Download The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism AudioBook Free
Today, seventy-three years after his loss of life, journalists still notify stories of Charles E. Chapin. As city editor of Pulitzers New York Evening World , Chapin was the style of the take-no-prisoners newsroom tyrant: he drove reporters relentlessly?and placed his paper in the center engagement ring of the circus of big-city journalism. From your Harry K. Thaw trial to the sinking of the Titanic , Chapin set the tempo for the night time press, the CNN of the pre-electronic world of journalism. In 1918, at the pinnacle of fame, Chapins world collapsed. Facing financial damage, sunk in despair, he decided to wipe out himself and his loved wife Nellie. Over a quiet September day, he took not his own life, but Nellies, taking pictures her as she slept. After his trial?and one hell of a tale for the Worlds challengers?he was sentenced alive in the infamous Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. In this history of an extraordinary life set in the most fascinating epoch of American journalism, James McGrath Morris tracks Chapins go up from renowned Chicago street reporter to movie star powerbroker in media-mad New York. His was a real human tragedy performed out in the sensational reviews of tabloids and broadsheets. But its also an epic of redemption: in prison, Chapin started a paper to deal with for prisoner rights, composed a best-selling autobiography, possessed two long-distance love affairs, and tapped his prodigious abilities to change barren prison plots into world-famous rose backyards before dying peacefully in his cell in 1930. The first portrait of one of the founding characters of modern American journalism, and a captivating chronicle of the cutthroat culture of scoops and scandals, The Rose Man of Sing Sing is also a concealed history of New York at its most multi-colored and passionate.James McGrath Morris is a past journalist, writer of Jailhouse Journalism: The Fourth House Behind Bars , and a historian. He lives in Falls Cathedral, Virginia, and teaches at Western world Springfield High School.
