Space, Nation, and the Triumph of Region: A View of the World from Houston

Abstract

For this article's accompanying online component, see Cameron Blevins, “Mining and Mapping the Production of Space,”http://spatialhistory.stanford.edu/viewoftheworld. On a rainy spring evening in 1898 the Texas newspaper editor Rienzi Johnston found himself in Chicago's Grand Pacific Hotel for the annual banquet of the Associated Press (ap). Johnston and eighty-seven fellow editors from across the country dined alongside two full-size printing presses built out of flowers and candy while seated at tables arranged to form the initials ap. Over little-neck clams and roast snipe they listened to a series of speeches on the defining issues of the day. A prominent lawyer defended the Associated Press and its powerful national news syndicate from charges of monopoly, while a string of boisterous toasts celebrated the recent outbreak of war between the United States and Spain. In a fit of patriotism, one southern editor rose from his chair to declare that three decades removed from a bloody civil war, “Our People: they know no North, no South, no East, no West.” Johnston was no stranger to national integration. This editor of a midsize regional paper served as Texas's delegate to the Democratic National Committee, briefly filled a vacated seat in the U.S. Senate, and was a rising leader within the ap's ranks. Johnston moved comfortably in a web of national associations and affiliations that extended well beyond his office in Houston and the carefully arranged tables of the Chicago banquet hall.1