The Press: News Between Covers

In 1892 a group of 65 newspapermen, led by the late, famed Publisher Victor Fremont Lawson of the Chicago Daily News and his onetime partner, Melville Elijah Stone, met in Chicago and organized the Associated Press of Illinois. It was the first big non-commercial news agency (incorporated in New York in 1900 under a law providing for the organization of “fish & game” clubs) to share news dispatches among its member papers.

AP’s Oliver Gramling, 36-year-old head of the membership department, onetime reporter, city editor, bureau chief, told the story last week in a book titled AP—The Story of News.* An official history, assigned by AP, Author Gramling’s volume nevertheless justified its subtitle. For the story went back to the origin of news-gathering in the U. S., told many a rousing anecdote of the press along the way.

First U. S. legman was a ship-news reporter, one Samuel Topliff Jr. A Boston coffeehouse proprietor, who kept a “news book” of recent happenings for the enlightenment of his patrons, hired young Topliff in 1811 to round up items. Reporter Topliff hired a boat, rowed down the harbor to meet incoming ships, got his news fresh from the passengers before they landed. Six New York City dailies later followed suit, outfitted a harbor boat, started a news pool. They called it The Associated Press, and it was the predecessor of Victor Lawson’s agency.

A legend since ascribed to many a newsman was born in Halifax, N. S. about 1849, when Correspondent Daniel Craig, gathering news from abroad as steamers entered the harbor, kept the telegraph wire open by handing the operator a Bible to transmit. Other episodes recorded by Historian Gramling:

> How General Winfield Scott established a temporary war censorship in 1861, forbade newsmen to report the disastrous Battle of Bull Run.

> When three correspondents were reported missing after the Battle of Vicksburg, General Sherman remarked: “That’s good. We’ll have dispatches now from hell before breakfast.”

> Pancho Villa once held an attack until baseball’s World Series was over, to get a bigger play in the U. S. press.

> AP’s Rome bureau head, Salvatore Cortesi, as a joke gave the name of Pope Pius X to AP’s treasurer as a business reference. His Holiness duly received a letter asking for information, told Cortesi he would give him a good character.

Like many press-association dispatches, Author Gramling’s book is clear, accurate, but not brilliant. He is apt to sacrifice speed of narrative for the sake of coverage. He is polite to rival agencies, balances Roy Howard’s famed false flash on the Armistice that ended World War I by telling of AP’s false report of the Hauptmann trial verdict.

*Farrar & Rinehart ($3.50).