New York Herald Tribune

• 1. Foundations And Early Rivals

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  On the 6th of May 1835, James Gordon Bennett, a Scottish immigrant aged twenty-four, launched the New York Herald from a small office in Manhattan. He had previously written dispatches for the New York Enquirer that sharply criticized President John Quincy Adams and Secretary of State Henry Clay. Bennett called the legal restrictions on press coverage an old worm-eaten Gothic dogma of the Court while reporting on a murder trial in 1830. His paper carried the most authentic list of market prices published anywhere, which commanded attention in financial circles alone. The Herald also became known for its crime reporting after covering the 1836 murder of Helen Jewett with excerpts from the victim's correspondence. This approach made Bennett the best known if not most notorious journalist in the country at that time. By 1839, the Heralds circulation exceeded that of The London Times. During the Mexican-American War starting in 1846, the Herald assigned a reporter to the conflict as the only newspaper in New York to do so. It used the telegraph to beat competitors with news and provided Washington policymakers with the first reports from the field. In 1841, Horace Greeley founded the New-York Tribune on April 10 as a daily penny newspaper for Whig Party constituents. Unlike the Herald or the Sun, it generally shied away from graphic crime coverage. Greeley saw his newspaper as having a moral mission to uplift society through editorials described as weapons in a ceaseless war to improve society. The Weekly Tribune reached a circulation of fifty thousand within ten years outpacing the Heralds weekly edition. The Tribune ranks included Henry Raymond who later founded The New York Times and Charles Dana who edited The Sun for nearly three decades.

• 2. The Great Merger Of 1924

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  Frank Munsey approached Elisabeth Mills Reid in early 1924 with a proposal to purchase the Tribune and merge it with the Herald. The elder Reid refused to sell saying only that she would buy the Herald instead. The two sides negotiated through the winter and spring until the 17th of March 1924 when Munsey agreed to an offer of five million dollars for the Herald and the Paris Herald. The merged paper published its first edition on March 19 under the name New York Herald New York Tribune. On the 31st of May 1926, the more familiar name New York Herald Tribune was substituted. Apart from the Heralds radio magazine and weather listings, the merged paper was with very few changes the Tribune intact. Only twenty-five Herald reporters were hired after the merger while six hundred people lost their jobs. Within a year, the new paper's circulation reached two hundred seventy-five thousand. Helen Rogers Reid took charge of the advertising department in 1919 and reorganized the faltering operation. Her aggressive pursuit of advertisers selling them on the wealth position and power of the Tribunes readership caused annual revenues to jump from one point seven million dollars to four point three million within her first two years. Circulation was responsible for no more than ten percent of that increase. The move surprised the journalism community which had expected Munsey to purchase the Tribune. One reporter reading the bulletin board note remarked Jonah just swallowed the whale.

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• 3. Golden Age And Pulitzer Dominance

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  The newly merged paper posted a profit of nearly fifteen hundred thousand dollars in 1929 as circulation climbed over the three hundred thousand mark. Stanley Walker became city editor in 1928 and pushed his staff to write in a clear lively style. He aimed at capturing the temper and feel of the city its moods and fancies daily helpings of what amounted to urban anthropology. The newspaper won its first Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1930 for Leland Stowes coverage of the Second Reparations Conference on German reparations for World War I. During World War II, Homer Bigart covered tactical operations conducted by small units and individual soldiers including the Anzio Campaign and the Battle of Okinawa. He frequently risked his life to get stories and won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize. By the end of the conflict, the Herald Tribune enjoyed some of its best financial years in history. While the newspaper had just sixty-three percent of its rivals daily circulation it earned nearly eighty-five percent of The New York Times overall ad revenue. It made two million dollars a year between 1942 and 1945. In 1946, the Heralds Sunday circulation hit an all-time peak of seven hundred eight thousand seven hundred fifty-four copies. The paper distinguished itself in its coverage of the Korean War when Bigart and Marguerite Higgins shared a Pulitzer Prize with Chicago Daily News correspondent Keyes Beech and three other reporters in 1951.

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• 4. Financial Struggles And Family Mismanagement

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  The Reid family was long accustomed to resolve shortfalls at the newspaper with subsidies from their fortune rather than improved business practices. They saw the paper as a hereditary possession to be sustained as a public duty rather than developed as a profit-making opportunity. After Elisabeth Mills Reid died in 1931 after having given the paper fifteen million dollars over her lifetime, it was discovered that the elder Reid had treated the subsidies as loans not capital investments. The notes amounted to a mortgage on the Herald Tribune which prevented the newspaper from acquiring bank loans or securing public financing. Financial advisors advised the Reids to convert the notes into equity but the family resisted this decision. Bill Robinson the business manager decided to reinvest profits to make needed upgrades to the pressroom in 1947. He raised the Tribunes price from three cents to a nickel expecting The New York Times to do the same. However, The New York Times refused to go along saying no free rides for the competition. In 1947, the Tribunes daily circulation fell nine percent from three hundred forty-eight thousand six hundred twenty-six to three hundred nineteen thousand eight hundred sixty-seven. Its Sunday circulation fell four percent from seven hundred eight thousand seven hundred fifty-four to six hundred eighty thousand six hundred ninety-one. The newspaper fell into the red in 1951 and losses reached seven hundred thousand dollars in 1953 when Robinson resigned late that year.

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• 5. The Whitney Era And Stylistic Innovation

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  John Hay Whitney gave the newspaper one point two million dollars over the objections of his investment advisors who doubted its viability. The loan came with an option to take controlling interest if he made a second loan of thirteen hundred thousand dollars. By 1958, the newspapers loss was projected at three million dollars so Whitney and his advisors exercised their option. On the 28th of August 1958, Helen Whitie and Brown Reid announced Whitenys takeover of the newspaper. In 1961, the Tribune hired John Denson a Newsweek editor native of Louisiana described as a critical mass of intensity and irascibility relieved by interludes of amiability. Denson swept away the old front-page architecture essentially vertical in structure and laid out stories horizontally with unorthodox and sometimes cryptic headlines. Large photos and information boxes replaced traditional layouts. Time called the new front page all overblown pictures and klaxon headlines while copy editor John Price called it silly but expert silliness. The newspapers circulation jumped in 1961 and those within the Tribune said the alternative seemed to be the death of the newspaper. The paper launched an ad campaign targeting The New York Times with the slogan Who says a good newspaper has to be dull? Daily circulation reached an all-time high of four hundred twelve thousand in November 1962.

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• 6. Labor Wars And The Final Strike

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  The New York newspaper industry came to an abrupt halt on the 8th of December 1962 when the local of the International Typographical Union led by Bert Powers walked off the job. This began the one hundred fourteen-day 1962, 63 New York City newspaper strike. The ITU represented three thousand eight hundred printers as well as workers at six hundred printshops and twenty-eight publications in the city. After nearly five months, unions and publishers reached an agreement in March 1963 which won a weekly worker wage and benefit increase of twelve point sixty-three dollars. The strike added new costs to all newspapers increasing the Tribunes losses to four point two million dollars while slashing its circulation to two hundred eighty-two thousand. A second strike in 1965 pushed the Tribunes losses to five million dollars. In 1966, Whitney attempted to organize what would have been New Yorks first joint operating agreement with the Hearst-owned New York Journal American and the Scripps-owned New York World-Telegram and Sun. All three papers would publish a Sunday edition called the World Journal Tribune. On paper, the JOA would have led to profits of four million to five million annually but also loss of one thousand seven hundred sixty-four out of four thousand five hundred ninety-eight employees. The day the JOA was supposed to go into effect on the 25th of April 1966, the Guild struck the newly merged newspaper. Half the editorial staff left during the strike. On the 15th of August 1966, Whitney announced the closure of the Herald Tribune in the ninth-floor auditorium saying I know we gave something good to our city while we published.

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• 7. Legacy And The International Successor

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  Following the collapse of the World Journal Tribune which folded on the 5th of May 1967, The New York Times and The Washington Post became joint owners with Whitney of the Heralds European edition. This new publication was named the International Herald Tribune. The first issue of the International Herald Tribune was published on the 22nd of May 1967. In appearance it was very similar to the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune. By 1964, the International Edition of The New York Times had a circulation of some thirty-two thousand although it attracted little advertising. The European edition of the Herald Tribune had a circulation of around fifty thousand and more advertising making it the stronger publication commercially. The change to the International Herald Tribune became official in early December 1966 when The Washington Post bought a forty-five percent interest. The International Herald Tribune ceased publication in 2013 after being renamed the International New York Times by The New York Times which bought out the Post holdings in 2003. From 1968, New York editor Clay Felker organized investors who bought the name and rights to New York successfully reviving the weekly as an independent magazine.

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