James Gordon Bennett

• Born: September 1, 1795
• Birthplace: Newmill, Keith, Banffshire, Scotland
• Died: June 1, 1872
• Place of death: New York, New York

American newspaper publisher

Bennett made American newspapers independent enterprises and established the foundations of the profession of journalism.

Area of achievement Journalism

Early Life

James Gordon Bennett was the first son of landholding Roman Catholic parents who abided by the teachings of the Church. At the time of Bennett’s birth, there were perhaps fewer than forty thousand Catholics in all of Scotland, but his parents were steadfast in the faith and in their determination to have a son join the priesthood. Two sisters and a close younger brother named Cosmo completed the Bennett family. James Gordon in later life became embittered by the Church, blaming it for mistreatment of his brother, who died in seminary.

In the strict, Presbyterian-dominated public school system of the time, the Bible was regarded as central to education and to the development of good manners and industry. Latin, Greek, some English, mathematics, history, and a large dosage of the doctrines of John Knox constituted the curriculum, which continued until the child reached the early teens. Bennett’s formal education was reinforced at home by his parents, who read the Scriptures regularly and discussed the colloquial history of the family, the region, and Scotland. Bennett attributed his later success as a newspaperman to this early training. At fifteen, he was taken to the Catholic Seminary at Aberdeen, which was some sixty miles from his home. He attended Blair’s College, the smallest of three schools that would eventually combine to form the University of Aberdeen. There, he was steeped in the study of classical literature and philosophy and the criticism of the great journal the Edinburgh Review.

Rejecting the priesthood, training for which was to follow college, Bennett spent the years from 1814 to 1819 traveling extensively in Scotland and living for a time in Glasgow, which had replaced Edinburgh in size and economic importance. Glasgow was also the embarkation port for emigrants to the West, and literature about America was in great demand. Bennett read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography (recently reprinted in Glasgow), with which he was much impressed; twenty-five years old and at a crossroads in his life, Bennett set his sights on America.

In 1819, Bennett set sail for Halifax, Nova Scotia, with only twenty-five dollars and a classical education to his name. Halifax was little more than an English loyalist outpost, and Bennett—having inherited a Scot’s hatred and fear of the English—taught bookkeeping for a time in that town and then moved on to Portland, Maine. Looking for the America he had read about in Scotland, Bennett found more of it in Maine, where he was impressed with the self-confidence of the people and saw in them something of the children of equality and liberty.

Bennett took a teaching job in the village of Addison and then continued on to Boston, where he discovered the reasons for which the people of Maine had expressed dislike of that city: Boston was a snob’s town, and Bennett was quickly reminded of Edinburgh, with its arrogance and presumption as a center of learning and culture. In Boston, he did, however, find a position as a clerk with a well-known bookseller and printer. He was made a proofreader in the print shop, where he learned something more of the rudiments of the trade that was to make him famous. He took what he could from Boston before moving farther south to New York.

In New York, Bennett was once again a new arrival with little money and even smaller prospects. The city excited him, however, as it seemed to be a microcosm of America: It was more representative of the nation about which he had read. He did some bookkeeping and proofreading, and fortune smiled on him in the person of Aaron Willington, the owner of the Charleston Courier, who eventually hired him to translate Spanish and French news and dispatches for his paper.

In Charleston, South Carolina, Bennett enjoyed the experience of working with well-educated and intelligent associates, men who enjoyed all that Charleston and its culture offered. The shy and withdrawn Bennett mixed only on the job, however, and then sparingly. He was aware early that appearances rather than ideas and wit counted the most in social gatherings, and in the former he was always lacking.

After ten months in Charleston, Bennett returned to New York. Bennett set about determining which were the best newspapers in New York, but he found that none of them was interested in a still-uncouth immigrant. He finally gained a job with the National Advocate, a moribund publication underwritten by the New York General Republican Committee, which was connected to the Tammany Hall political machine. The original editor was Mordecai Noah, who had large political aspirations for himself and even larger aspirations for creation of a Jewish colony on Grant (modern Grand) Island in the Niagara River, some fifteen miles west of Niagara Falls.

The agitation provoked by the Grant Island scheme led to Noah’s dismissal, but he was soon brought back. Bennett, meanwhile, became known in the newspaper world as a bright and industrious young man with a flair for writing. He was soon getting freelance work with other papers, and in 1825 he took over ownership of a struggling weekly called the New York Courier, the first Sunday paper in the United States. It was a doomed project, and Bennett soon found himself working for Noah, who had changed his paper’s name to the New York Enquirer.

When Bennett offered to write some light and humorous sketches for the New York Enquirer, Noah accepted, and on April 27, 1827, an article entitled “Shaking Hands” appeared. It dealt with alternatives to shaking hands as a form of greeting, with examples ranging from the Philippines to Africa. Noah was amazed at the increase in the paper’s circulation following the publication of this article. Bennett followed up the piece with one called “Intemperance,” which was a portent of his later tactic of using a subject to take a competing newspaper to task by making fun of it. In this case, it was The New York Times and its claim that New York was a very moral city that came in for a spoofing. As a result, a new excitement took hold over journalism in New York, despite the fact that disgruntled competing editors were already complaining that Bennett’s work was degrading the profession.

Bennett was promoted to the position of assistant editor on the death of the incumbent in a duel. Bennett asked to go to Washington to report on Congress and the Adams administration. In a short time, he became the first full-fledged Washington correspondent in American journalism. For four years, he was everywhere politicians traveled, submitting comment on legislation, on speeches and idiosyncrasies, on merchants, bankers, and stock hustlers. He listened for tips and rumors and followed up leads to confirm information and otherwise mastered the techniques of journalism, techniques that seemed to be lost on his contemporaries.

In the meantime, Bennett’s paper combined with James Watson Webb’s Morning Courier under Webb’s control as publisher of the new Morning Courier and New York Enquirer. Bennett contributed greatly to the success of the paper, but Webb never granted him recognition by name. Like Noah, Webb took credit for Bennett’s pieces or attributed them to the rewriting of others. This experience later encouraged Bennett to allow reporters their own bylines when writing for his papers.

During Bennett’s stay with the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer, the paper became perhaps the most influential in New York, though it printed only thirty-five hundred copies daily and took in an average of less than fifty dollars per issue. In 1832, the paper joined the side of the National Bank and Nicholas Biddle in its fight against the Jacksonians (though the paper had been an organ of the Democratic Party), and Bennett resigned rather than work for the opposition. The compromising of the paper’s independence grated on Bennett, who now turned again to starting his own daily.

Bennett started the Globe, which failed to gain political support. He then went to Philadelphia, where he published the Pennsylvanian, which also failed. Needing capital, he appealed to Martin Van Buren and the Democrats for financing, only to be rejected. Returning to New York, he visited Horace Greeley with the hope of starting a partnership. Greeley referred Bennett to two printers with whom he had worked. The penny daily was enjoying marked success via Benjamin Day’s New York Sun, from which spun the Philadelphia Public Ledger and the Baltimore Sun, both of which were begun by former associates of Day. With the barest of capital and a promise to print, Bennett grabbed the opportunity to create an independent newspaper.

Life’s Work

Bennett started his newspaper in a basement New York City room at 20 Wall Street with only planks and barrels for furniture. He called it the New York Herald. It was the traditional size for such papers—four pages with four columns to the page—and sold for one penny. The first issue appeared on May 6, 1835. Bennett worked sixteen-hour days, carefully structuring his time for each facet of publication. He spent three hours writing editorials before arriving at his office at eight o’clock and continued until he retired to his single room on Nassau Street at 10:00 p.m. Originality was his byword.

Unlike his competition, Bennett used few reprinted stories. Fresh news flowed constantly. He sought to provide a view of the city and its people by creating scenarios, reporting conversations, relating anecdotes with a social point of view, and delivering humorous accounts of manners, fashion, and the foibles of people generally. He brought to public view the demi-monde; often he relegated politicians to this realm, all to the delight of his supporters and to the rage of his growing list of enemies and competitors. Women, religion, abolitionists, bankers, speculators, and merchant hustlers all came in for a fair share of Bennett’s gibes. Reformers were left to rail against his ridiculing columns. He cultivated rumor and gossip, and his coy exposition of events often of his own invention but attributable to unnamed sources foreshadowed the use of the “informed source.”

Bennett took to the street to gain information firsthand and then to exploit it to its fullest. He covered an infamous murder case involving a fashionable house of prostitution to the point of questioning the guilt of the prime suspect, thereby influencing the jury’s decision to acquit. He viewed the body of the dead woman, describing her in intimate detail. He also interviewed the keeper of the house in the first use of the didactic question-answer interview by a newspaper. The financial panic of 1836 and the huge fire of the same period encouraged Bennett to print the first financial news, which became an instant hit among a new business readership. He visited the fire area as well, talked to owners of properties that were burned, and interviewed displaced tenants. He printed a sketch of the burned-over area and again outdistanced his rivals.

Because the public generally bought one paper only, the one with the latest news was the one in demand, and the New York Herald was the paper of choice. Bennett, encouraged, hired a police reporter and expanded the size of his publication, moving the paper’s offices to Broadway and Ann streets. He found more time for leisure, though he was still irascible in print. Threatened with lawsuits for libel and slander, pummeled and horsewhipped for his writings, he never wavered in his attacks. His pen was his sword. Over six feet in height and sturdy in build, he was uncoordinated in his movement and hopelessly cross-eyed; although he was always courteous and polite, he was reserved and shy.

In 1838, his wealth allowed him time to go to Europe, where he was crushed to learn of his brother Cosmo’s death. Two years later, he announced his marriage to Henrietta Agnes Crean in St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, after which they went on to Niagara Falls on their honeymoon. His declaration of his love and the description of his bride in the New York Herald enraged his competitors, who attacked him unmercifully. When their son, James Gordon, Jr., was born on May 10, 1841, whispers abounded as to the true father. His former associate Mordecai Noah printed the rumors, which caused Bennett to bring suit; it was successful and cost Noah a $250 fine. The Bennetts had three other children: a girl who died at eight months; a boy, Cosmo Gordon, who died within a year; and Jeanette, who married Isaac Bell and lived a long life.

Bennett enjoyed all the luxuries money could buy, but because of the harassment by his enemies, his wife spent much of her time traveling abroad or sailing. The children were taught by private tutor, and James, Jr., was especially pampered. Bennett even traded a family sailing sloop complete with cannon in return for a lieutenancy for his son in the Union navy in 1862. When the ship was put out of service in 1864, the youth promptly resigned his commission. In 1866, he was installed as managing editor of the New York Herald and, within two years, his father gave him ownership of the enterprise, which had grown to five hundred employees.

Bennett always put profits back into the paper by keeping a battery of reporters in Washington and as many as sixty-five in the field during the Civil War. His people were in all parts of the world. His paper was the only one Abraham Lincoln read daily because of its influence. Lincoln tried to co-opt Bennett by offering him an ambassadorship to France, but to no avail. Independence had come too hard for Bennett for him to give it up so easily. Even after his retirement in 1867, he continued to visit the offices and make suggestions. His wife visited briefly in May, 1872, and he promised to join her in Europe, but he was overcome by a stroke that paralyzed his lower body and caused his death in New York City on June 1, 1872. No family members were present, though he had asked the Catholic archbishop John McCloskey to take his confession and administer the Sacraments. His son attended his funeral, accompanied by Bennett’s lifelong friends and adversaries.

The New York Herald did not print a lengthy obituary of its own, choosing instead to reprint those of other New York papers. Every significant editor in the city had served as a pallbearer. The service was held at Bennett’s home on Fifth Avenue, and he was buried in the nonsectarian Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. His will left the paper to his son and his properties to his wife. His daughter’s wherewithal was guaranteed in the estate. His wife did not live long after. Dying of cancer, she prevented her children from seeing her. She died in the company of strangers in Sachsen, Germany, on March 28, 1873. The New York Tribune was first to carry news of her death.

Significance

Along with Horace Greeley and Charles Dana, James Gordon Bennett was one of the three giants of journalism and publishing in the United States during the nineteenth century. Of the three, Bennett alone mastered every facet of journalism, from getting stories to editing to proofreading to printing to total management of advertising, distribution, and marketing. His public was his power. His ideas—for example, that advertisers and distributors pay cash for copy and papers—flourished and multiplied as sound practice. The byline and feature articles on styles, theater, books, business, and so on all became part of the New York Herald style. Bennett’s organization was a model of efficiency, with meetings of the key staff held each day to plan the day’s production and assign future stories and leads. As a result of these innovations, many consider Bennett to be the founder of the modern newspaper.

Bennett had to survive a vicious, competitive struggle for success, and he was not above using his paper to pull down his competition. Neither money nor institutional power frightened him when he believed in a principle. His sardonic wit and sophisticated interplay of scenes and anecdotes sorely tried his enemies, and he was not reluctant to exploit the frailties inherent in the pompous and the fatuous. He instinctively knew the power he could wield with his readers, who were legion.

Bibliography

Carlson, Oliver. The Man Who Made the News: James Gordon Bennett. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1942. This is the only complete biography of James Gordon Bennett. Though impressionistic and containing no illustrations, it is nevertheless very useful.

Croffut, William A. An American Procession: A Personal Chronicle of Famous Men. Boston: Little, Brown, 1931. Reprint. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries, 1968. This is a collection of personal views and portraits of famous Americans and puts the work of Isaac Pray (see below) in perspective, showing that Pray actually tried to get Bennett to authorize his biography, which came out the same year as James Parton’s biography of Horace Greeley.

Crouthamel, James L. Bennett’s “New York Herald” and the Rise of the Popular Press. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989. Focuses on the journalistic methods Bennett employed between 1835 and 1872 to make the New York Herald the country’s largest and most prosperous newspaper. Crouthamel attributes the newspaper’s success to its middle-class readers, and not to its working-class populism.

Fermer, Douglas. James Gordon Bennett and the “New York Herald”: A Study of Editorial Opinion in the Civil War Era, 1854-1867. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Analyzes the newspaper’s editorial columns to explore its opinions during the Civil War and to examine the power of the press upon politics and politicians.

Herd, Harold. Seven Editors. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977. Reprint. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955. This work recognizes Bennett’s journalistic achievements and puts them in context.

Hudson, Frederic. History of Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873. This is a very useful book by Bennett’s confidant and last managing editor of the New York Herald during his tenure, which ended in 1867. It contains great amounts of detail about newspaper development and the personalities surrounding it.

Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: 1690-1960. 3d ed. New York: Macmillan, 1962. Any overview of the growth of journalism in the United States owes something to this work.

Pray, Isaac Clark. Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and His Times. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1855. Reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1970. This work was written without the cooperation of Bennett and is taken largely from the columns of the New York Herald and from hearsay gathered by a man who had once worked for the Bennett paper as a theater critic. Pray was also a successful playwright and managed several theaters.

Seitz, Don C. The James Gordon Bennetts: Father and Son, Proprietors of the “New York Herald.” Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1928. This is a useful introduction to Bennett, written in a breezy, journalistic style. It shows a heavy relationship to Pray (see above), but contains some useful illustrations and photographic material.

Tebbell, John, and Sarah Miles Watts. The Press and the Presidency. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. This has some interesting material relating to Bennett’s considerable influence, most notably on Abraham Lincoln, who was always a reader of the New York Herald and ever-concerned with that paper’s lukewarm editorial attitude toward the Republican Party.

Turner, Hy B. When Giants Ruled: The Story of Park Row, New York’s Great Newspaper Street. New York: Fordham University Press, 1999. A history of New York City journalism, focusing on the 100-year period when the Herald and other newspapers were located on Park Row. Contains information on Bennett, his newspaper, and his rivalry with Horace Greeley.

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