 Ritchie wrote the stirring partisan editorials, clipped the news from Washington and New York papers, and did most of the local reporting himself.For 25 years he was state printer, a method by which his political friends subsidized their most articulate voice.Ritchie was a leader of the "Richmond Junto" that controlled the Republican state committee, originally with Ritchie's relatives Spencer Roane and Dr. John Brockenbrough of the Virginia State Bank.