Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/379



1877 the controlling interest in The Commercial, a paper estab- lished in 1864 by C. D. Bingham: this consolidation, called The Commercial Gazette, was edited by Russell Errett.

PULITZER IN ST. LOUIS

One newspaper change can be recorded in a sentence. Toward the close of the period, Joseph Pulitzer purchased The Post- Dispatch of St. Louis. "The penniless son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother," Pulitzer left Hungary in 1864 to come to America. After various precarious attempts to earn his living, he became at twenty-one a reporter on The St. Louis Westliche- Post, then under the management of Carl Schurz. By strange coincidence he was the secretary of the Cincinnati Liberal Re- publican Convention which nominated Horace Greeley, of The New York Tribune, for President. After securing control of The Post-Dispatch, Pulitzer made the paper a power for good by at- tacking the corrupt interests which had again become intrenched following their exposure by The Democrat during Grant's Ad- ministration. It was in St. Louis that Pulitzer first tried out many of his theories about the editing and making of a news- paper which he later developed and perfected after he pur- chased The New York World from Jay Gould in May, 1883.

FIRST COOPERATIVE PAPERS

During the War Colonel A. H. Bellow was a soldier in the Con- federate Army, but after the surrender at Appomattox he went on horseback to Galveston, where he arrived in June, 1865. Be- coming associated with The News he made it one of the most suc- cessful papers in the State. In 1881, in reorganizing a company to publish The News, he drew its charter in such a way that it might publish papers not only in Galveston, but also in other cities in Texas and became the first successful publisher of co- operative newspapers. With the privilege granted by the new charter, he established in Dallas a second daily also called The News. He made no mistake in trying to make the latter paper a minor publication. For all practical purposes The News in Dallas was quite independent of its older relative in Galveston and had its own newspaper plant, its own staff of editors, and its