(2 of 2)
As is so often the case with able Midlanders wherever found, Earle Martin's origins can be traced to that hotbed of literati and journalists, Indiana. He was born at Edinburgh, Ind., in 1874, and 20 years later got his first job from Meredith Nicholson, now famed as a novelist, on the Indianapolis News. In 1896 he joined the Scripps forces as a "police cub" under Charles F. Mosher of the Cincinnati Post, whose managing editor he became within three years.
He "ran away" from the Scripps people for five years, to manage the Indianapolis News during an historic fight with its townsfellow, the Press, and to start the Star for Publisher G. F. McCulloch. In 1905 he "went home," to join the Scripps Press in Cleveland and stay with it until last week. His one vice is the constant wearing of an incredibly old, battered, dirty straw hat, in the office, as he edits.
Earle Martin, said oldtimers, knows how to edit, how to fight for circulation, how to jockey a paper into a lucrative advertising position. The Plain Dealer would soon have a rival worthy of its fame.