Paragraphers

Thanks to digital technology and search engines it’s easier than ever today to read and admire the work of a vanished journalistic breed – the paragrapher.

“Paragrapher” is an archaic term for someone who wrote fillers (usually one-sentence trivia items or jokes) and other short pieces for newspapers back in the day when they were produced with hot metal.

A paragrapher (the British preferred “paragraphist”) was not a full-fledged reporter or editor, though both of those jobs required the construction of paragraphs. But reporters and editors wrote long strings of paragraphs hopefully connected with artful transitions. A paragrapher would be content with a series of unconnected paragraphs or even a page of pithy sentences for which he was paid by the inch of type. The word enjoyed its heyday, as did paragraphers, in the last quarter of the 19th century and first decade or two of the 20th century.

Herewith, a sampling of anonymous paragraphing from early-day Texas newspapers:

A California physician has discovered a new disease — love madness, and has been experimenting with persons afflicted therewith, and has produced the ‘love parasite,’ or bacillus mierocus. This he cultivated to the 20th generation, and with the parasites of that generation he inoculated a number of subjects. The inoculation was invariably successful, symptoms of the disease appearing in a very short time after the operation. A bachelor, aged 50 years, on the first day after inoculation, had his whiskers dyed, ordered a suit of new clothes and a set of false teeth, bought a top buggy, a bottle of hair restorer, a diamond ring and a guitar, and began reading Byron's poems. The inoculation produced symptoms of the same nature in a ‘young’ lady of 45. She spent $5 at a drug store for cosmetics, got a lot of new hair and a croquet set, sang ‘Empty is the Cradle,’ sent out invitations for a party and complained that the ‘nice young men did not go into society.’ An inoculated youth of 17, employed in a country store did up a gallon on molasses in a paper bag, and also, in a fit of absent-mindedness, put the cat in the butter-tub, and threw some fresh butter out of the window. Finally, he sat down in a basket of eggs while looking at the photograph of a pretty girl, and was discharged for his carelessness.”

(Originally published in Peck's Sun and reprinted in a Texas newspaper during the 1880s, this long example of a paragrapher’s work was found pasted in an old scrapbook.)

The next item concerns former Gov. Oran B. Roberts (known as “The Old Alcalde,” he served from 1879-1883):

“The San Antonio Express is confident the assaults of the press cannot confuse Governor Roberts, and adds: ‘He gets ‘off wrong’ at times, but laughs in his sleeve at the papers poking him up, well knowing that by his peculiar manipulations he will get around to the right side all in good time, and make the average citizen believe he has been there all the time, and forced the editors who had been obeying him to come to his support.’”

Whoever wrote that then felt moved to rhyme, another example of the paragrapher’s skill set: