BENNETT, JAMES GORDON

James Gordon Bennett (1795–1872), in many ways the father of modern journalism, shaped the American newspaper as it is today. At the time of the American Civil War (1861–1865), Bennett's newspaper, the New York Herald, had the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world and it wielded great national influence. Reportedly the only paper that President Abraham Lincoln (1861–65) read daily, the Herald made Bennett one of the wealthiest men in America.

Bennett was the first newspaper publisher to exploit rail and steamboat transportation and use the telegraph to speed the delivery of news. He joined Horace Greeley (1811–1872) and Charles Dana (1819–1897) to become one of the three giants of journalism and publishing in America in the nineteenth century.

Born and raised in Scotland, Bennett grew up in a devout Catholic family in a overwhelmingly Presbyterian community. He received a classical education in a local school and later at a Catholic seminary in Aberdeen. In 1817, at age 24, he sailed to America, landing in Nova Scotia with just five pounds sterling in his pocket. By the time he reached Boston, he was penniless and actually went two days without food until he found a job as a clerk with a book selling and publishing firm. After working for the firm as a proofreader and learning many of the details of the publishing business, Bennett moved on to New York where he sought work as a freelancer.

Bennett's next important job was with the very influential Charleston, South Carolina, Courier. Its editor, Aaron Smith Wellington, was ahead of his time in believing that speed and timeliness were crucial to a newspaper's success. For example, Wellington scooped the rest of the country with the first news of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 (1812–1814). Bennett's job at the Courier was to translate articles from French and Spanish newspapers that were brought by ships into Charleston's busy seaport. Although he learned the tenets of deadline journalism in Charleston, Bennett's poor social skills hampered his ability to participate in the city's active social life. At the end of ten months he returned to New York.

For the next few years, until 1827, Bennett supported himself precariously as a lecturer and freelance writer. In 1827 he was hired by the New York Enquirer and became the first Washington correspondent in history. Over the next few years he worked for a series of newspapers as a reporter. Twice he tried to start his own paper and both times he failed.

Finally, in 1835, with $500 in capital, he founded the New York Herald. The newspaper's offices were in a cellar furnished with planks and barrels and Bennett was its publisher, reporter, and advertising and circulation manager. At the time New Yorkers already had a choice of more than a dozen daily newspapers, and the Herald's chances for success were poor.

But in the next 37 years Bennett built the Herald into the newspaper with the largest circulation in the world. He accomplished this by introducing several enduring innovations. Among them were listing the closing prices of stocks traded each day on the New York Stock Exchange, hiring as many as 63 correspondents to cover the battles of the Civil War, printing the first illustration accompanying a news story, establishing correspondents in Europe, and introducing a society column. Bennett was the first newspaper publisher to use the telegraph to obtain a full report of a major political speech and was also the first to narrate a sensational murder in great detail.

Whatever resources were demanded, Bennett was determined to cover stories ahead his rivals. Speed in newsgathering became his watchword. Even the most successful of his competitors were sometimes forced to copy stories from the Herald. He early realized and exploited the communications potential opened up by the telegraph, the ever-faster steamships crossing the Atlantic from Europe, and the new railroads which began to connect American cities. During the Mexican War and the Civil War, the Herald usually received stories from the battlefield days ahead of the dispatches that were sent to the War Department in Washington.

The Herald in the mid-nineteenth century was among the most profitable newspapers in the world. Bennett's salary of about $400,000 a year made him one of the wealthiest Americans of his time. Politically independent, reported on deadline, and aimed at the widest possible audience, the New York Herald was the first mass circulation newspaper that was essential reading for the country's opinion makers and political leaders.

BENNETT, JAMES GORDON

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