NY Times: "After four rounds of the fiercest fighting Butte has seen for some time. At one time the champion went to his knees and a knockout looked possible." BDE: "Once during the bout Monroe sent Jeffries to his knees and the crowd was worked up to a high point of excitement at the showing made by the local man. It looked pretty dangerous for Jeffries at this point as a knockout was looked for when the champion went down. The fight was one of the fiercest ever seen in Butte." The wording is somewhat different, but it's clear the source of both pieces is the same. Also, note that BDE says: "According to dispatches, Jeffries tried hard to ..." basically, it says it got its info from wires, it didn't have it's own correspondent present at the fight. Usually, when they had their own reporter giving an account of the bout, it had "(Special)", "Special to <name of newspaper>" or similar notes at the beginning of the report. Name spelling, you could sometimes have the same wire spelling Joe Gans' name differently, depending on paper, Gans, Ganz, Ganss. First name could be spelled <i>Joe</i>, <i>"Joe"</i> (with quotation marks) and Joseph, depending on newspaper sports editor preferences.
"According to dispatches, Jeffries tried hard to . . ." I started off my post #75 with "The New York Times and the Brooklyn Eagle seem to be separate stories. The Eagle writer was not at ringside but referring to dispatches. The Times writer seems to have been at ringside off the evidence of his report and is writing from Butte>" I still think that is correct. I don't agree that you two quotes of somewhat similar lines proves this was written by the Butte Miner writer who penned the AP report. The best that can be said is this writer may have read the AP report before writing his story, but even that is speculation. Note this line: "Monroe, who is a miner in the Anaconda mine, went at Jeffries like a fighter . . ." from the Brooklyn Eagle. This is the beginning of the report in the Anaconda Standard: "Jack Munroe, a miner in the Anaconda mine, who claims the title of Amateur champion . . ." I don't think this necessarily means the guy who wrote the piece for the Anaconda Standard was involved in writing this either, although there might have been a dispatch. Basically, too many variations in style to warrent jumping to any conclusion. The Brooklyn Eagle piece was most likely by a New York writer off dispatches. The question is why did he get Munroe's name wrong when the AP report was correct.
What exactly gives you the feeling that this very short piece was written by a Times writer, sitting at ringside in Butte? 1902-12-22 The New York Times (page 3) Champion Jeffries Met a Surprise. BUTTE, Montana, Dec. 21.--Champion pugilist James Jeffries to-night lost a decision in a four-round contest with Jack Munroe, after four rounds of the fiercest fighting Butte has seen for some time. At one time the champion went to his knees and a knockout looked possible. Jeffries and his manager had posted a forfeit of $250 for any one to stand against Jeffries for four rounds and Munroe accepted the challenge. At the end of the fourth Munroe was still ready to fight. Munroe is amateur champion of the Pacific Coast. Fitzsimmons has posted a forfeit of $500 to put Munroe out in four rounds.
Sloppy language on my part--The Times report was written by a man at ringside, and I stand by that. It seems it was written by the Butte Miner writer and sent over the wire to New York, probably as an AP report. The Brooklyn Eagle writer makes it clear he was not at ringside. If this was written by the Butte Miner writer, why did he suddenly begin misspelling Munroe's name?
I'm telling you (based on my own experience), that different sports editors or writers (in different newspapers) very often slightly altered the wire reports to their liking, they didn't re-print it word for word, letter for letter, comma for comma. On the contrary, unless the piece was very short (one or two sentences), you could rarely find two texts (of the same wire) that were absolutely identical, something would be different all the time. One would write something like "Dec 21. ... to-night ...", another "Dec. 22. ... last night ...", "Jeffries, of San Francisco" and "Jeffries of San Francisco", etc etc. Parts of the wires always were getting slightly modified, either during transimission or by the person who prepared the text for printing. Basically, BDE sports editor could be used to spelling that name as "Monroe", maybe he knew someone who wrote their name like that, or just thought it was correct spelling, or whatever other reason, and NY Times editor was used to spelling it "Munroe" or didn't have any preferences and just wrote it the same as the wire said. Why does Butte Miner you quoted say it was Monroe, and Anaconda Standard said "Munroe"? They didn't ask his passport, they didn't ask him or his manager to write his name as it should be, they simply wrote it how they believed it was correct. It is the same why NY Times and BDE spelled it differently too.
I just don't buy the name excuses, myself. These are New York City papers, not rags from cow towns or one outhouse whistle stops in the sticks. It seems to me that if a name comes over the wire, they should and would get it correct. That is one of the first principles of journalism. The most reasonable explanation is that the Brooklyn Eagle writer was getting dispatches from someone who spelled Jack Munroe's name as Monroe, but the AP reports did not make that mistake. On your above post--But the Butte Miner writer corrected the spelling for the AP reports. He must have learned by that point the correct spelling. I am certain editors altered wire reports, but the spelling of a name which comes over the wire? I would have to see real strong evidence of that, certainly from a New York paper. By the way, I doubt anybody at the New York Times or the Brooklyn Eagle knew of Jack Munroe prior to this time. He was at best an obscure west coast fighter.
First, the principles of journalism ethics appeared much later. Second, the AP was not always reliable (see, for example, this wiki page), plus there could be transmission errors (fully automatic telegraph - teletype - was invented only in 1914). Third, NY or not, it was common to have slightly different spellings of people's name in wires printed by different newspapers.
On Dec 24, NY Times spells Munroe's name as "Munroe" (see here, it's an AP wire), but BDE on the same day continues to call him Monroe: JEFFRIES IS ANXIOUS TO MEET MONROE AGAIN. --- Jack Monroe, the amateur, who was awarded a decision over Champion Jim Jeffries last Saturday night, says that he will not meet the champion at present. Monroe says his condition is wholly unfit at the present time to successfully fight any one, but in a short while he will be ready to meet Jeffries, Fitzsimmons or any other heavyweight. Jeffries announced yesterday that he will give Monroe a present of $1,000 if he can stay four rounds with him again. So they never seen the AP spelling of his name, or they simply didn't care and spelled it the way they wanted?
In those days, the AP was prone to errors. You are right it was a different journalistic world back then. The best conclusion here is Jeffries was never down.
Munroe and Munroe are common names here in Ireland and are often interchanged. I have read of a defeat of Monroe, whom I believe is Jack Munroe, as an amature back on the west coast, in if I recall correctly, 1899. IT's difficult as you know well to be sure now, but I think the likely that Jack slipped or suffered a flash kd.
Who, What, When, Where--Hasn't got anything to do with ethics, really. These are the principles of writing a story--The questions that the reader should be able to answer after reading the story. Sinclair's book deals with political bias in newspapers. Any American could go to his neighborhood bookstore today and probably buy several books dealing with bias in the media. There are all kinds of watch dog groups constantly putting out critiques. And almost no journalist or media outlet will admit they are biased. But it is apples and oranges comparing political biases with factual errors in something like a sporting event. And it still makes no sense to me to change the spelling of a name. That the Brooklyn Eagle spelled the name Monroe points to it being spelled that way on a story coming over the wire. Doesn't mean that was the only dispatch they received.
"So they never seen the AP spelling of his name, or they simply didn't care and spelled it the way they wanted?" You left out the most likely reason. They received dispatches from the site spelling the name Monroe. As the Butte Miner reporter spelled it Munroe in his AP report, it leaves the door open that there was a second reporter sending out dispatches. I think that is certainly possible, off the body of the Eagle story.
"The best conclusion here is Jeffries was never down." I think the weight of evidence is slightly on that side, but why this need to jump to a "conclusion" one way or another? I think the evidence is mixed, myself. The reference to Jeffries admitting he slipped in the Syracuse report from 1916 might point to the truth. I am simply not certain enough to reach a conclusion on the matter. "the AP was prone to errors." In this case the writer for the Butte Miner was the writer for the AP. It seems to me that if he was unreliable when writing AP reports, the same might be true for his local newspaper reports.
BDE received the same dispatch from AP as NY Times (you can find AP wires printed on pretty much every sporting page of BDE, it was a member of AP-affiliated newspapers). The part of $1K offered came from the AP, so they could not be unaware that that was the spelling if Munroe's name. You are clutching to a straw for a long time already.
So now they are lieing only about politics, but they are completely honest and are not looking for scandals or extraordinary stories in boxing, culture, science, etc, to increase selling rates. If you want to stick to your belief that the AP writers were honest and never tried to twist or invent the "facts" in sports, it's your right, but this is totally silly, no matter how much evidence I present to you. I posted a story from the ring, that's 1st hand recollections of those times, and those same people who readily accepted false reports from boxers' managers, were the same people who contributed to AP sports coverage or printed the AP stories in their newspapers. Honest, who, what, when, my ass!