Andrew Jackson Aikens was an American newspaper publisher and editor. He is best known for working with The Evening Wisconsin, a daily newspaper published in the city of Milwaukee, and as a creator of the "patent inside" preprinted sheet.
Background
Andrew Jackson Aikens was born on October 31, 1828 among the Vermont hills, in the town of Barnard, Vermont, United States, to parents of rugged ancestry. His father, Warren Aikens, was of Scotch descent, while his mother, Lydia, was directly descended from John Howland of the Mayflower.
Education
Aikens attended school until the age of fifteen.
Career
At the age of fifteen, Aikens started his life career by becoming a printer's apprentice. After some experience as editor of country newspapers in Woodstock and Bennington, Vermont, and North Adams, Massachussets, he was employed in Boston in the state printing office.
In 1853, he became the special western correspondent of the New York Evening Post. During his travels in connection with this position, he made the acquaintance, in Milwaukee, of Editor Cramer of the Wisconsin (later issued as the Evening Wisconsin) and was persuaded to assist in editing that paper, an evening sheet which was, according to a contemporary, "noted for its enterprise and generally popular for its miscellaneous intelligence and family reading. " It gave its influential support to the Union during the Civil War. Aikens became its business manager in 1857 and one of its proprietors in 1868, continuing his connection with it until his death.
In 1864, the proprietors of the Wisconsin, under Aikens's leadership, devised a plan of cooperative advertising, an adaptation of the "patent insides" idea. They furnished a ready-print page, the new and financially successful feature of which was the columns of advertising matter. This made an immediate appeal to country weekly newspapers and, in 1870, Cramer, Aikens, and Cramer established the Chicago Newspaper Union. With his characteristic enterprise, Aikens, in the same year, carried his idea to New York and with George P. Rowell and Samuel French launched the New York Newspaper Union.
The next step in 1874 was the formation of the American Newspaper Union, which included the Unions above mentioned, and branch offices in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Sioux City, Iowa, Nashville, and Cincinnati. Of the 1, 700 country weeklies using ready-print pages in 1875, this Union claimed to be supplying 1, 100. Aikens did not live to see the greater merger, in 1912, which brought into existence the present Western Newspaper Union.
Achievements
Connections
Aikens was married twice: first in 1854 to Amanda L. Barnes of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and then to Catherine Vine-Crehore of Minneapolis.