Hugh Baillie was an American newspaperman and journalist. Hugh Baillie and the United Press Associations were one and the same for 40 years.
Background
Hugh Baillie was born on October 23, 1890, in Brooklyn, New York. Baillie was the son of a prominent journalist in New York, David Gemmell, and Fannie Mead Hays Baillie.
His father had left Great Britain in 1887 for adventure in Australia. Instead, David Baillie disembarked in New York City, finding work writing for the New York Tribune, as well as a position as literary secretary for Andrew Carnegie. In time, he wrote for other papers such as the New York World and New York Press.
Baillie’s maternal grandfather was also a news writer. John B. Hays served the New York City Hall Reporter’s Association as dean and president and wrote political articles for the New York Tribune.
As a child, Hugh Baillie was allowed to go with his father and grandfather on interviewing assignments. He met Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and Thomas Edison and traveled on the inaugural train of William McKinley. The Baillie family relocated to Southern California, where David Baillie had become an editorial writer at the Los Angeles Herald.
Education
Baillie attended the University of Southern California, from 1907 to 1910. During that time, Baillie became campus correspondent for his father’s paper.
In 1910 Hugh Bailie began working as a staff member of the Los Angeles Herald, a sensationalist newspaper. He covered sports for a brief spell, then moved into police reporting. Baillie thoroughly enjoyed the excitement of this task, accompanying police on raids, riding in paddy wagons, and carrying a gun. Writing brash, popular stories of discord and murder, Baillie developed an affinity for reporting violence. Baillie’s first United Press assignment was a high-profile case. In 1912, he reported on a trial involving lawyer Clarence Darrow, who was accused of bribing a jury member. Baillie submitted a well-received column on the proceedings for approximately three months. Three years later he moved to San Francisco to report full-time for the United Press organization.
Baillie was appointed to run the small UP bureau office. It was there that Baillie won a contest by landing the newest clients for the United Press. In March of 1917, Baillie had a brief stint in Chicago, Illinois, supplying shortened news reports to local newspapers. Three weeks after arriving in Chicago, Baillie was sent to New York City. Impending world war led United Press management to move reporters about, and so Baillie was requested at the main office of the wire service. Baillie was present when his office issued an erroneous armistice announcement (four days too soon), a mistake that greatly damaged the reputation of the United Press.
After two years in New York, Baillie was honored with a promotion to bureau manager in Washington, D.C. Only twenty-eight years old, he found himself surrounded by renowned news writers. Baillie immediately hired an assistant manager to run the office, enabling himself to remain a reporter. He put himself on a key story at the time: President Wilson’s attempt to attain public support for the League of Nations. As Wilson traveled across America for three weeks, Baillie wrote the lead bylines. He found himself the subject of news in 1920 while covering the Republican national convention. When asked to leave a group of delegates, an altercation ensued in which Baillie took a swing at a security person.
In 1920, Baillie returned to New York to become manager of the bureau there. He was now moving rapidly toward the presidency of United Press, becoming assistant general news manager and then general news manager. He was choosing the content of United Press transmissions at the age of thirty-three. Soon after, Baillie agreed to be “demoted” to sales in order to leam about the business of reporting news.
Working in the South, an area controlled by the Associated Press, Baillie sold the news service to the Miami Herald and found a dozen new clients. After nine months as a salesman, Baillie became sales manager of the United Press. In 1927, he was promoted to vice president and general business manager. Four years later, he was named the executive vice president, and in 1935, he became the president of the United Press.
Baillie ran the organization by focusing on the quality of United Press reporting, leaving the logistics to executive Kent Cooper. Baillie developed a sense of upcoming news, traveling extensively and encouraging staff members to excel.
In 1937, Baillie interviewed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, as well as Russian leaders. He correctly concluded that the Spanish Civil War was a kind of testing ground for European nations’ military strength, a grim prelude to world war. Baillie was in England when Germany invaded Poland in the fall of 1939, fighting censorship and interviewing Neville Chamberlain.
A trip to European fronts in 1943 convinced Baillie that he wanted to experience the war firsthand. Baillie published his trip dispatches in Two Battlefront, which the United Press published to instruct its staff on war correspondence. Baillie told colleagues to write with a frank description while acknowledging his own emotional style. During the Korean conflict, the public interest in war coverage waned. Baillie urged UP correspondents to write with intensity, but Americans were tired of in-depth reporting of hostilities abroad.
In 1955, Baillie stepped down from his position as president of United Press, after twenty years of leadership. He had served longer than any UP president, during a time of great change and growth in the United Press and the world. Baillie continued to work with UP as chairman of the board from 1955 to 1957. He wrote and published an autobiography, titled High Tension, in 1959.
Achievements
Baillie was the top executive at United Press. He directed the press coverage of World War II and the Korean War. As president of 1935-1955, Baillie was an overall charge of business operations and dealings with his correspondents and subscribing newspapers. He personally interviewed top European leaders in the coming of World War Two, including Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Neville Chamberlain. He covered the American invasion of Sicily in 1943, and the Belgian campaign in 1944, in which he was wounded.
After the war, Baillie continued with his interviews of famous world leaders, such as the heads of Japan, China, and the Soviet Union. At the time of his retirement, UP had 2900 clients in the United States and 1500 abroad.
The Missouri School of Journalism honored Baillie with its Distinguished Service in Journalism Award in 1953.
Hugh Baillie was a leader in promoting freedom of news dissemination and called in 1944 for an open system of news sources and transmission, and a minimum of government regulation of the news.
Membership
Hugh Baillie was a member of St. Andrew’s Society, Sigma Delta Chi (national honorary president 1935) and Society of Silurians (Board of Governors, New York, 1957).
Personality
Baillie was remembered as a statuesque, powerful man with a booming voice, a person who exuded confidence. Examining the television and print journalism of today, the career of Baillie seems a precursor of all-day news channels and in-depth news coverage. He advanced swiftly to the top of his field without losing familiarity with the street.
Though he rose to the top of the news industry during a time of intense expansion, Hugh Baillie never stopped calling himself a reporter. He spent forty-two years at the United Press, swiftly rising to the role of president, but he preferred the field to the oak desk.
Connections
Hugh Baillie married Constance Scott in 1916. They had a son, Hugh Scott.
