Although Joshua Norton was perfectly serious in declaring himself Emperor in 1859, it generally is agreed that the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin published his original Proclamation as a joke.

It didn’t take long for other newspapers — in San Francisco, yes, but eventually across California and Nevada — to get in on the game of burlesquing the Emperor with fake stories about — and fake proclamations by — him.

William Drury may have been the first, in his 1986 biography of the Emperor, to point out that the Daily Alta California — in particular, the Alta’s city editor Albert S. Evans, pen name "Fitz Smythe" — was the real "pacesetter" in this, taking the mantle from the Bulletin and fully milking the comic potential of the Emperor’s persona.

Recently, I stumbled upon a couple of pieces of evidence — not mentioned in Drury’s account — that other newspapers at the time recognized the Daily Alta and Evans as tops in the field!