One of the benefits of doing historical research in the early 21st century is the wealth of newspaper indexes.  There is Newspaperarchive.com.  Proquest has digitized many papers.  As well, there are still the older indexes—some  published, some not.  It’s important to remember that even using these, there’s still a lot that is missed.  Nonetheless, surveys of papers today can be made much broader much easier than in the past.

And doing so, it becomes clear that the Oakland Tribune was a major disseminator of Charles Fort, at least in the Bay Area.  Again, this conclusion must be taken with a certain grain of salt: the Tribune is digitized, which makes searching it easier.  Its San Francisco competitor, The Chronicle--both were staunchly Republican papers in the first part of the twentieth century—is only indexed.  Some of the indexes are published.  Some were created by California state librarians.  And it is possible that references to Fort slipped through the index.  Be that as it may, the Tribune was important.