PASSAGE TWO

(1) Bythe 1840s New York was the leading commercial city of the United States. It hadlong since outpaced Philadelphia as the largest city in the country, and eventhough Boston continued to be venerated as the cultural capital of the nation,its image bad become somewhat languid; it had not kept with the implications ofthe newly industrialized economy, of a diversified ethnic population, or of upthe rapidly rising middle class. New York was the place where the "new"America was coming into being, so it is hardly surprising that the modernnewspaper had its birth there.

(2)The penny paper had found its first success in New York. By the mid-1830s BenDay’s Sun was drawing readers from all walks of life. On the other hand, theSun was a scanty sheet providing little more than minor diversions; few todaywould call it a newspaper at all. Day himself was an editor of limited vision,and he did not possess the ability or the imagination to climb the slopes toloftier heights. If real newspapers were to emerge from the public’s demand formore and better coverage, it would have to come from a youthful generation ofeditors for whom journalism was a totally absorbing profession, an exactingvocational ideal rather than a mere offshoot of job printing.

(3)By the 1840s two giants burst into the field, editors who would revolutionizejournalism, would bring the newspaper into the modern age, and show how itcould be influential in the national life. These two giants, neither of whomhas been treated kindly by history, were James Gordon Bennett and HoraceGreeley. Bennett founded his New York Herald in 1835, less than two years afterthe appearance of the Sun. Horace Greeley founded his Tribune in 1841. Bennettand Greeley were the most innovative editors in New York until the Civil War.Their newspapers were the leading American papers of the day, although forcompletely different reasons. The two men despised each other, although not inthe ways that newspaper editors had despised one another a few years before.Neither was a political hack bonded to a political party. Greeley fanciedhimself a public intellectual. He had strong political views, and he wanted torun for office himself, but party factotum he could never be; he bristled withideals and causes of his own devising. Officially he was a Whig (and later aRepublican), but he seldom gave comfort to his chosen party. Bennett, on theother hand, had long since cut his political ties. And although his papercovered local and national politics fully and he went after politicians withhammer and tongs, Bennett was a cynic, a distruster of all settled values. Hedid not regard himself as an intellectual, although in fact he was bettereducated than Greeley. He thought himself only a hard-boiled newspaperman. Greeleywas interested in his newspaper. He wanted to find out what the news was, whatpeople wanted to read. And when he found out he gave it to them.

(4)As different as Bennett and Greeley were from each other they were alsocuriously alike. Both stood outside the circle of polite society, even whenthey became prosperous, and in Bennett’s case, wealthy. Both were incurableeccentrics. Neither was a gentleman. Neither conjured up the picture of asuccessful editor. Greeley was unkempt, always looking like an unmade bed. Evenwhen he was nationally famous in the 1850s he resembled a clerk in a third-ratebrokerage house, with slips of paper—marked-up proofs perhaps—hanging out ofspectacles. He spoke in a high-pitched whine(哀号).Not a few people suggested that he looked exactly like the illustrations ofCharles Dickens’s Mr. Pickwick. Greeley provided a humorous adversary JamesFenimore Cooper. The editor was, according to the description, a half-bald,long-legged, slouching individual “so rocking in gait(步态)that he walks down both sides of the street at once.”

(5)The appearance of Bennett was somewhat different but hardly more reassuring. Ashrewd, wiry(瘦而结实的)Scotsman, who seemed to repel intimacy, Bennett looked around at the world witha squinty glare of suspicion. His eyes did not focus right. They seemed to fixthemselves on nothing and everything at the same time. He was as solitary as anoyster, the classic loner. He seldom made close friendships and few peopletrusted him, although nobody who had dealings with him, however brief, doubtedhis abilities. He, too, could have come out of a book or Dickensian eccentrics,although perhaps Ebenezer Scrooge or Thomas Gradgrind comes to mind rather thanthe kindly old Mr. Pickwick, Greeley was laughed at but admired; Bennett wasseldom laughed at but never admired; on the other hand, he had a hardprofessional competence and an encyclopedic knowledge of his adopted country,an in-depth learning uncorrupted by vague idealisms. All of this perfectlysuited him for the journalism of this confusing age.

     (6) Both Greeley andBennett had served long, humiliating and disappointing apprenticeships in thenewspaper business. They took a long time getting to the top, the only rewardfor the long years of waiting being that when they had their own newspapers,both knew what they wanted and firmly set about getting it. When Greeleyfounded the Tribune in 1841 he had the strong support of the Whig party and hadalready had a short period of modest success as an editor. Bennett, older bysixteen years, found solid commercial success first, but he had no one behindhim except himself when he started up the Herald in 1835 in a dingy cellar roomat 20 Wall Street. Fortunately this turned out to be quite enough.