page_title: William Rule (editor)
section_title: Editor
hierarchical_section_title: William Rule (editor) / Editor
caption_attribution_description: English: The front page of the June 27, 1872 edition of the Knoxville Chronicle.
context_page_description: William Rule was an American newspaper editor and politician, best known as the founder of the Knoxville Journal, which was published in Knoxville, Tennessee, from 1870 until 1991. A protégé of vitriolic newspaper editor William G. "Parson" Brownlow, Rule established the Journal as a successor to Brownlow's Knoxville Whig. Rule twice served as mayor of Knoxville, and published the city's first comprehensive history, Standard History of Knoxville, in 1900.
context_section_description: In 1869, the Whig, which was the only pro-Republican newspaper in the post-bellum South, was sold to Knoxville businessman Joseph Mabry, who attempted to rebrand it as a Democratic Party newspaper.  To ensure the survival of Knoxville's pro-Republican newspaper tradition, Rule left the Whig in 1870 and formed the Knoxville Chronicle, which he considered the true successor to Brownlow's paper.   When Brownlow returned to Knoxville after his Senate term had ended in 1875, he purchased a half stake in the Chronicle, and the paper was published as the Whig and Chronicle until Brownlow's death in 1877.
  Rule was first elected Mayor of Knoxville in 1873.  He spearheaded a successful initiative to establish a city waterworks, which Knoxville voters approved in June of that year.  He also opened a small pox hospital on the outskirts of town, and appointed a board of health.
  During the 1880s, the Chronicle quarreled with the pro-Democratic Knoxville Tribune.  On the morning of March 11, 1882, the Chronicle featured an article accusing the Tribune of publishing obscene material.  That evening, James W. Wallace, editor of the Tribune, angrily accosted Rule on Gay Street, and demanded he issue a retraction.  When Rule refused, Wallace proceeded to loudly issue a "formal denunciation" of Rule. As Wallace spoke, Rule bashed him over the head with a cane, whereupon Wallace drew a pistol and fired three shots, all of which missed.  Both Wallace and Rule were arrested, but no charges were filed, and both editors blamed one another for the incident.
  Throughout the 1880s, Rule's newspaper (which after a series of ownership changes became the Knoxville Journal) was the mouthpiece for the so-called "Houk Machine," a Republican political syndicate headed by Leonidas C. Houk (a former rival of Rule) that dominated East Tennessee politics.   In 1887, Rule published a speech, "The Loyalists of Tennessee in the Late War," which detailed the actions of East Tennessee's Unionists during the Civil War.  During the same period, Rule spoke out against Appalachian stereotypes (which were beginning to take shape), arguing that people from the region had normal levels of intelligence, but suffered due to Southern states' lack of funding for schools.
  On January 29, 1888, another violent incident involving the Rule family took place in Knoxville.  After the Journal published an article questioning the competence of Dr. A. T. West, who had been appointed city physician by the Board of Aldermen, West's sons, John and William, confronted Rule's brother, James (who was an editor for the Journal), outside St. John's Episcopal Church, and demanded he reveal the article's author.  When Rule refused, the Wests attacked him.  Rule was shot through the wrist and stabbed before he managed to draw a pistol and fire blindly, killing John West.  
  In 1900, Rule cowrote and edited the Standard History of Knoxville, the city's first fully comprehensive history.  After Rule was again elected mayor in 1898, he sold his ownership stake in the Journal, but continued as the paper's editor.  After his death from appendicitis in 1928, he was described as having been the "oldest active editor in the U.S." by Time magazine.  Rule is buried with his family in Old Gray Cemetery.
caption: Front page of the June 27, 1872, issue of the Knoxville Chronicle
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