Founder of Modern Journalism Was
Called Everything That Had an Unpleasant
Name, but He Prospered.
James Gordon Bennett, who founded the _New York Herald_, was well over
thirty-five years of age when he left the office of the old _New York
Courier and Enquirer_. He had learned what a newspaper should be, he
believed, and he was going to put that knowledge into operation. He had
toiled early and late all his life, and when he was ready to start for
himself he had a nominal capital of five hundred dollars, and a big idea.
He was the only newspaper man in New York who thought that a newspaper
didn't have to be dull to be good. In fact, he found that if he wished to
be an editor at all it would have to be on his own paper. So on May 6,
1835, in a cellar on Wall Street, he issued the first number of the
_Herald_.
Many things which we take for granted in the newspapers of to-day were
originated by Bennett and his lively little cellar-born sheet. In the
second month of its existence, the _Herald_ printed the first Wall Street
reports that had ever appeared in an American daily. Later, in the same
year, Bennett introduced modern reportorial methods by his graphic "story"
of the great fire that devastated down-town New York in December, 1835;
and his introduction of a picture of the Stock Exchange on fire, and a map
of the burned district, was another epoch-making innovation. It was he,
too, who ordered for the _Herald_ a telegraphic report of the first speech
ever sent in full over the wires to a newspaper--that of Calhoun on the
Mexican War.
There were no theories concerning the news in the _Herald_, no stately,
long-winded, word-spinning explanations of what the news meant; just the
news itself, given tersely and in as simple and bright language as
possible. The readers were left to draw their own inferences and make
their own comments.
Competitors Tried to Crush Him.
Bennett was right in trusting to the readers' intelligence, for his
following increased. But though the public came to him in goodly numbers,
the battle was a desperate, up-hill one. Five years after he started, all
the papers in the city banded together to crush him. The records of the
fight are curious now, chiefly for the profusion of the epithets that were
hurled at him. One paper, in one short broadside, managed to call him an
"obscene rogue," "profligate adventurer," "venomous reptile,"
"pestilential scoundrel," "polluted wretch," "habitual liar," and "veteran
blackguard."
Bennett weathered the storm, seldom bothering about hitting back, but all
the time striving to make his paper brighter and more readable. His
adversaries soon realized that they were losing ground, and they gradually
relinquished the struggle.
Twelve years after he had started the _Herald_, Bennett got into a dispute
with Horace Greeley concerning the relative circulation of the _Herald_
and _Tribune_. The dispute was settled by an impartial committee, and this
committee found that the _Herald_ had a daily circulation of 16,711 to the
_Tribune's_ 11,455, while the _Weekly Herald_ had a circulation of 11,455
to a circulation of 15,780 for the _Weekly Tribune_. On the whole, the
result was a decided victory for Bennett.
His Announcement of His Marriage.
Here is the announcement of his marriage, written by himself and published
in the _Herald_ on June 1, 1840:
To the Readers of the "Herald"--Declaration of Love--Caught
at Last--Going to Be Married--New Movement in Civilization.
I am going to be married in a few days. The weather is so
beautiful--times are getting so good--the prospects of
political and moral reforms so auspicious, that I cannot
resist the divine instincts of honest nature any longer; so
I am going to be married to one of the most splendid women
in intellect, in heart, in soul, in property, in person, in
manner, that I have yet seen in the course of my interesting
pilgrimage through human life.
I cannot stop in my career. I must fulfil that awful destiny
which the Almighty Father has written against my name, in
the broad letters of life, against the wall of Heaven. I
must give the world a pattern of happy wedded life, with all
the charities that spring from a nuptial love.
In a few days I shall be married according to the holy rites
of the most holy Catholic Church, to one of the most
remarkable, accomplished, and beautiful young women of the
age. She possesses a fortune. I sought and found a
fortune--a very large fortune.
She has no Stonington shares, or Manhattan stock, but in
purity and uprightness she is worth half a million of pure
coin. Can any swindling bank show as much? In good sense and
elegance, another half a million; in soul, mind, and beauty,
millions on millions, equal to the whole specie of all the
rotten banks in the whole world.
Happily, the patronage of the public to the _Herald_ is
nearly twenty-five thousand dollars per annum--almost equal
to a President's salary. But property in the world's goods
was never my object, Fame, public good, usefulness in my day
and generation--the religious associates of female
excellence--the progress of true industry--these have been
my dreams by night and my desires by day.
In the new and holy condition into which I am about to
enter, and to enter with the same reverential feelings as I
would Heaven itself. I anticipate some signal changes in my
feelings, in my views, in my purposes, in my pursuits. What
they may be I know not; time alone can tell. My ardent
desire has been through life to reach the highest order of
human excellence by the shortest possible cut. Associated
night and day, in sickness and in health, in war and in
peace, with a woman of this highest order of excellence,
must produce some curious results in my heart and feelings,
and these results the future will develop in due time in the
columns of the _Herald_.
Meantime I return my heartfelt thanks for the enthusiastic
patronage of the public, both in Europe and in America. The
holy estate of wedlock will only increase my desire to be
still more useful. God Almighty bless you all.