Herbert Bayard Swope
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Herbert Bayard Swope (January 5, 1882 - June 20, 1958) was a U.S. editor, journalist and intimate of the Algonquin Round Table. Swope spent most of his career at the New York World newspaper. He was the first and three time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting. Swope was called the greatest reporter of his time by Lord Northcliffe of the London Daily Mail.[1]
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[edit] Background
Herbert Bayard (pronounced "by-ard")[1] Swope was born 5 January 1882 in St. Louis, Missouri to German immigrants Ida Cohn and Isaac Swope,[1] a watchcase maker. He was the youngest of four children – the younger brother of businessman Gerard Swope. As a child, Swope was a loner.[1]
[edit] Career
Swope was the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1917 for a series of articles that year entitled "Inside the German Empire"[2] The articles formed the basis for a book released in 1917 entitled Inside the German Empire: In the Third Year of the War, which he wrote with James W. Gerard.[3]
He is known for saying, "I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time." He is also credited with coining the phrase "Cold War".[4]
He was the first newspaperman to employ the "op-ed" concept of opinion pieces printed opposite the editorial page.
Although standard editorial pages have been printed by newspapers for many centuries, Swope established the first modern op-ed page in 1921. When he took over as editor in 1920, he realized that the page opposite the editorials, was "a catchall for book reviews, society boilerplate, and obituaries."[5] He wrote:
"It occurred to me that nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting, so I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial, which became the most important in America... and thereon I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts."[6]
Swope served as the editor for New York World 's 21-day crusade against the Ku Klux Klan in October 1921, which won the newspaper the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1922.[7] As an example of investigative journalism, it was ranked 81 out the top 100 journalism stories of the 20th century by New York University's journalism department.[8]
He was a legendary poker player, at one point in his life winning over $470,000 in a game with an oil baron, steel magnate and entertainer.[9] Swope was also a member of a social club, the precursor to the Algonquin Round Table known as the Thanatopsis Inside Straight and Pleasure Club.
[edit] Mansion
Swope died in 1958 at his home, known as Land's End, on Hoffstot Lane at Prospect Point, Sands Point, New York. Swope had hosted parties with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Dorothy Parker, Harpo Marx, Winston Churchill, Averill Harriman, Albert Einstein, Alexander Woolcott[10] – as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald.[11] These associations, along with other similarities to the houses and events in The Great Gatsby, helped give rise to unsubstantiated reports that Fitzgerald had[10][11] modeled Daisy Buchanan's home in the 1925 novel after Swope's home. However Swope did not buy Land's End until 1929. Other reports suggest the home, built in 1902,[11] had been designed by Stanford White[12] – though other sources dispute the claim.[12]
The clapboard colonial mansion included 15 bedrooms and 14 baths (eleven full baths), a seven-car garage, a tennis court with a tennis pavilion, a rose garden and a guest house – on 13.35 acres.[11] The 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m2) waterfront mansion had originally been built for A.C. Sloane and originally named Keewaydin. The house had been a site for a Vanity Fair photo shoot with Madonna and had been a location for the 1978 shooting of The Greek Tycoon, a film on the life of Aristotle Onassis.[12] In 2011, the home was razed and the property is to be subdivided.[11]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d "Herbert Bayard Swope Biography". http://www.bookrags.com/biography/herbert-bayard-swope-dlb/. "Herbert Bayard Swope was called the greatest reporter of his time by Lord Northcliffe of the London Daily Mail. The accolade is all the more impressive when one considers that Swope's illustrious colleagues included Walter Lippmann, Damon Runyon, Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott, Franklin P. Adams, William Henry Chamberlin, Arthur Brisbane, and Richard Harding Davis. That Swope had a special impact upon journalism in his time is undeniable. He rose rapidly from obscurity to become a journalistic legend. Herbert Bayard (pronounced "by-ard") Swope was born 5 January 1882 in St. Louis, Missouri, which was at that time the fourth largest city in the United States. His parents were Isaac and Ida Cohn Swope, both immigrants from Germany. He was the youngest of four children. As a child, Swope was something of a loner. His brother, Gerard, was nine years older, and his interests were widely different from Swope's. Yet, as Swope was growing up, it was Gerard who was to have a large influence in shaping his brother's character."
- ^ Pulitzer Prize Website Pulitzer prizes for Reporting, 1917–1947
- ^ Amazon.com: Inside the German Empire: In the Third Year of the War (1917) (9781436646178): Herbert Bayard Swope, James W. Gerard: Books
- ^ Safire, William (October 1, 2006). "Islamofascism Anyone?". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/01/news/edsafire.php. Retrieved December 25, 2008.
- ^ Meyer, Karl E. (1990). Pundits, poets, and wits : an omnibus of American newspaper columns. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195060636.
- ^ Swope, H. B. as quoted in Meyer, K. (1990). Pundits, poets, and wits. New York: Oxford University Press, p. xxxvii.
- ^ Harris, Roy (2007). Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. pp. 131–135. ISBN 978-0-8262-1768-4.
- ^ Barringer, Felicity (March 1, 1999). "Journalism's Greatest Hits: Two Lists of America's Top Stories". The New York Times.
- ^ Press, Politics and Poker - Howard Bayard Swope by Byron Liggett, Poker Player (newspaper). April 4, 2005.
- ^ a b "Swope's Mansion at Lands End". Port Washington News,May 9, 2008. http://www.antonnews.com/portwashingtonnews/2008/05/09/opinion/.
- ^ a b c d e "Sands Point's Lands End goes on market for $30 million". Newsday.com, November 10, 2009, By Laura Mann. http://www.newsday.com/classifieds/real-estate/real-li-1.812034/sands-point-s-lands-end-goes-on-market-for-30-million-1.1577950.
- ^ a b c "A Whisper of White, a Hint of Daisy". The New York Times, 5,15, 2002, Tracie Rozhon. May 16, 2002. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/16/garden/turf-a-whisper-of-white-a-hint-of-daisy.html?scp=30&sq=herbert%20bayard%20swope&st=cse.
[edit] External links
| Awards and achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Henry Cabot Lodge |
Cover of Time Magazine 28 January 1924 |
Succeeded by Edward Eberle |
