Kentucky Fried Irish – Frank McNally on the rise and fall of one of America’s greatest small newspapers

Many an Irish emigrant has run of out Barry’s occasionally, to regret. But minus the apostrophe, this was also the fate that, half a century ago, finally closed one of America’s greatest small newspapers.

Published weekly in Louisville, with a circulation stretching to 43 states, the Kentucky Irish American had animated US journalism for 70 years until that point, earning a readership far beyond its ethnic origins.

Then in 1968 its owner Mike Barry, who had succeeded his father John as owner and editor, finally stopped the presses. The limited staffing had become unsustainable. “This has been a Barry family newspaper and we’re just running out of Barrys,” he lamented.

In the feistiness of its commentary, the Kentucky Irish American belonged to a tradition celebrated by Mark Twain in his comic essay on a neighbouring state, Journalism in Tennessee.

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Unlike Twain’s fictional editor, the opinion writers of the KIA never exchanged actual gunfire with their critics. But it was a standing joke that readers outraged by his politics could “horsewhip” the editor “by appointment only”.

Despite – or because of – of the hard-hitting style, the paper’s readership included such national celebrities as Franklyn D Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and the sportswriter “Red” Smith.

A star columnist with the International Herald Tribune and New York Times, Smith once said: “Around our house the Kentucky Irish American rates above bread and just below whiskey as one of the necessities of life. It’s all the excuse any man needs for learning to read.”

Reflecting the American patriotism that underlaid its ethnic identity, the KIA was first published on July 4th,1898. But its offices were in the Louisville suburb of Limerick, a name that tells a tale.

Louisville was a major city then, bigger than Los Angeles and Dallas combined, with seven foreign consulships. It also had an Irish population big enough to make it the “Boston of the South”.

In politics, the KIA was both pro-labour and anti-socialist. It was also staunchly Catholic. Cherished enemies included the “Republican Party, the Ku Klux Klan, Great Britain, and the Courier-Journal” (a bigger local rival, considered pro-British and anti-Catholic).

A fervent supporter of Irish independence before and after the Easter Rising, it was less overtly interested in Ireland from 1922 on, except via an innovation of later years, when its St Patrick’s Day editions were printed in green ink.

Although invariably Democrat-leaning, the paper was not always quick to adopt liberal causes. Under founding editor William M Higgins, it opposed votes for women and its coverage of black politics bordered on racism. But by the 1950s, it was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement.

Whenever it attracted new subscription inquiries in later years, the editor found it necessary to warn potential recruits. His letter read: “We cannot accept subscriptions for less than a year, nor do we make refunds to irate subscribers who wish to cancel when they discover their knotheaded opinions do not agree with our knotheaded opinions.

“It may save both time and trouble if you know, before you subscribe, some of our views. For instance we despised [Senator] Joe McCarthy when he was alive and we hate McCarthyism now. We think Father Ginder [a priest and conservative columnist] is an incurable knucklehead. Now that you have some idea, you may do as you please. It’s your money. It’s also our paper.”

The “our paper” aspect peaked during the second World War when five of John J Barry’s sons – Mike, Joe, Tom, Jim, and Dan – served in the US army and extracts from their letters home were published as a column, Brothers in Arms. After the war, Mike took over the editorship and with the help of brothers, sisters, and cousins, persevered until November 1968.

The Kentucky Irish American is now preserved in digital form at the University of Louisville. An anthology of Mike Barry’s columns – to the introduction of which I’m indebted for the paper’s history – was published in 1995.

Barry went on to spend another quarter century as a sports columnist for the once hated Courier-Journal. But when the KIA folded, another rival publication, The Louisville Times paid tribute to him and it:

“For 70 years the witty fiery weekly […] has delighted, deflated, and bruised with a fine and free-swinging style of personal journalism. Armed with little more than a typewriter, an uncertain list of subscribers, a love of the language and an instinct for human comedy, Mike Barry made a career out of puncturing stuffed shirts.”

His paper had died at the biblical age of three score years and ten. But speaking of the Bible, one of the stuffed shirts Barry had long excoriated was Kentucky senator Albert “Happy” Chandler. On a stump speech once, Chandler echoed the Psalms: “Goodness and kindness have followed me all the days of my life.” The KIA responded: “Don’t worry, they’ll never catch up.”