Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/369

Rh so much the views of the editors as the news that the papers contained would sell papers, and all of them made their papers successful by fitting their publications to the spirit of the times. It is this understanding that has made Ochs, the present owner of the Times, the proprietor of possibly the most successful paper, financially, in the country, exclusive of the Chicago Tribune.

Credit has been given to Godkin of the Post and Dana of the Sun for their influence on the journalism of the country; it would be an injustice to Whitelaw Reid to fail to point out the credit due to him for the liberalizing influence which the Tribune had on the American press, both during the war, when he was managing editor under Greeley, and after he had become the chief owner. As did Bowles and the Springfield Republican, Reid set a standard for the politically independent paper and showed that it could not only live, but that it could lead. The Chicago Tribune, Cincinnati Commercial and the Louisville Courier Journal were papers that breathed the same spirit. Later, it is true, Reid made the Tribune the organ of the Republican party, but it was a chastened and refreshed Republican party and the independence he had shown in the time referred to had its effect on the growth of American independent journalism.

Of the personal journalism that Dana said was bound to arrive whenever the newspaper had back of it a strong figure, no greater exemplar could have been conceived than another journalist who rose contemporaneously with Reid, Henry Watterson of the Louisville Courier-Journal, the successor of George D. Prentice.

No journalist, no individual, in the country has done so much since the Civil War to bring about a better understanding between the North and the South. No one