William L. McLean bought the Evening Bulletin in 1895, when it was thirteenth in a field of thirteen newspapers circulating in the city. By his death in 1931, the Bulletin led the field and was considered one of the nation's most prestigious newspapers. Although the paper died, greatly lamented, in 1982, much of its distinguished history was due to the leadership and publishing acumen of McLean and his descendants.

William Lippard McLean was born 4 May 1852 in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, a small town thirty-two miles southeast of Pittsburgh. As a young man of twenty, he secured a position in the circulation department of the Pittsburgh Leader. His job required him to travel about outlying areas of the city, and it was here he learned a fact of newspaper life that was to prove essential in his later management of the Evening Bulletin: the primacy of local news. Later he held other positions...