Michael Henry de Young was an American journalist and businessman. He is remembered today as a highly charismatic journalist who built a great newspaper San Francisco Chronicle and indelibly stamped it with the mark of his distinctive personality and character.
Background
De Young was born on September 30, 1849, in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. The family was Jewish, but the family history is murky. Michael was the son of Cornelia "Amelia" (née Morange; 1809-1881) and, supposedly, Miechel de Young (died 1854), who married in 1837. The de Young family moved from St. Louis to San Francisco in 1854. M.H. de Young’s father was said to have died of a stroke during the journey.
Education
De Young attended high school in San Francisco. During their high school years, de Young’s interest in journalism was evident as he and his older brother, Charles, put out a small paper called the School Circle.
Career
M. H. de Young and his brother, Charles, borrowed money from their landlord and rented space in a printing shop to produce a four-page newspaper that they called the Dramatic Chronicle. The Dramatic Chronicle, which first appeared on January 17, 1865, was comprised of notices about shows at local theatres. After its first issue, the paper was subsidized by local theatre owners, and it was distributed free throughout the city. By the end of its first month, the Dramatic Chronicle had a circulation of 2,000 copies. The spirited writing in the Dramatic Chronicle caught the attention of Mark Twain, who contributed some pieces, and then of Bret Harte, who did the same. Soon, it became fashionable for noted local writers to gel a byline in the paper.
In the meantime, Michael and Charles pored over copies of the nation’s leading newspaper of the time, the New York Herald, carefully taking note of the paper’s style, substance, tone, and format, which they proceeded to copy diligently, and with great success. Within two years, they were able to afford their own offices and printing equipment. Years later, de Young said, as quoted in Stephen D. Bray’s essay in Dictionary of Literary Biography, that the early Dramatic Chronicle had “just enough reading matter for men to read during lunch, and it was of a character to attract special attention. There were criticisms of public men, crisp references to important events, shots at conspicuous people, and other such information.”
By September of 1868, the Dramatic Chronicle had a circulation of over 10,000 and changed its name to the Daily Morning Chronicle. The paper was no longer free, but it sold for just five cents a copy. In its new form, the editors promised “what will prove a novelty in San Francisco journalism, a bold, bright, fearless and truly independent newspaper.” Though the de Youngs were sued for libel no less than a dozen times by 1871, the paper’s popularity blossomed, and the brothers prospered.
During the 1870s, Charles de Young formed a close political bond with Denis Kearney, a labor agitator and leader of the Workingmen’s Party. De Young was incensed by Kearney’s support for the candidate for mayor of San Francisco, the Reverend Isaac S. Kallach. He wrote against Kallach vociferously in the Chronicle, and actually shot him. Kallach recovered from his gunshot wounds and won the election. Shortly thereafter, on April 23, 1880, Kallach’s son shot and killed Charles de Young in the Chronicle offices. Around the same time, de Young gained full control of the Chronicle and took it in a more conservative, less activist direction, and the reporting focus became more business-oriented. Within a few years, the paper became identified with the philosophy of the Republican party, and in 1888, 1892, and 1908, de Young served as a delegate to the Republican national convention. De Young himself ran for the Senate in 1892 but lost.
In 1892, President Harrison appointed him a national commissioner to the World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago the following year. In Chicago, de Young conceived the idea of a Midwinter Fair in San Francisco, which took place in Golden Gate Park in 1894.
De Young continued to receive various ambassadorial appointments, including commissioner-general to the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1898, national commissioner to the Paris Exposition in 1900, and vice president and director of concessions at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. He died on February 15, 1925, at the age of seventy-five.
According to his daughter Helen de Young Cameron, de Young “loved objects. He was an incurable collector. He collected everything. He stored his collections at the Memorial Museum, where he would visit them at all hours. He took genuine delight in sharing them with the citizens of San Francisco, insisting that his museum never charge admission.”
Connections
M. H. de Young married Kate Dean, who would later bear him five children. Tragically, one of his children, de Young’s only son, was to die of typhus in 1913.