The CLEVELAND RECORDER was launched as a morning daily on 9 Sept. 1895. Cleveland's last daily example of personal journalism, it was the mouthpiece of its founder, veteran newspaperman GEO. A. ROBERTSON. TOM L. JOHNSON later admitted having invested $80,000 in hopes of making the Recorder a more reliable Democratic organ than the PLAIN DEALER. In 1897, at about the time Johnson claimed to have withdrawn his support because of losses in the panic, the Recorder was thrown into receivership. At that point it was neither sold to the Plain Dealer nor converted into a court calendar, as stated in standard sources. Although cut back from 8 to 4 pages, it entered the evening field and continued as a general newspaper for at least another dozen years. If anything, Robertson made the Recorder more outspokenly Democratic than ever. Politics was the Recorder's principal fare, and its "Town Gossip" column, undoubtedly written by Robertson, was a prime daily source of political rumors and news. Other than that, there were standard wire reports and occasional columns on the theater and boxing. Early in the 1900s, the Recorder went through a yellow phase, colored with such heads as "PLACED HIS CHILD ON A RED HOT STOVE." Circulation was generally reported at around 30,000. By 1908 Robertson had acquired the Daily Legal News, which he began to publish as the morning edition of the Recorder. When he died on 20 Feb. of that year, however, the primary impulse behind the Recorder was gone. By 1913 the Daily Legal News, established in 1885, had swallowed the Recorder.
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