James McClatchy had a wealth of rivals in the newspaper field

There was no CNN back then, no Headline News or Internet news services.

There were simply a few news sheets scratching out a living by printing news of ship arrivals and letters from afar.

So it is hardly surprising that word of the gold discovery at Sutter's Mill in January 1848 took a little time to filter out to the rest of the nation.

Newspapermen of the time were more interested in real news rather than pursuing wild rumors, even when the story delivered itself to their doorsteps.

James McClatchy The young Irishman arrived in California at the age of 24.

And that is how one of the most respected newsmen of the time missed the story of the gold discovery when a boatload of men from New Helvetia landed in San Francisco in front of California Star editor Edward Kemble.

Kemble was hoping for an exclusive about how many acres of wheat John Sutter would be planting that year, according to a history of California newspapers edited by Helen Harding Bretnor in 1962.

But none of the passengers knew anything about planting, and when one of them called Kemble and others into a store to show them some flakes of gold, there was a decided lack of interest.

"One said it was mica, another that it was fool's gold," Bretnor wrote. "After a while the group at the store broke up and, if Kemble remembered aright, the Star went to press that night without an item concerning the gold mines. Not until the eighteenth of March was the discovery mentioned in the Star."

It was just as well, because when word of the discovery finally did hit the local papers, the result was instantaneous: Workers, reporters and editors left their jobs to flock to the gold fields and newspapers -- including Kemble's Star -- were forced to fold or suspend publication.

"California was left without a newspaper," Bretnor wrote in her foreword, which accompanied a reprint of "A History of California Newspapers" from 1846 to 1858, originally printed in the Sacramento Union on Christmas 1858 and written by, yes, Kemble.

That situation did not last long, as the state's newspaper fellowship grew as rapidly as California's population during the Gold Rush period.

Among the newspaper types streaming into California at that time was James McClatchy, a young Irishman who arrived in the state at the age of 24.

McClatchy eventually helped found The Sacramento Bee and the McClatchy newspaper empire.

But when he arrived in Sacramento in mid-1849 there were a number of other newspapers operating in the area.

	"When word of the discovery finally did hit the local papers, the result was instantaneous: Workers, reporters and editors left their jobs to flock to the gold fields...."

Among them were the Placer Times, which began at Sutter's Fort in April 1849 and which was McClatchy's first California newspaper employer, and the Sacramento Transcript, which was founded in 1850. By October of that same year, a third newspaper was established -- the Settlers and Miners Tribune -- by McClatchy and two others.

Over the next several years, the Sacramento area became home to as many as 60 different newspapers and journals devoted to politics, land issues and religion.

With the influx of miners seeking their fortune, a decent reporter could have a field day merely by hanging around Sutter's Fort.

"The fort became a madhouse," Joseph A. McGowan, a history professor at then-Sacramento State College, wrote in his "History of the Sacramento Valley." He said that by July 1848 "there were 10 or 12 stores in operation at the fort itself, the merchants paying $100 a month rent for a single room."

With miners returning to the fort from the gold fields with thousands of dollars of gold, alcohol abuse and crime were inevitable.

"The result?" McGowan wrote. "In three weeks one man was stabbed, another shot at the bar, miners fell asleep drunk and were robbed, and the horses of those who stayed at the fort were robbed."

Eventually, only two dailies would survive the tumult of that era -- The Bee and the Sacramento Union -- and with the demise of the Union in January 1994 the only survivor was The Bee, which last year celebrated its 140th anniversary.