A.W. Merrick

A.W. Merrick runs the Black Hills Pioneer, Deadwood's fledgling newspaper, chasing every rumor and killing with a reporter's hunger and a huckster's nerve. He fusses over his press, courts whoever holds power that week, and treats the camp's chaos as copy — proof, in his eyes, that Deadwood is becoming a real town worth writing about.

Jeffrey Jones plays him fussy and vain in exactly the right register, a man convinced that documentation is civilization even as he grovels to survive it. Merrick's comic nervousness is the show's sly commentary on how history gets written by whoever's still standing to print it — he's ridiculous, but he's also indispensable.