Bruce Ormsby Bliven was an American journalist and editor. He served as the New York correspondent for the Guardian from 1927 to 1947.
Background
Bruce Bliven was born on July 27, 1889, in Emmetsburg, Iowa, United States, the son of Charles F. Bliven and Lilla C. Ormsby. Bliven's early childhood was comfortable; his father, a farmer, also worked for the family mortgage and loan company. Unfortunately, that firm never quite recovered from the panic of 1893. Over the years his father slowly sold off the family farm and his mother took part-time jobs.
Education
It was only because a cousin volunteered to finance his education that Bliven was able to enroll at Stanford University in 1907. He graduated in 1911.
Career
Bliven's interest in journalism began in high school, when he started his own paper. The paper lasted for four or five issues, but his enthusiasm remained. At Stanford he was college correspondent for the San Francisco Bulletin (1909 - 1912) and worked summers as a cub reporter. After he left Stanford, he wrote advertising copy in Los Angeles. Newspapers remained Bliven's first professional interest, however, and soon he was a theater critic for the Los Angeles Evening News and a part-time journalism instructor at the University of Southern California. By 1914 he was director of the journalism department, enabling him to leave advertising. Unsatisfied by teaching alone, Bliven continued to do freelance writing for trade publications and newspapers in his spare time. One of those trade publications, Printers' Ink, offered him an editorial position in 1916. Bliven accepted, and he and his wife moved to New York City. A 1919 assignment to interview the publisher of the New York Globe led to his employment as that publication's chief editorial writer. A year later, he became managing editor. He remained with the publication until it changed ownership and format in 1923.
Bliven is best known for his work on the New Republic. He began his association with the weekly magazine while still employed by the Globe, by writing free-lance pieces. In 1923, the New Republic engaged him as managing editor; in 1930, he was named editor in chief. Bliven is generally credited with shifting the New Republic's editorial line to the left politically. In 1932, for example, the publication endorsed Socialist party candidate Norman Thomas for president. A year later, however, it came out in support of both the domestic and the foreign policies of Franklin Roosevelt. By the end of the 1930's, Bliven and the New Republic had moderated somewhat, remaining liberal but becoming anti-Communist. During Bliven's tenure the New Republic published the writings of such well-known authors as Edmund Wilson, John Dewey, Charles Beard, John Dos Passos, Malcolm Cowley, and Felix Frankfurter. In 1946, Bliven hired Roosevelt's third-term vice-president, Henry Wallace, as an editor until his 1948 run for the presidency forced him to resign.
Bliven was not content merely to handle editorial matters at the New Republic; he also contributed pieces from time to time. He helped expose the scandals in the Harding administration, interviewed Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti just before their execution, toured the country to report on conditions during the nadir of the Great Depression, and in 1938 wrote an open letter to Joseph Stalin urging him to conduct the Moscow trials by Western standards.
Besides his work at the New Republic, Bliven wrote free-lance pieces, particularly on propaganda, consumer issues, and science; and gave public lectures. Several heart attacks prompted the workaholic Bliven to cut back on his activities. In 1947, after a heart attack, he had to resign from the Guardian. In 1953, on his doctor's advice that he move to a milder climate, Bliven also resigned from the New Republic and returned to Palo Alto, California, taking up residence on the Stanford campus. In California, Bliven entered a period of semi-retirement, writing, speaking, and teaching an occasional journalism class. At the time of his death in Palo Alto, he was working on a manuscript detailing the history of the late nineteenth century.
Bruce Bliven was a member of the Twentieth Century Club, the Consumers' League of New York and the Foreign Policy Association of the United States.
Personality
Bliven was a stout 5‐foot‐9‐inch‐tall man with ample brown hair brushed hack into a pompadour who habitually worked in a jacket and gracious with his authors, a man who never lost his temper and who went to great lengths to edit by consensus of the editorial board.
Connections
In May 1913 Bruce Bliven married Rose Frances Emery; they had one child.