Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, the Los Angeles Tribune, a feisty weekly newspaper that served the African American community, attained great popularity and eventually rivaled the much older California Eagle and the Los Angeles Sentinel, the other black newspapers in the city. Editor Almena Lomax, pictured setting type with then-husband Lucius W. Lomax Jr., had a reputation as a hard-hitting journalist willing to stir controversy with stories on such topics as racial discrimination in Hollywood and police mistreatment of blacks. Cal Press inducted Almena Lomax into the California Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2019.
Frank McCulloch was a reporter and editor at newspapers in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and Reno, and a heralded war correspondent for Time magazine. He was a formidable editor and a beloved mentor whose career impacted countless journalists and publishers. The Center for Investigative Reporting, presenting McCulloch a Founders Muckraker Award in 2009, said he “was named in seven libel suits — all unsuccessful — during his McClatchy years that helped establish protections from which journalists still benefit today.” Cal Press inducted McCulloch into the California Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2018. (Photo courtesy The Press Democrat)
Morris “Morrie” Turner long had admired Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” and mulled creating a black Charlie Brown. At one point, Turner asked Schulz why he didn’t have any black kids in his comic strip, and Schulz told Turner to create his own. At the time of Turner’s death at age 90, “Wee Pals” appeared in 40 newspapers and about a dozen websites. Cal Press presented its Mark Twain Award for Journalism Excellence to Turner’s family in 2016.
During Otis Chandler’s tenure, the Los Angeles Times won 10 Pulitzer Prizes and expanded from two to 34 foreign and domestic bureaus. At the same time, it doubled its circulation to more than 1 million daily and for many years published more news and advertising than any other paper in the country. Cal Press inducted Chandler into the California Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2015.
James McClatchy was an editor for a New York newspaper when news of the gold strike prompted him to go West. He realized the power a newspaper could wield in the public interest, and he worked for several Sacramento-area newspapers before co-founding The Sacramento Bee in 1857. Cal Press inducted McClatchy (1824-1883) into the California Newspaper Hall of Fame in 1959.
