The Herald

“ In its closely-printed columns the Herald has, during the last decade, given to its readers a cyclopædia of the world's daily doings. Portraitures of men of affairs done by skilled writers, the fullest records of contemporaneous events, the gossip and news of the chief towns of the globe,—all this has made up a complete record to which the future historian may turn. ”

“ Why, then, did not this powerful combination supplant the Herald? If mere ability in the writing of a newspaper; if to have given an impulse to thought and enterprise; if to have won the admiration and gratitude of a host of the best men and women in America; if to have inspired many thousands of young men with better feelings and higher purposes than they would else have attained; if to have shaken the dominion of superstition, and made it easier for men to think freely, and freely utter their thought ”

“ The other opinion is,—the Herald takes the lead because it is such a good paper. It is highly important to know which of these two opinions is correct; or, in other words, whether it is the Herald's excellences as a newspaper, or its crimes as a public teacher, which give it such general currency. Such success as this paper has obtained is a most influential fact upon the journalism of the whole country, as any one can see who looks over a file of our most flourishing daily papers. It is evident that our daily press is rapidly becoming Heraldized ”

“ He has made "The Herald" the leading newspaper of the world, for no other journal upon the globe can compare with it in liberality and energy in the collection of news or in promptness and completeness of detail in laying it before the public. Its growth has been slow, but sure. Every step has been won by hard and conscientious labor, as well as by the force of real genius. ”

“ The data thus gathered enabled The Herald as hostilities broke out to publish a muster roll of the Confederate army with such accuracy that a leak was suspected in the War Office at Richmond. Several times The Herald pub- lished items based upon such accurate information that rivals positively asserted that The Herald was in collusion with Con- federate authorities. In the number of war correspondents pos- sibly The Herald excelled. Every army of the North had its Herald headquarters equipped with tents, a wagon bearing the name of the paper, and several attendants. ”

“ It is the popular university to which thousands upon thousands of readers resort daily for intelligent comment on the events of the world—the great wars, the suggestions of science, the achievements of the engineers, home and foreign politics, etc. That such a great newspaper as the Herald, wherein the elucidating comment is kept up from day to day by cultivated writers trained in journalism, must perform many of the functions of a university is clear. The news columns of the Herald are a perfect mirror of the great world's busy life. ”

“ We shall support no party—be the organ of no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candidate from president down to a constable. We shall endeavor to record facts on every public and proper subject, stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments when suitable, just, independent, fearless, and good-tempered. If The Herald wants the mere expansion which many journals possess, we shall try to make it up in industry, good taste, brevity, variety, point, piquancy, and cheapness. ”

“ The reporter of The Sun was the first to leave Boston, but he was no sooner out of sight than the reporter of The Herald sent his loco- motive to the round-house and got out a special edition of The Herald in Boston on the press of The Mail. This special edition of The Herald, sent by train to New York, was the first to give the news, for The Sun, thinking that the express of The Herald had been wrecked when it did not arrive, had not rushed the news into type as rapidly as usual. ”

“ The Herald under this joint management presented its readers with from eight to ten columns of reading-matter daily. Two columns of editorials, four of local news, and two of clippings from "exchanges," were about the average. News by telegraph was not plenty, and, as has already been intimated, very little of it was printed during the first year. Yet, the Herald was a live and lively paper, and published nothing but "live matter." Much prominence was given to reports of affairs about home, and in consequence the circulation soon exhibited a marked improvement. ”

“ It was an obscure provincial sheet, Liberal-cum-Radical in tone, strongly upholding Free Trade and much given to enunciating those few leading principles ‘upon which the prosperity and happiness of this country must inevitably depend.’ But in the days when I knew its editor, the Herald was nothing more to me than a frame, the necessary boundaries of gilt and moulding, that set off his personality. Thus framed, my old acquaintance was a man to be sought out and gathered to oneself. To a youngster in quest of the absurd, as I was at that time, he was meat and drink. ”

“ The Herald, feeble as it was, managed to survive financial diseases concomitant with newspaper infancy, and at the beginning of 1847 it appeared with a new dress as The Morning Herald and The Evening Herald. An editorial spoke as follows about the penny press in Boston: "The competition of the penny press has caused a mental activity among all classes ”

“ In both the Times and the Herald was an inconspicuous personal in the modest retirement of the advertising section, of obscure wording and small type:
Now is the time for all good men and true to get a cautious move on the trail sit tight coming up. ”

“ The Herald has achieved a great success; it has broadened from year to year since the present proprietors assumed control. It has been their steadily followed purpose gradually to elevate the tone of their paper, till it should reach the highest level of American journalism. They have done this, and, at the same time, they have retained their enormous constituency. The wonderful educating power of a [33] great newspaper cannot easily be overestimated. ”

“ It was in my eighth standard, when one of the then Salesian fathers, Jude Borges, who taught moral science, brought copies of the Herald into the class and asked us to count the number of advertisements and the number of news items on each page. The verdict: There was more news than advertisements. The moral that day for us kids was: read the Herald newspaper, it enriches your knowledge because it has got more news than advertisements compared to the other leading daily. ”

“ Therefore, the editor who would conquer the opportunity of speaking his mind freely, must do it by making his paper so excellent as a vehicle of news that the public will buy it though it is a daily disgust to them.
The Herald has thriven beyond all its competitors, because its proprietor comprehended these simple but fundamental truths of his vocation, and, upon the whole, has surpassed his rivals both in the getting and in the display of intelligence. We must pronounce him the best journalist and the worst editorialist this continent has ever known ”

“ The Herald alone knows how to dish up the foreign news, or indeed domestic events, in a readable style. Every reader, numbering between thirty and forty thousand daily, acknowledges this merit in the management of our paper. We do not, as the Wall street lazy editors do, come down to our office about ten or twelve o'clock, pull out a Spanish cigar, take up a pair of scissors, puff and cut, cut and puff for a couple of hours, and then adjourn to Del- monico's to eat, drink, gormandize, and blow up our contemporaries. ”

“ What can we do?"
"What man can do I have already done," Lechmere said. "The thing will be contradicted and proved to be a lie by the Herald newspaper, to whose Editor I have told everything. The two papers will start fairly, the one with the lie and the other with the truth. And as you know the Herald is looked upon as a respectable journal. The telegraph that flashes the news for the one will flash the refutation for the other. ”

“ The Civil War was the heroic age of American press enterprise, and while the Evening Post conducted a less extensive war establishment than the Herald, Tribune, or Times—the Herald spent $500,000 on its correspondence—Nordhoff saw that it maintained a creditable position. ”

“ Its New York City staff comprises a general correspondent, a political observer, a chronicler of business failures, an accomplished art critic, a fashion writer, a theatrical correspondent, and three general news correspondents, using the wires. The Herald is something more than a Boston paper. It has a wide reach, and employs electricity more freely than did the oldtime newspaper the post-horse. ”

“ The Worcester Herald has been for years at the head of the Worcestershire Press, having a circulation nearly double that of any other paper published in the County; and contains a complete digest of the news of the week, with ample details of interesting local events. The Herald is entirely independent of political party, and circulates among all classes and individuals of every shade of opinion. ”

“ With these few words as "grace before meat," we commit ourselves and our cause to the public, with perfect confidence in our own capacity to publish a paper that will seldom pall on the appetite, provided we receive moderate encouragement to unfold our resources and purposes in the columns of The Morning Herald.
The contents of the first issue of The Herald were in striking contrast not only to the previous work Bennett had done for newspapers, but also to the contributions he was soon to make to American journalism. ”

“ The sixpenny journals, the Evening Post, Commercial Advertiser, Courier, Journal of Commerce, and Express, perforce learned much from the Herald about news-gathering. Years later the Evening Post described the new spirit of enterprise which had seized upon journalism by the early forties:
In those days expresses were run on election nights, and in times of great excitement the Herald and Tribune raced locomotive engines against each other in order to get the earliest news ”

“ As a news story, it is an event to test the news-gathering ability of the greatest newspaper. The dramatic repetition, on a modern stage, of feudal forms and priestly rites, may never again be repeated. The Herald’s best writers are already in London. ”

“ The Herald, in fact, by demonstrating that a newspaper can flourish in the United States without any aid from politicians, has brought us nearer the time when no newspaper of any importance will be subject to party, which has been the principal cause of the indecencies of the press. ”

“ The organization of the Herald force is almost ideally perfect. Its three proprietors, all of whom are still on the ascending grade of the hill of life, share in the daily duties of their vast establishment. Colonel Royal M. Pulsifer is the publisher of the paper, and has charge of the counting-room, the delivery, press, and composition rooms, the three last departments being under competent foremen. A large share of the wonderful business success of the Herald is due to his sagacity and liberality. He is a publisher who expends at long range, not expecting immediate returns. ”

“ A reporter returning from the army laden with information, procured at a lavish expense, was received in the office like a conqueror coming home from a victorious campaign, and he went forth again full of courage and zeal, knowing well that every man employed on the Herald was advancing himself when he served the paper well. ”

“ The policy of the paper has been, while neglecting nothing of news value at home, and while photographing all events of local importance with fulness and accuracy, to keep its readers au courant with the world's progress. In all departments of sporting intelligence the Herald is an acknowledged authority; its dramatic news is fuller than that of any paper in the country; it "covers," to use a newspaper technicality, the world's metropolis on the banks of the Thames not with a single correspondent, but with a corps of able writers ”

“ There are in this city at least 150,000 persons who glance over one or more newspapers every day. Only 42,000 daily sheets are issued to supply them. We have plenty of room, therefore, without jostling neighbors, rivals, or friends, to pick up at least twenty or thirty thousand for The Herald, and leave something for others who come after us. ”

“ The Sun, on ac- count of its large circulation, already had gone to press when its copy arrived. The Herald, before its suspicions were aroused, had actually printed over twenty thousand copies of the paper with the bogus proclamation, but when it found that neither The Times nor The Tribune was printing the document, it im- mediately substituted something else and recalled the copies already printed, save a few which had already been mailed to points outside the city. ”

“ The Signal, The Tattler, and The Star were among the cheap papers which sat astride the political fence; The Sun had now achieved an enormous circulation, and while professing neutrality in poli- tics always shone a little brighter for the Democrats; The Herald was still independent and had raised its price to two cents.
In his preliminary notice of publication, Greeley thus out- lined the policy to be pursued by The Tribune :
On Saturday, the tenth day of April instant, the subscriber will publish the first number of a new morning journal of politics, literature and general intelligence. ”

“ The New York Herald, which you will receive with this, is the Satirist of America; but having a great circulation (on account of its commercial intelligence and early news) it can afford to secure the best reporters. . . . My speech is done, upon the whole, with remarkable accuracy. There are a great many typographical errors in it; and by the omission of one or two words, or the substitution of one word for another, it is often materially weakened. ”

“ After recording these transactions, my Journal thus continues:—
“It is impossible to notice all the proceedings of the week, nor is it necessary. The accounts of meetings to protest against the measure, and the gross falsehoods which have been promulgated in order to get up a case, will be found in the Morning Herald; . . . the real facts appearing in my published minute, and in the statements of Ministers on receiving the deputation of Wednesday.” ”