Frank Brett Noyes was born on July 7, 1863 in Washington, D. C. , United States. He was the second son and second of five children of Crosby Stuart Noyes and Elizabeth S. (Williams) Noyes. Both parents were natives of Maine. The father, after moving to Washington in 1852, became a reporter for the newly founded Evening Star. In 1867 he and four partners purchased the Star, and Crosby Noyes became editor, with another partner, Samuel H. Kauffman, as president.
After graduating from a Washington high school in 1878, Noyes enrolled for a time in the preparatory department of Columbian (later George Washington) University and in the Spencerian Business College.
Noyes received honorary degrees from George Washington University (1925), the University of Pennsylvania (1928), Yale (1932), and the University of Maryland (1938).
Young Frank began working on his father's paper at the age of thirteen.
In 1886 he became business manager and treasurer of the Star, a post he continued to hold until 1901. The Star thrived under Noyes's managership, and by the early 1890's it was one of only two surviving dailies in Washington. Its news emphasis throughout his career was local--some said provincial--and the Star carried more small advertisements than any other paper in America. Noyes himself soon moved, however, into a national role. In 1893, when the cooperative Associated Press of Illinois, led by Victor F. Lawson and Melville E. Stone of the Chicago Daily News, was seeking to replace the purely commercial New York United Press as the nation's principal wire service, Noyes aided the AP's cause. He enlisted the Star in the AP and helped convert other newspapers in Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. The Associated Press was reorganized in 1900 under New York state laws, and Noyes, recognized for his business ability, was chosen president. Reelected annually, he served in this post until his resignation in 1938 and remained a director of the AP until 1947.
Although happy in publishing, Noyes may have felt overshadowed at the Star by his older brother Theodore Williams Noyes, who joined the staff in 1877 and became associate editor-in-chief ten years later. When Samuel Kauffman died in 1906, Theodore Noyes became president of the publishing company, and he succeeded to the editorship as well when Crosby Noyes died in 1908. Meanwhile, in 1901, Frank Noyes had accepted Victor Lawson's invitation to take charge of the Chicago Record-Herald, at first as publisher, then after a year as editor also. The Chicago paper encountered financial difficulties, however, and in 1910 Frank returned to the Star as president of the company. He remained in this post until his retirement in 1948; his brother continued as editor-in-chief and became chairman of the corporation's board of directors. Carrying on the municipal improvement policies of their father, the Noyes brothers campaigned for a clean Potomac River, better schools, and the building of a Lincoln Memorial. In national affairs the Star maintained an unswerving Republican editorial outlook. With a circulation that grew from 48, 000 in 1910 to 152, 000 in 1940 and 211, 000 in 1948, it led all other Washington papers until 1939. It consistently carried the most advertising in Washington, and through most of the 1930's in the nation as well.
Noyes viewed as his most important act the selection in 1925 of Kent Cooper as general manager of the AP. Member papers continued to supply most of the news, with the association acting as clearing-house and editorial center, but Cooper expanded the staff and increased the number of bureaus. He and Noyes also stepped up the agency's foreign news coverage and in 1935 inaugurated the AP Wirephoto service.
When he retired as AP president in 1938, at the age of seventy-five, Noyes seemed the personification of an agency devoted to objective news reporting.
It was as president of the Associated Press that Noyes made his most noteworthy contribution to journalism. During his tenure the nonprofit AP became the leading American press association and a major world news agency, with a reputation for accuracy and impartiality. Its membership rose from 600 papers in 1900 to 1, 300 in 1937. Although the AP's relations with labor unions were sometimes strained, Noyes was responsible for the introduction, after World War I, of improved employee benefits, including pensions, sick pay, and disability provisions.
Quiet, austere, and judicial, Noyes studiously avoided personal publicity or any public stand that might reflect on his agency's nonpartisanship.
A fellow editor, Oswald Garrison Villard, characterized Noyes's Star as "extremely prosperous and extremely dull" and its publisher as lacking vision and breadth of view. A more generally held estimate for both might be "solid if unspectacular. "
Noyes married Janet Thruston Newbold, daughter of an army colonel, on September 17, 1888. They had three children: Frances, Newbold (who served as associate editor of the Star, 1919-1942), and Ethel. His grandson, Newbold Noyes, Jr. , became editor in 1963.
