Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/234

 r, Bennett

enlarged the foreign correspondence of the paper. For years The Herald was first in foreign news. Bennett did not neglect local and national news. After he had found the value of such items to the paper he went over New York with a net and gathered in with apologies to The New York Times "all the news that's fit to print," along with some that wasn't. He developed his own news bureau for the interior. He printed "news-slips" which were sent free by express mail to the news- papers in the interior. These "news-slips," which reached pub- lishers one mail in advance of the regular issues of The Herald, took the place of the telegraph news service of the Associated Press of to-day. This free news service placed papers receiving the same under obligation to see that The Herald got all the worth-while news from their territory and got it before the other New York papers.

In building up The Herald, Bennett had the active cooperation of Frederick Hudson, who had the honor of being managing director. Of the latter, Samuel Bowles, the elder, once said, while editor of The Springfield Republican, that Hudson was the greatest organizer of a mere newspaper that this country has ever seen.

PENNY PAPERS SOLD BY BOYS

The conservative Journal of Commerce, a six-penny paper, on June 29, 1835, published an account of the penny press in New York which described not only the conditions in New York, but those in other cities which bad penny newspapers:

It is but three or four years since the first penny paper was estab- lished. Now there are half a dozen or more of them in this city, with an aggregate circulation of twenty or thirty thousand, and perhaps more. These issues exceed those of the large papers, and, for aught we see, they are conducted with as much talent, and in point of moral char- acter we think candidly they are superior to their six-penny contem- poraries. . . . They are less partisan in politics than the large papers, and more decidedly American, with one or two exceptions. The manner in which their pecuniary affairs are conducted shows how much may come of small details. They are circulated on the London plan, the editors and publishers doing no more than to complete the manu- facture of the papers, when they are sold to the newsmen or carriers at