California Burning: Photographs from the Los Angeles Examiner

Los Angeles Examiner Photographs Collection, 1920-1961

The photographs on this website come from the Los Angeles Examiner, a prominent newspaper founded by William Randolph Hearst in December 1903 in an effort to further his desire to run for President of the United States. Hearst founded the San Francisco Examiner prior to establishing the Los Angeles-based paper. He believed that in order to secure the presidency, he needed a southern California paper in addition to his northern California paper. The Los Angeles Examiner was a right-leaning morning paper that reflected Hearst’s political convictions. The Examiner, for example, supported the detainment and deportation of Mexican-Americans in the 1930s as well as the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. [1]  The newspaper's biggest rival was the Los Angeles Times, the only other major paper in southern California.

The Examiner was a significant paper in Los Angeles, producing 380,000 papers daily and 700,000 papers on Sunday until its closure on January 7, 1962. [2] The newspaper closed due to public criticism from organizations such as the California Loyal League, which called the Examiner disloyal and dangerous to society. The Los Angeles Times then became the only notable morning paper in Los Angeles. Hearst’s afternoon paper the Herald & Express, later known as the Herald-Examiner, then acquired the Los Angeles Examiner. The Herald Examiner operated on the southwest corner of 11th and Broadway in Los Angeles until 1989 when the paper closed for good in response to the Los Angeles Times acquiring the Examiner’s subscribers. [3]

The images shown on this website come from the Los Angeles Examiner’s photograph morgue, and are preserved in the University of Southern California’s Special Collections.

Southern California Studies Specialist at the University of Southern California Libraries Special Collections, Suzanne Noruschat explains that “photo morgues were commonly created by newspaper publishers many decades ago, before the decline of print publishing” in order to preserve historical events. [4] In addition to the approximately 1.4 million prints and negatives from the newspaper, the collection also includes clippings from nearly every published issue of the Examiner. Almost every event from 1903 to 1962 is documented in the collections and is divided into several categories or subcollections.

The Los Angeles Examiner Special Collections can be utilized in many ways.  According to Noruschat, “usually, researchers (whether they be students, faculty, or other types of patrons) are looking for images on a particular topic (a place or an event) that is represented in the subject portion of the collection.” Since the collections encompass a wide range of subjects from “crime, sports, society, art, and entertainment,” individuals can research nearly any subject for any reason. According to Noruschat, “oftentimes, researchers also wish to find images of a particular individual and in these cases, the ‘portrait file' section of the Examiner collection can prove very useful” to help them in their research.  These collections of prints, negatives, and clippings can be accessed digitally on the University of Southern California’s library database, or in person.  Prints, which are not digitized, can be accessed by researchers when they contact the university and request materials from the collection’s finding aids. [5]
 
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[1] Contributor, Guest. “Laistory: The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.” LAist, 23 June 2018, https://laist.com/news/laistory-the-los-angeles-herald-exa.

[2] “Hearst Corporation Los Angeles Examiner Photographs, Negatives and Clippings--Portrait Files (N-Z) 7000.1C.” Online Archive of California, https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8w37tqm/.

[3] Contributor, Guest. “Laistory: The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.” LAist, 23 June 2018, https://laist.com/news/laistory-the-los-angeles-herald-exa.

[4] Noruschat, Suzanne. Personal interview. 8 November 2022.

[5] Noruschat, Suzanne. Personal interview. 8 November 2022.