Press & broadcasting / Business & brands / Visual art
James E. Scripps
1835–1906 · newspaper publisher, founder of The Detroit News, art patron
London-born publisher who founded The Evening News (today's Detroit News) in 1873 and helped create the Detroit Museum of Art, forerunner of the DIA.
- Born
London, England- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 71- Birth name
- James Edmund Scripps
- Also known as
- James Edmund Scripps
- Detroit years
- 1859–1906
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Scripps came to the United States as a child, worked at the Chicago Tribune and moved to Detroit in 1859, where he managed the Detroit Tribune and later co-owned the Detroit Daily Advertiser. When the Advertiser's building burned in 1873, he used his $20,000 insurance payment to start The Evening News, a cheap, compact afternoon paper aimed at Detroit's growing class of working readers. Rivals called it a rag, but it soon led the city's market and survives as The Detroit News. He brought his siblings, including Ellen Browning Scripps and E. W. Scripps, into the business, laying the groundwork for the E. W. Scripps media company. After a long buying tour in Europe he helped found the Detroit Museum of Art in the 1880s and gave it a large collection of old master paintings, one of the first such gifts to an American museum. He died in Detroit in 1906 and is buried at Woodmere Cemetery.
Highlights
- Founded The Evening News (The Detroit News) in 1873
- Key founder and donor of the Detroit Museum of Art (now the DIA)
- Gave one of the first major old-master collections to an American museum
- Wrote a letter for the Detroit Century Box time capsule in 1900
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Founded · 1880s–1906
Detroit Institute of Arts (Friday Night Live!)
Successor of the Detroit Museum of Art he helped found; his old-master paintings formed an early core of its collection.
Buried here · 1906
Woodmere Cemetery
The southwest Detroit cemetery where Scripps is buried.