Editing Will Irwin

{{short description|American journalist}}
{{other uses|William Irwin (disambiguation)}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2013}}
{{Infobox person
| name          = William Henry Irwin
| image         = 111-SC-9377 - NARA - 55179084-cropped.jpg
| alt           = William Henry Irwin
| caption       = Will Irwin in May 1918
| birth_name    = <!-- only use if different from name -->
| birth_date    = September 14, 1873
| birth_place   = [[Oneida, New York]]
| death_date    = {{Death date and age|1948|2|24|1873|9|14}}
| death_place   =[[Greenwich Village, New York]]
| nationality   = American
| other_names   = 
| occupation    = Journalist and author
| years_active  = 
| known_for     = 
| notable_works = 
| spouse        = [[Inez Haynes Irwin]]
}}
'''William Henry Irwin''' (September 14, 1873 – February 24, 1948) was an American author, writer, and journalist who was associated with the [[muckrakers]].

==Early life==
Irwin was born in 1873 in [[Oneida, New York|Oneida]], [[New York (state)|New York]]. In his early childhood, the Irwin family moved to Clayville, New York, a farming and mining center south of [[Utica, New York|Utica]]. In about 1878, his father moved to [[Leadville, Colorado|Leadville]], [[Colorado]], established himself in the lumber business, and brought his family there. When his business failed, Irwin's father moved the family to [[Twin Lakes, Colorado (disambiguation)|Twin Lakes]], Colorado. A hotel business there failed too, and the family moved back to Leadville in a bungalow at 125 West Twelfth Street. In 1889, the family moved to [[Denver]], where he graduated from high school. He said he cured himself of a diagnosed bout of [[tuberculosis]] by "roughing it" for a year as a cowboy.<ref name="hudson">{{cite book |author=Robert V. Hudson |title=The Writing Game: A Biography of Will Irwin |location=Ames, Iowa |publisher=The Iowa State University Press| date=June 30, 1982|isbn=978-0813819310}}</ref>

==University==
[[Image:Will Irwin1904-6.jpg|right|thumb|Will Irwin, photo published in ''[[San Francisco Call]]'' December 9, 1910. page 6, to accompany the story by Mary Ashe Miller, "Will Irwin Weaves 'The City That Was' Into Strong Novel."]]
With a loan from his high school teacher, Irwin entered [[Stanford University]] in September 1894.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Charles K. Field |author2=Will Irwin |author-link1=Charles K. Field |date=1900 |title=Stanford Stories: Tales of a Young University |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24735 |location=New York |publisher=Doubleday, Page & Co}}</ref> Irwin was forced to withdraw for disciplinary reasons but was readmitted and graduated on May 24, 1899.{{efn|Irwin is sometimes said to have been a member of the [[Stanford Chaparral]]. However, Irwin graduated on May 24, 1899, and the first issue of The Chappie was published in October of that year.<ref name="hudson"/>}} According to journalism historians Clifford Weigle and David Clark in their biographical sketch of Irwin,

:"During four riotous years at Stanford, Irwin 'specialized' in campus politics, undergraduate theatricals and writing, and beer drinking and inventive pranks. Expelled three weeks before he was to have received the B.A. degree in 1898, he got the degree a year later after final, solemn consideration by a somewhat reluctant faculty committee on student affairs."<ref>{{cite book |title=The American Newspaper |author=Will Irwin |date=1969 |location=Ames, Iowa |publisher=Iowa State University Press |chapter=About Will Irwin |pages=ix-x |isbn=9780813800950}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1899-05-23/ed-1/seq-2/;words=William+Irwin+Henry| title=Class of '99 Bids Farewell to Alma Mater. Stanford Men and Women Who Go Forth to Fight Life's Battles |work=The San Francisco Call |date=May 23, 1899|page=2}}</ref>

== The ''Chronicle'' and The ''Sun''==
In 1901 Irwin got a job as a reporter on the ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]'', eventually rising to Sunday editor. For the San Francisco-based [[Bohemian Club]], he wrote the [[List of Grove Plays|Grove Play]] ''The Hamadryads, A Masque of Apollo in One Act''' in 1904.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://ead-pdfs.library.yale.edu/1685.pdf |title=Guide to the Will Irwin and Inez Haynes Gillmore Papers |author1=Danijela True |author2=Jennifer Meehan |date=2012 |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/berkeley/bancroft/mch109_cubanc.pdf |title=Guide to the Wallace Irvin papers, ca. 1917-1959| publisher=The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley |date=1997 |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/570645/echoes_from_stageland/ |title=Echoes from Stageland |work=Vancouver Daily World |location=Vancouver |date=August 10, 1912 |page=36 |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref> The same year, he moved to New York City to take a reporter's position at ''[[The Sun (New York)|The New York Sun]]'', then in its heyday under the editorship of Chester Lord and Selah M. Clark. Also in 1904, Irwin co-authored a book of short stories with [[Gelett Burgess]], ''The Picaroons'' ([[McClure, Phillips & Co.]])

Irwin arrived in [[New York City]] the same day as a major disaster, the sinking of the ''[[PS General Slocum|General Slocum]]''. As a new reporter on ''The Sun'', he was assigned to work the [[Bellevue Hospital]] [[morgue]], where the more than 1,000 bodies of the victims of fire and drowning were taken.<ref name="hudson"/><ref>{{cite news |title=49 More Bodies; 680 in All. |work=[[The Sun (New York City)|The Sun]] |date=June 20, 1904 |page=5}}</ref>

==''The City That Was''==
[[Image: Nysun04211906p5.jpg|right|thumb|First installment of Irwin's series "The City That Was" as it appeared in  ''[[The Sun (New York City)|The Sun]]'', in [[New York City]], Saturday, April 21, 1906, page 5]]
Irwin's biggest story and the feat that made his reputation as a journalist was his absentee coverage for  ''[[The Sun (New York City)|The Sun]]'', in [[New York City]], of the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|San Francisco earthquake]] of April 18, 1906.

Weigle and Clark described his activities:
: "Because he knew the city so well, he was assigned to write – mostly from memory, supplemented by scant telegraphic bulletins – the story of the quake. Before the last-edition deadline on the first day, April 18, 1906, he wrote fourteen columns of copy. and he kept writing, eight columns or more a day, for the next seven days, as fire swept the ruined city. The booklet, for which Irwin is most widely known, resulted from six or seven columns of the general description of pre-earthquake San Francisco that he wrote on the afternoon of the third day of the story."<ref>{{cite book |title=The City That Was: A Requiem of Old San Francisco |author=Will Irwin |date=1906 |publisher= B. W. Huebsch |location=New York |oclc=671922810 |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3314 |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref>

== McClure's and Collier's ==
Irwin was hired by [[S.S. McClure]] in 1906 as managing editor of ''[[McClure's]]''. He rose to the position of editor but disliked the work and then moved to ''[[Collier's Weekly|Collier's]]'', edited by [[Norman Hapgood]]. He wrote investigative stories on the movement for [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]] and a study of fake spiritual [[mediumship|mediums]].

Back on the Pacific coast in 1906–1907 to research a story on [[anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States|anti-Japanese racism]], Irwin returned to San Francisco and found it flourishing. Several years later, he wrote an article on the city's rebirth entitled "The City That Is" in the ''[[San Francisco Call]]'', which concluded that San Francisco had become "a larger city, a more convenient city, and since it is also a more beautiful and more distinctive city I announce myself a complete convert. This city that was business is the old stuff."<ref>{{cite news |title=The City That Is |author=Will Irwin |url=http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1910-03-12/ed-1/seq-12/ |work=San Francisco Call |date=March 12, 1910 |page=12 |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref>
[[File:Signed drawing of Will Irwin by Manuel Rosenberg for Cincinnati Post 1924.jpg|thumb|Signed drawing of Will Irwin by [[Manuel Rosenberg]] for the Cincinnati Post 1924]]
Irwin's series on anti-Japanese discrimination appeared in ''Collier's'' in September–October 1907 and ''Pearson's'' in 1909.<ref>{{cite magazine |author=Will Irwin |date=September 28, 1907 |title=The Japanese and the Pacific Coast |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_colliers-the-national-weekly_1907-09-28_40_1/page/n11/mode/2up |magazine=Collier's: The National Weekly |volume=40 |issue=1 |pages=13–15 |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |author=Will Irwin |date=October 12, 1907 |title=The Japanese and the Pacific Coast |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_colliers-the-national-weekly_1907-10-12_40_3/page/n11/mode/2up |magazine=Collier's: The National Weekly |volume=40 |issue=3 |pages=13–15 |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |author=Will Irwin |date=October 19, 1907 |title=The Japanese and the Pacific Coast |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_colliers-the-national-weekly_1907-10-19_40_4/page/n15/mode/2up |magazine=Collier's: The National Weekly |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=17–19 |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |author=Will Irwin |date=October 26, 1907 |title=The Japanese and the Pacific Coast |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_colliers-the-national-weekly_1907-10-26_40_5/page/n13/mode/2up |magazine=Collier's: The National Weekly |volume=40 |issue=5 |pages=15–16 |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |author=Will Irwin |date=June 1909 |title=Why the Pacific Slope Hates the Japanese |magazine=Pearson's Magazine | volume=21 |issue=6 |pages=581–591 |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433081664322&view=page&seq=629 |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref>

=="The American Newspaper"==
{{main|The American Newspaper}}
Then came the ''Collier's'' magazine series, "The American Newspaper", one of the most famous critical analyses of American journalism. The series was researched from September 23, 1909, until late June 1910 and published from January to June 1911.<ref name="hudson" />

[[Image:Collier's Jan. 21 1911.jpg|right|thumb|''Collier's'' January 21, 1911. Cover of the first installment of Irwin's series "The American Newspaper."]]

==World War I==
Irwin continued to write articles, some in the [[muckraking]] style, until the outbreak of [[World War I]]. He sailed to Europe in August 1914 as one of the first American correspondents. According to the media historians Edwin and Michael Emery

:"[Irwin's] [[Beat (journalism)|beats]] on the [[Second Battle of Ypres|battles of Ypres]] and the first [[Chemical weapons in World War I|German use of poison gas]] were also printed in the [[New York Tribune|''Tribune'']]. Irwin was one of several correspondents who represented American magazines in Europe; he first wrote for ''Collier's'' and then for the ''[[Saturday Evening Post]]''.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Michael Emery |author2=Edwin Emery |author3=Nancy L. Roberts |title=The Press and America. An Interpretive History of the Mass Media. Eighth Edition |location=Boston and London |publisher=Allyn and Bacon |date=1996 |page=261 |isbn=9780205183890}}</ref> Irwin's article appeared on the front page of ''[[The New York Tribune]]'' on April 27, 1915.<ref>{{cite news |work=New York Tribune |date=April 27, 1915 |author=Will Irwin |page=1 |url=http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1915-04-27/ed-1/seq-1/ |title=Germans Use Blinding Gas to Aid Poison Fumes |access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref>

Irwin served on the executive committee of [[Herbert Hoover]]'s [[Commission for Relief in Belgium]] in 1914–1915 and was chief of the foreign department of [[George Creel]]'s [[Committee on Public Information]] in 1918.

==Skeptic of spiritualism==
Irwin was skeptical of [[paranormal]] claims. In 1907-1908, for the ''Colliers Weekly'', he published four installments of "The Medium Game: Behind the Scenes with Spiritualism" to cover fraud and trickery associated with [[Spiritualism (movement)|spiritualism]].<ref name="hudson"/>

The psychical researcher [[Hereward Carrington]] described Irwin as a well-known "exposer of fraudulent mediums."<ref>{{cite book |last=Carrington |first=Hereward |date=1913 |title=Personal Experiences in Spiritualism |publisher=T. Werner Laurie Ltd |page=140 |isbn=978-5518522459}}</ref>

==Books and plays==
During and after the war Irwin wrote 17 more books, including ''Christ or Mars?'', an anti-war treatise (1923); a [[biography]] of Herbert Hoover (1928); a history of [[Paramount Pictures]] and its founder, [[Adolph Zukor]], ''The House That Shadows Built'' (1928); and his own [[autobiography]], ''The Making of a Reporter'' (1942). He also wrote two plays and continued magazine writing.

==Personal life==
Irwin was married to the [[feminist]] author, [[Inez Haynes Irwin]], who published under the name Inez Haynes Gillmore, author of ''[[Angel Island (novel)|Angel Island]]'' (1914) and ''The Californiacs'' (1916).<ref>{{cite web |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1914/02/01/100081953.pdf |title=Fiction for February |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=February 1, 1914 |access-date=September 29, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Short/00000016.htm |title=''The Californiacs'' by Inez Haynes Irwin |access-date=2017-12-15 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071129031834/http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Short/00000016.htm |archive-date=November 29, 2007 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> The Irwins summered in Scituate, Massachusetts, in the early 1900s.<ref>{{cite book |editor=Harold Howard |title=Towns of Scituate and Marshfield Massachusetts Directory 1918: Containing an Alphabetical List of the Inhabitants, a Summer Resident Directory |location=Boston |publisher=Harold Howard |date=1918 |page=79}}</ref> Will Irwin wrote a story in 1914 for ''The American Magazine'' about summer life in Scituate.<ref>{{cite magazine |author=Will Irwin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9Vg_AQAAMAAJ |title=Togo, Mayor of Scituate: A True Dog Story |magazine=The American Magazine |volume=78 |issue=2 |date=August 1914 |location=New York |publisher=Phillips Pub. Co. |pages=11–16, 83–86 |access-date=June 17, 2016}}</ref>

Irwin died in 1948, at the age of 74.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://archives.yale.edu/agents/people/67899|title=Irwin, Will, 1873-1948|website=Yale Archive|access-date=February 5, 2023}}</ref>

==See also==
*''[[The House That Shadows Built]]'' (1931). <small>—[[Paramount Pictures]] promotional film that took its name from Irwin's book.</small>

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
{{Wikisource author}}
* {{Gutenberg author | id=26707 | name=Will Irwin}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Irwin, Will (William Henry)|name=William Henry Irwin|author=yes}}
* {{Internet Archive author |search=("William Henry Irwin" OR "Irwin, William Henry" OR "Will Irwin" OR "Irwin, Will") |dname=Will Irwin}}
* {{Librivox author |id=13365}}
* [[hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.irwin|Will Irwin and Inez Haynes Gillmore Papers]]. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
* Will Irwin, [[Arnold Genthe]]. (1908) [https://books.google.com/books?id=vTtOAQAAMAAJ Pictures of Old Chinatown]
* Will Irwin. [https://books.google.com/books?id=sBAVAAAAYAAJ ''The City That Was: A Requiem of Old San Francisco''] 1906. New York: B. W. Huebsch. 47 p. {{oclc|671922810}} (free download)
* {{IMDb name|0410470}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Irwin, William Henry}}
[[Category:1873 births]]
[[Category:1948 deaths]]
[[Category:American male journalists]]
[[Category:American skeptics]]
[[Category:American writers]]
[[Category:Journalists from New York (state)]]
[[Category:People from Oneida, New York]]
[[Category:20th-century American journalists]]