Robert Paine Scripps was an American poet, newspaper publisher. Scripps Oceanography survived the depression thanks to him. Not only did he more than double his family's support during this period, but Robert Paine Scripps also made these gifts strategically, arranging for the state of California to match the family's contributions.
Background
Robert Paine was born on October 27, 1895 in San Diego, California, United States, the fifth among six children to survive infancy and the youngest of four sons of Edward Wyllis Scripps, founder of the Scripps newspaper chain, and Nackie Benson (Holtsinger) Scripps. His paternal grandfather had emigrated to the United States from England in 1844; his mother's father, Samuel King Holtsinger, was a Cumberland Presbyterian minister in Ohio. E. W. Scripps's children, as one of his biographers has written, "knew him more as a boss than as a father".
Education
Though Robert attended Pomona College (Claremont, California) for a time, his education was gained chiefly from tutors and from extensive reading prescribed by his forceful parent. Like his brothers, he also began reading his father's business correspondence and attending conferences with editors, business executives, and prominent visitors.
E. W. Scripps studied his sons' potentialities carefully. James George Osborn, the oldest, born in 1886, showed marked business abilities and in 1908 was made chairman of the board and given active control of the newspapers owned by E. W. Scripps and Milton A. McRae. John Paul Scripps, born in 1888, soon joined his brother, becoming editor-in-chief of the Scripps papers. John, however, died in 1914, and it became obvious that Robert would be needed in the family newspaper chain.
Career
For six years Robert Paine Scripps sampled a wide range of experiences that included newspaper work for the Scripps chain and, on his own, manual labor in the Bakersfield (Calif. ) oil fields and sojourns in Europe, Hawaii, and Australia - always with frequent reports to his father. During these years, however, he also wrote poetry, and if circumstances had been different he might have followed a literary career.
In 1917, when the United States entered the first World War, E. W. Scripps emerged from his nominal retirement and moved to Washington to throw the full support of the Scripps-McRae papers behind the war effort, taking his youngest son along as his right-hand man. Differences of opinion soon arose between the elder Scripps and his son James, who in the West Coast papers under his control was sharply criticizing the Wilson administration's handling of defense matters, and on E. W. 's insistence, Robert was installed as editor-in-chief, with full control over the editorial policies of the entire chain.
When the break between E. W. and James became final in 1920, followed by James's death in 1921, Robert became the heir-apparent of the Scripps chain. Choosing Roy W. Howard to be his son's business partner, E. W. Scripps made Howard chairman of the board in 1920 and in 1921 officially changed the name of the organization to the Scripps-Howard Newspapers. In November 1922 he drew up a will and trust agreement making Robert Paine Scripps sole trustee and chief stockholder. In 1923 Scripps accompanied his father on a six months' world cruise in the latter's yacht for a final tutoring as his successor; three years later E. W. Scripps died.
As head of the Scripps-Howard chain, Robert Scripps followed his father's policies. Like his father, too, Scripps allowed his editors wide latitude and directed them to show initiative in local and state matters. Twelve years after his father's death aboard a yacht off Liberia, Scripps - still only forty-two - was fatally stricken with an internal hemorrhage, resulting from a varicose condition of the esophagus.
Achievements
Robert Paine Scripps and his partner Howard purchased, founded twenty papers - most notably the New York World (1931), which was merged into the Scripps-Howard Telegram. He was a founding patron of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, saved the Institute during the Depression, by more than doubling his family's financial support. His famous poetry - Verses of an Idle Hour (1917).
In 1930 Scripps was honored by a committee of British publishers with a Walter Hines Page Fellowship, given to those who make outstanding contributions to journalism worldwide. He is commemorated by the Robert Paine Scripps Forum for Science, Society and the Environment, an oceanside conference center facility located at the Institute.
Strongly attached to the principles embodied in the Bill of Rights, Scripps encouraged such campaigns as that of the San Francisco News in behalf of Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings, two labor leaders who had been convicted of bombing the 1916 Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco after what was widely felt to be an unfair trial. In 1924 Scripps gave the support of his newspapers to the third-party presidential candidacy of Senator Robert M. La Follette.
Views
Like his father, however, Scripps was more concerned with public service than with the business end of journalism.
Personality
Modest, patient, and tolerant, Scripps gave increasingly free rein to the dynamic Roy Howard. A tall, broad-shouldered, handsome man who wore a mustache and in his later years a dark beard.
Quotes from others about the person
Observer Forrest Davis in 1938 characterized the Scripps-Howard chain as a "constitutional monarchy, with Howard the prime minister and Scripps as king exercising the final power (March 12, 1938). But though content to remain in the background, Scripps was credited by his associates with ability and force".
Interests
Robert Paine Scripps was an avid motorist and played tennis with enthusiasm. Like his father he loved the sea.
Connections
Scripps had married Margaret Lou Culbertson of Pasadena, California, on March 21, 1917, and the union produced six children: Robert Paine, Charles Edward, Margaret Ellen, Nackey Elizabeth, Samuel Holtsinger, and Edward Wyllis, all of whom survived him.
