Background

Herbert Bayard Swope was born on January 5, 1882 in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Isaac Swope (formerly Schwab), a German immigrant who had set up a watchmaking business in St. Louis, and Ida Cohn. A high-spirited, unconventional, adventurous boy, he tried his gentle father's authority.

Education

In Swope's first year at Central High School Swope was expelled for unruly behavior, but he was readmitted and graduated.

Career

After his father's death Swope made a trip to Germany on his share of the meager inheritance, returned to do odd jobs, and then drifted into his lifework on newspapers. He was a reporter on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Chicago Tribune, the Morning Telegraph (in New York), and then for several years on the New York Herald. He also worked as a theatrical press agent, and led a glittering although impecunious life as a young man-about-town in New York.

In 1909 Swope became a reporter for Ralph Pulitzer's New York World, which sold for a penny and had a circulation of 350, 000. He remained with that paper for nineteen years as reporter and editor. He used the World as his entre into society, where he cut a swashbuckling, news-tracking, news-making figure.

Swope quickly built a reputation as a resourceful, aggressive reporter. Among his scoops was his tour de force expose of the police corruption behind the murder of a gambler named Herman Rosenthal. This was a classic case of participatory journalism; he not only wrote the story but also helped track down the suspects. Swope made two trips to Europe during World War I to get an objective view of Germany.

After the second visit he wrote a long series of articles for which, in 1917, he received the first Pulitzer Prize for reporting. Swope's only book, Inside the German Empire (1917), consisted of these articles.

Swope later went to Paris to report on the Versailles Peace Conference. He championed Wilson's early role, and magnified the president's influence in Europe, but he was disillusioned by the later compromises, especially the reparations clauses, the text of which he obtained, probably from Secretary of State Robert Lansing, then out of favor with Wilson, and published.

On his return Swope became executive editor of the World, at a salary of $54, 000 a year plus 2 percent of the profit from the morning and Sunday editions. He held the post from 1920 to 1928. His first headline was on Warren G. Harding's presidential victory over James M. Cox; his last was about Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration as governor of New York. Swope's imagination, never exactly dormant, ran riot.

His cherished project was the "Op Ed" (opposite editorial) page, which featured columnists and reviewers including Heywood Broun, William Bolitho, Franklin P. Adams, Deems Taylor, and Laurence Stallings, and became the model for all later "Op Ed" pages.

Swope's decision to resign from the World seemed both sudden and arbitrary: he didn't want to be "a hired boy any longer, " he told his wife. Yet its sources were deeper. When Herbert Pulitzer assumed control of the World papers, his decisions seemed arbitrary to Swope. The price increase from two cents to three cents proved disastrous for readership and advertising revenue, and the return to two cents did not help much. Worst of all, the profits, while they lasted, were drawn out instead of being plowed back into strengthening the papers.

Actually, Swope never left newspaper work; when he heard the Washington Post was for sale, he tried to buy it-and failed. This happened again when the news leaked out that the Pulitzers wanted to sell the World papers. Swope became entangled in a maze of schemes to raise the money for the purchase, pinning his highest hopes on William Randolph Hearst.

That too fell through, and the papers were sold to Roy Howard for $5 million in 1931, and merged with his New York Telegram. From then on, Swope's life was anticlimactic. He continued to live lavishly and entertain on a grand scale at his fabled Sands Point, New York, home, designed by Stanford White and decorated by Lady Mendl. (Scott Fitzgerald had used Swope's rented house at Great Neck as the setting for his The Great Gatsby. )

He continued to play high-stakes poker with the moguls he cultivated; he proved to be an "elegant" chairman of the New York Racing Commission (1934 - 1945); he rarely missed a theater first night. But he had no heart for it all. To live on the level he was accustomed to, he took a public relations job. But he had little pride in the work and was ashamed of the fees he got.

He died in New York City.

Achievements

• Herbert Swope spent most of his career working at the New York World. His greatest achievement was in becoming 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. Swope was a brilliant reporter and a memorable and creative editor, but his chief impact on journalism consisted of the public-spirited crusade, the "Op Ed" page, and a stylish approach to daily liberal journalism. In life he was a great legend maker, and his greatest legend was himself. As an example of investigative journalism, it was ranked 81st of the top 100 journalism stories of the 20th century by New York University's journalism department. He was inducted into the Croquet Hall of Fame of the United States Croquet Association in 1979 and his son Herbert Bayard Swope, Jr. in 1981.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Inside the German Empire: In the Third Year of the War (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Inside the German Empire: In the Third Year ...)

  • Inside the German Empire in the Third Year of the War - War College Series

    (This is a curated and comprehensive collection of the mos...)

  • Inside the German Empire in the Third Year of the War. With a Foreword by James W. Gerard

    ( About the Book Military history texts discuss the histo...)

  • Our Bill Of Rights: What It Means To Me

    (Contributing Authors Mary Anderson, Henry A. Atkinson, W....)

  • Journalism: An instrument of civilization, (Hobart college bulletin)
  • Inside the German Empire - 1916
  • FINE WATCHES & OBJECTS DE VERTU
  • Inside the German Empire in the Third Year of the War / by Herbert Bayard Swope

Politics

In his political affiliation Herbert Swope was a Democrat. During his reign at the World, Swope cut a wide swath in politics, bringing the Democratic Convention to New York City in 1924. The same year he pushed Governor Al Smith for the presidency. Swope was triumphant when Smith was nominated in 1928, and crestfallen when he was defeated. Later he served as go-between in bringing Smith's nominal support to Roosevelt in 1932.

Views

Mencken believed Herbert Swope was "far more a politician than a newspaperman, " but Mencken was wrong. Swope never cared much about the substance of political issues; Smith and Roosevelt, despite the chasm between them, were much alike to him. He saw politics as analogous to his favorite sport, horse racing: both entailed excitement, competitiveness, drama, betting, identification, and success. Aside from that, Swope viewed his political role as part of his editorial role and his personal role in the world of publicity: together they formed a single image.

His favorite crusades illustrated his credo that editing a paper was a combination of drama, furor, and public service. He knew the World could not compete with the New York Times in breadth of coverage, so he relied on selected in-depth treatments. "Pick the best story of the day and hammer the Hell out of it, " was his injunction to reporters. Slum landlords, subway service, and the League of Nations were subjects of his "crusades. "

Quotations: "What I try to do, " Swope told Broun, "is to give the public part of what it wants and part of what it ought to have whether it wants it or not. " His "chiefest occupation" was "evaluating an event in terms of public reaction. " He also claimed, "My whole capital is my knowledge of things and my acquaintance with people. " These remarks show his limitations as well as strengths.

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. "

Baruch's term "cold war, " as well as the opening sentence of his U. N. speech on the atomic bomb--"We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead"--were actually Swope's words. It was characteristic of Swope that he wanted the world to know the origin of these words.

"The secret of a successful newspaper is to take one story each day and bang the hell out of it. Give the public what it wants to have and part of what it ought to have whether it wants it or not. "

"Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one. "

"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - which is: Try to please everybody. "

Membership

Herbert Swope was a member of a social club, the precursor to the Algonquin Round Table known as the Thanatopsis Inside Straight and Pleasure Club.

Personality

Herbert Swope took great pride in a number of his friendships, especially the one with Baruch, which was a kind of symbiosis between very self-centered, very vain, but also very able and affectionate friends. Swope felt he had added to Baruch's public stature by his public relations advice: Baruch felt grateful but also behaved as if Swope's help was somewhat onerous.

Quotes from others about the person

• Harold Nicolson, on David Lloyd George's staff at the time, noted in his diary that Swope was "the star turn in the American journalistic world" and added, "He bursts with boost. "

Interests

• Herbert Swope was a legendary poker player, at one point winning over $470, 000 in a game with an oil baron, a steel magnate, and an entertainer.

Connections

Herbert Swope married Margaret Honeyman Powell on January 10, 1912, with H. L. Mencken as their only attendant.

Father:

Isaac Swope

Mother:

Ida Cohn

Wife:

Margaret Honeyman Powell Swope

1890–1967

colleague:

Henry L. Stimson

American statesman who exercised a strong influence on United States foreign policy in the 1930s and ’40s. During World War II, from 1942 to 1946, Swope served as a consultant to U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

Friend:

Bernard Baruch

American financier, stock investor, philanthropist, statesman, and political consultant. When the United States entered the war, Swope became an assistant to his close friend Bernard Baruch.

References

• MAN of the WORLD, Herbert Bayard Swope: A Charmed Life of Pulitzer Prizes, Poker and Politics
• This is Swope: Herbert Bayard Swope
• Letter from Herbert Bayard Swope to Walter Winchell
• Man of the world : Herbert Bayard Swope, a charmed life of pulitzer prizes, poker and politics
• American reporter at the international political stage: Herbert Bayard Swope and his Pulitzer Prize-winning articles from Germany in 1916 (Studien zur internationalen Kommunikation)