merged

operations in 1987. In 2003, South Charleston became the last municipality to merge.25

Years after his death, his reputation for fighting interests that would harm West

Virginia or its people continued to resonate. In May 2002, after floods ripped out trees and homes in southern West Virginia, a Charleston lawyer attributed the damage to inadequate logging and strip mining regulations. “[Ned Chilton] would be screaming in the Capitol Rotunda,” he wrote in a letter to the editor.26 In June 2002, the American

Journalism Review, in assessing and lamenting the continuing decline of statehouse

coverage across the nation (a decrease led by the Gannett chain), noted Chilton’s

insistence on skewering the power structure and Haught’s lengthy history of investigative

journalism.27

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A central question remains ethereal and, perhaps, unanswerable in any real way.

Why would a third-generation heir choose to spend his career in arguably the most

difficult part of the newspaper operation, the newsroom, where his reputation, friends,

family, and business associates would constantly be questioned and dissected. Those

closest to him seemingly were surprised at such a question. Ned was Ned. Trying to

explain him was as useless as trying to explain why generation after generation of West

Virginians stayed in their ancestral hills, aloof and yet warm, vitally energetic yet lackadaisical about their own possessions. That was simply the way it was. There was no hint in thousands of documents, dozens of interviews, and reams of writings that he ever considered anything other than returning to West Virginia and working not just in the family business but in the newsroom as his father and grandfather had done.

Why then, granting the strength of the family tie that bound him to the hills flanking the languid Kanawha River, did he make the choices he did as head of the state’s largest newspaper? At each turn of history’s pages, he was presented with a choice: support Vietnam or not; urge restraint on drastic civil rights reforms or not; decry communism or dismiss inflamed Red baiting as propaganda; fight libel or submit to a more tepid form of journalism that was far safer financially; accept some closed records as a basic fact of the law or fight to make new law. Again, quizzical looks. Ned was Ned.

In order to be Ned, there really were no choices, the path was brightly lit: Fight or cease to be. Yet, there are clues to his mindset. He clearly was a student of the world, devouring books on many subjects, traveling around the world, and corresponding regularly with a variety of people across the nation. His Army experience, as demonstrated by the anecdote of German war prisoners being treated better than

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American black soldiers, was influential. Yale University also had a lasting effect, as

evidenced by references to his schooling in his correspondence. His family history, too,

revealed itself in his staunch support for the Democratic Party, if not its individual candidates. At times, as when he so vehemently attacked Jay Rockefeller for his massive political spending, he seemed to be fighting himself, as if launching a tirade against his friend and fellow child of privilege could turn back feelings of hypocrisy about his own past.

Ultimately, what motivated him is as unknowable for him as for any human being caught in the maelstrom of life. Choices are presented, decisions are made, and history becomes the judge. The publisher’s legacy, or more appropriately perhaps, his personality, remained an issue in the courts. Although he never lost a libel case during his tenure as publisher, the West Virginia high court handed him his first defeat five years after his death, upholding a lower court ruling in a two-two decision (with one justice abstaining). A Brooke County lawyer had sued, alleging he was libeled in a 1983 editorial that had accused him of bilking an immigrant Russian coal miner. In a wide- ranging, oddly personal opinion, Justice Richard Neely seemed to imply the decision might have gone the other way if Chilton was still alive. He wrote that while it was appropriate to punish “arrogant” media corporations who refused to apologize for wrongly damaging reputations, it was necessary to protect men like Chilton:

The tenure of the late W. E. Chilton, III, as the Gazette’s long-time publisher, demonstrates why tempering punitive damages against a corporate defendant when one or two employees has or have behaved improperly is entirely proper. Mr. Chilton was a corporate employee who owned substantially less than a controlling interest in the defendant corporation.

217

Although Mr. Chilton was a man and not a saint, the broad license that his fellow stockholders accorded him to manage the Gazette’s editorial policy inured enormously to the benefit of the people of this State. The record before us demonstrates that Mr. Chilton’s editorial policy of strictly scrutinizing the behavior of lawyers led to one of the towering modern law reforms in this State, namely the abolition of the old “commissioners of account” system under which political appointees received enormous fees for precious little effort in the administration of decedents’ estates.

Mr. Chilton’s premature death was a tragedy that has become progressively more obvious even to Mr. Chilton’s detractors as the specter becomes prominent of “The State’s Newspaper” being bought by an anonymous national McMedia corporation with little understanding and even less affection for the State, its peculiar traditions, and its people. Although this is a strange context in which to say it, ave atque vale W. E. Chilton, III [literally, Hail and Farewell].28

Neely was not the only one speculating about how long the Gazette could withstand the pressures of the industry in which corporations were offering astounding amounts of cash to the few remaining family owners of daily newspapers. In the months following his death, the board of directors of the Gazette, made up of extended Chilton and Smith family members, met in Charleston. They faced two questions: Should they explore one of the overtures from chains interested in acquiring the state’s largest newspaper with a Sunday circulation of nearly 90,000, and, if not, who would take the newspaper forward?29 No record is available of what offers might have been tendered. As her husband’s direct heir, Elizabeth Chilton was intimate in the discussions and would reveal only that the offers were substantial. Based on other sales at the time, it is reasonable to assume that the family easily could have extracted more than $100 million

(based on what Gannett was paying for properties per Sunday subscriber). As Eustace

Chilton noted fifty years before, the family would have been “set for life.” The discussions were surprisingly brief and unanimous: The Gazette would remain in the

218

family. Smith Jr., the son of the man who had started work at the newspaper as a copy boy and later became publisher while Chilton threw off the strains of youth and learned the business, would lead the organization.30 Chilton acolytes Marsh would carry the title

of editor rather than managing editor, and Haught would remain as editorial page editor.

Offers continued to come in, yet Elizabeth Chilton noted that there was “never any

feeling” to sell.31

Still, one thing was clear: an era had ended. During those turbulent years of titanic

civil rights battles, open records wars, and crusades against all manner of corruption and

mean pettiness, Haught and Marsh had toiled next to Chilton on a day-to-day basis, firing their rhetorical cannons as the publisher pointed out the targets and served in the trenches

with them. At times, they grew weary, and their efforts seemed for naught as one scandal after another rocked the state they both loved as much as their boss. Reforms became twisted and required constant vigilance and nurturing. Chilton never flagged; he thrived on outrage. Each revelation, each investigation, each biting editorial was a victory in itself, a thrust or parry by the state’s first Mountaineer, a man with piercing blue eyes, a loud laugh, and intense energy who used the First Amendment as much as a weapon as a shield. Hated, reviled, admired, dismissed, venerated, and ultimately, enshrined, he lived the West Virginia motto: Montani Semper Liberi. “Mountaineers are always free.”

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Notes

1 John P. Robinson, “The changing habits of the American Reading Public,” The Journal of Communication, 30, no. 1 (1980): 141-152; also, L. Bogart, “The Public’s use and perception of newspapers,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 48 no. 4 (1984): 709-719.

2 J.K. Loving, “Readers comment on gubernatorial campaign,” Charleston Gazette, October 24, 1980.

3 Tom Buell, “Chilton fields questions on gripes, grammar,” Charleston Gazette, August 28, 1986.

4 Interviews, James Haught, Charleston, W.Va., June 16, 2009; Rudolph L. DiTrapanao, Charleston, W.Va., June 16, 2009; Jim Comstock, “Man of the Year,” West Virginia Hillbilly, January 1, 1987. Comstock, well known in the state for his humor and honest assessments, named Chilton his first man of the year.

5 Tom Buell, “Chilton fields questions on gripes, grammar,” Charleston Gazette, August 28, 1986.

6 Rick Steelhammer, “Gazette publisher Chilton dies in D.C.,” Charleston Gazette, February 8, 1987.

7 Interview, Susan Carroll Chilton Schumate, Charleston, W.Va., June 9, 2009.

8 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton, Charleston, W.Va., January 19, 2009.

9 Editorial, The Nation, February 21, 1987, 205. The editors quoted one of Chilton’s editorials as a sort of eulogy: “If free enterprise is the wave of the future in the world, then the Lord help the world. What is increasingly becoming clear about this economic system is that it placed greed over all other concerns.”

10 Rick Steelhammer, “Gazette publisher Chilton dies in D.C.,” Charleston Gazette, February 8, 1987.

11 Ibid.

12 Thomas Stafford, Afflicting the Comfortable: Journalism and politics in West Virginia (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2005): 321.

13 Ibid.

14 Andrew V. Gallagher, “Chilton will be missed,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, February 15, 1987.

220

15 Kelly P. Kissel, “West Virginia publishers recall Chilton as strong voice,” Sunday Gazette-Mail. February 8, 1987.

16 Ibid.

17 House Resolution 15, West Virginia House of Delegates, February 1987.

18 Dave Payton. Reprint in Charleston Gazette March 11, 1987, from Peyton’s column that ran in the Huntington Herald-Dispatch.

19 Staff, “Senator pleads guilty,” Sunday Gazette-Mail, October 21, 1990.

20 Interview, Martin Berg, by telephone, February 26, 2009.

21 Staff, “Chilton dies in Washington, D.C.,” Charleston Daily Mail, February 10, 1987.

22 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton.

23 Financial history, at http://www.tgkvf.org/Finance.htm (Accessed August 9, 2009).

24 Staff, “Chilton leaves $100,000 to foundation,” Charleston Gazette, November 6, 1988.

25 Dave Gustafson, “Chilton 911 center dedicated,” Charleston Gazette, May 7, 2005.

26 James Haught, “What makes a trustworthy newspaper?” Charleston Gazette, May 21, 2002.

27 Charles Layton and Jennifer Dorrah, “Sad state,” American Journalism Review, June 2002.

28 Raymond V. Hinerman v. Daily Gazette Co. No. 20489. W.VA. S. Ct. (January 1992). Neely’s remarks in the 1992 case are puzzling in light of what he told Haught during the height of the battle over the commissioners of accounts system. In 1980, he told Haught he felt the system was “working beautifully,” with the only problem being the fees were sometimes “too high.” Ave Atque Vale is translated, literally, as Hail and Farewell!

29 Interview, Elizabeth Chilton.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid. 221

Bibliography

Manuscript Collection

William Edwin Chilton III Papers. A&M 3020 Addendum, West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Library, Morgantown.

Books

Bagdikian, Ben. “The Growing Gap” in Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism. Edited by Robert W. McChensey and Ben Scott, 275-286. New York: The New Press, 2004.

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Breed, Warren. “Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis” in Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media criticism. Edited by Robert W. McChensey and Ben Scott, 229-243. New York: The New Press, 2004.

Campbell, Joseph W. Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the myths, defining the legacies. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001.

Commission on Freedom of the Press. A Free and Responsible Press. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947.

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Hanson, Todd. Campbell’s Creek: A portrait of a coal mining community. Charleston, W.Va.: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1990.

Haught, James. Fascinating West Virginia. Charleston, W.Va.: The Printing Press Ltd., 2008.

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Herman, Edward S., and Noam Chomsky. “Propaganda Mill” in Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media criticism. Edited by Robert W. McChensey and Ben Scott, 405-411. New York: The New Press, 2004.

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Stafford, Thomas. Afflicting the comfortable: Journalism and politics in West Virginia. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2005.

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University of Kentucky Press, 1965/1995.

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Magazine articles

Chilton, W.E. III, “Fight frivolous libel suits by seeking restitution of newspaper’s legal fees,” Presstime, August 1984.

Consoli, John, “Auto dealers trim ads in Charleston newspapers,” Editor & Publisher, October 28, 1978.

Editorial, “FBI check of newspapers,” Editor & Publisher, December 4, 1976.

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Editorial, The Nation, February 21, 1987, 205.

Halleck, Steve, “Fewer two newspaper cities,” St. Louis Journalism Review. Vol. 37, No. 299, (2007): 24-25.

Morton, John, “Noble Sentiments,” American Journalism Review 25, No. 2 (March 2003): 60

Sherrill, Robert, “One paper that wouldn’t shut up,” The Nation, May 17, 1986.

Staff, “West Virginia feud a tale of two strong-willed men,” Charleston Gazette, July 26, 1986, reprint from the National Law Journal.

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Staff, “Lawyer drops his $13 million libel suit, pays newspaper $12,500,” Editor & Publisher, May 24, 1986.

Staff, “Newspapers starting to sue back,” ABA Journal, V. 71, 1985, 17.

Staff, “Limits on libel defense costs pushed,” Journal of Commerce, December 3, 1986.

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Interviews and correspondence

Berg, Martin, telephone interview, by the author, February 26, 2009.

Callaghan, David, telephone interview, by the author, December 28, 2008.

Chilton, Elizabeth Early, interview, by the author, Charleston, W.Va., January 19, 2009. Davis, The Rev. Homer, interview, by the author, by telephone, July 1, 2009.

DiTrapano, Rudolph L., interview, by the author, Charleston, W.Va., June 16, 2009.

Earle, Rosalie, interview, by the author, Charleston, W.Va., January 9, 2009.

Gadd, Nanya, interview, by the author, Charleston, W.Va., June 16, 2009.

Haught, James, interview, by the author, Charleston, W.Va., January 19, 2009.

Rockefeller, John “Jay” IV, e-mail correspondence, to author, July 27, 2009.

Schumate, Susan Carroll Chilton, interview, by the author, Charleston, W.Va., June 9, 2009.

Steelhammer, Rick, interview, by the author, Charleston, W.Va., January 29, 2009.

Wells, Sandy, interview, by the author, Charleston, W.Va., January 9, 2009.

Legal cases

Raymond V. Hinerman v. Daily Gazette Co. No. 20489. W.VA. S. Ct. (January 1992).

Tris Colcord v. The Gazette Publishing Co. 145 S.E. 751 (W.VA. S. Ct. 1928).

J. Paul England v. The Daily Gazette Co. 104 S.E.2d 106 (W.VA. S. Ct. 1958).

Daily Gazette Co. v. The Committee on Legal Ethics of the West Virginia State Bar. 346 S.E.2d 341 (W.VA. S. Ct., 1985).

State ex rel. Daily Mail Publishing Co., etc., et al. v. The Hon. Robert K. Smith, Judge, et al., etc.; Don Marsh, et al. The Daily Gazette Co., etc., et al. v. Hon. Robert K. Smith, Judge, etc. 248 S.E.2d 242 (W.VA. S. Ct., 1978). Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co. 443 U.S. 97 (1979).

The Daily Gazette Co., etc., v. The West Virginia Board of Medicine, 352 S.E. 2d, 66 (W.VA. S. Ct., 1986).

225

The Daily Gazette Co. v. Carl Withrow, sheriff of Kanawha County. 350 S.E.2d 248. (W.VA. S. Ct. 1986).

U.S. Department of Justice. Civil Action. No. 2:07-0329.

Strauder v. West Virginia – 1880. Law Library: Great American Legal Information. Great American Court Cases. Vol. 7, at http://law.jrank.org/pages/12916/Strauder-v-West- Virginia.html#ixzz0JpQwLCyP&D. (Accessed June 30, 2009).

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Bogar, L. “The Public’s use and perception of newspapers,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 48 No. 4 (1984): 709-719.

Carter, Alice. “Segregation and Integration in the Appalachian Coalfields: McDowell County responds to the Brown decision.” West Virginia History. Vol. 54 (1995), 78-104.

Coulson, David C., and Anne Hansen, “The Louisville Courier-Journal’s news content after purchase by Gannett,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Vol. 72, No. 1 (Spring 1995): 205-215.

Dente, Susan, and R. Kenton Bird. 2004. “The ad that changed libel law: Judicial realism and social activism in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.” Communication Law & Policy, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2004): 489-523.

Hallin, Daniel C., “The Media, the War in Vietnam, and Political Support: A Critique of the Thesis of an Oppositional Media.” Journal of Politics, Vol. 46, No.1, (1984): 2.

Houston, Craig. “The Charleston Gazette's Editorial Response to the Vietnam War, 1963-1965.” West Virginia History. Vol. 51 (1992): 15-28.

Plessinger, Allison, and Jeanne Criswell. “Results of Gannett’s purchase of Indianapolis Star mixed.” Newspaper Research Journal. Vol. 27, No. 4 (2006), 6-22.

Robinson, John P. “The changing habits of the American Reading Public,” The Journal of Communication, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1980): 141-152.

Watson, John C., “Times v. Sullivan: Landmark or Land Mine on the Road to Ethical Journalism?” Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2002): 3-19.

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Newspapers

Bluefield (West Virginia) Daily Telegraph Charleston (West Virginia) Daily Mail Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette Huntington (West Virginia) Dispatch New York Times Sunday (West Virginia) Gazette-Mail Washington Post Morgantown (West Virginia) Dominion-News

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