Joseph Medill Patterson was an American newspaper publisher.
Background
Joseph Midell Patterson was born on January 6, 1879 in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, United States into one of America's leading newspaper dynasties. He was the first of two children and only son of Elinor (Medill) Patterson and Robert Wilson Patterson, Jr. , both of Scots-Irish descent. His maternal grandfather was Joseph Medill, editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune. His father, the son of a prominent Presbyterian clergyman, was managing editor of the Tribune anl later Medill's successor at the paper. Joseph's sister Eleanor ("Cissy") Patterson later became owner and editor of the Washington Times-Herald. Although raised in a mansion on Chicago's Gold Coast, young Patterson refused to conform to his background.
Education
Joseph Medill Patterson attended private schools in Chicago and France and Groton School in Massachusetts (1890 - 1896). After a year spent on a ranch in New Mexico, he entered Yale University in 1897 and received the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1901.
Career
Understandably, Joseph Medill Patterson developed an early interest in journalism. In the summer of 1900 he went to China to report on the Boxer Rebellion for the Tribune, and after graduating from college he joined the paper's staff as a city reporter, subsequently rising to assistant editor. Patterson's experience as a city reporter caused his proletarian sympathies to develop into a zeal for political reform. In 1903, running as an opponent of boss rule, he was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives, resigning from the Tribune after he learned that his father had used the paper's influence to aid his election. Two years later Patterson supported the successful mayoral campaign of reformer Edward F. Dunne in Chicago and was rewarded by being named commissioner of public works. In this post he fought the large department stores, which were turning their basements into female sweatshops. But Patterson came increasingly to believe that reform of the capitalist system was impossible and that socialism must replace it. He resigned his commissionership in 1906 and joined the Socialist party.
In "Confessions of a Drone, " published in the Independent that year, he described the way that he and other members of the privileged classes lived on wealth appropriated from others and suggested that the working class had it in its power to alter the "present arrangement". Patterson was named a member of the Socialist party's executive council in 1906 but spent most of the next four years on a farm he purchased near Libertyville, Ill. , where he devoted himself to writing. Among the works he produced were the plays Dope, which showed that drug addiction grew out of slum conditions, and The Fourth Estate, written in collaboration with James Keeley and Harriet Ford. He also wrote a novel, A Little Brother of the Rich (1908), which dramatically, and with some exaggeration, portrayed the immoral and corruptive lives of the idle rich. By 1910, when his father died, Patterson had also become disillusioned with socialism, having learned as a working author that people will only work for a profit. Returning to Chicago, he joined his cousin Robert McCormick as coeditor of the Tribune, taking over the editorial side of the business.
Patterson had always had a high regard for his father's insistence on unbiased reporting, but both he and McCormick felt the paper was stuffy and needed to be enlivened. Crime news appeared on the front page for the first time, Lillian Russell was hired to write beauty hints, and there were crusades against everything from loan sharks to clairvoyants. Although Patterson clashed frequently with his conservative cousin over the paper's enduring conservatism on the editorial page, McCormick's influence prevailed. More interested in reporting than editing, Patterson personally covered the border conflict with Mexico in 1914 and the beginning of World War I in Europe. In 1916 he joined the Illinois Field Artillery and after United States entry into the war, he served in France in five major engagements, rising to the rank of captain. Before returning to the United States in 1919, Patterson stopped in London, where he was impressed by the success of the tabloid Daily Mirror. He was convinced that such a paper, based on photographs and mass appeal, could succeed in New York.
Consequently, on June 26, 1919, he brought out the first issue of the Illustrated Daily News (which soon became simply the Daily News). Having run the News initially from his office in Chicago, in 1925 he gave McCormick complete control of the Tribune and moved to New York. Derided by critics as the "servant-girls' Bible" and "gum-chewers' delight, " the News at first had difficulty attracting advertisers. Within a few months, however, subway straphangers found that the tabloid size was easy to read, and Patterson's view that crime and sex were sure circulation-builders was confirmed. Advertisers soon lost their squeamishness and the paper began to show a profit. Patterson introduced editorials written in everyday English and a popular letters column called "Voice of the People. " Considering the comics an important journalistic feature, he developed the idea for such strips as "The Gumps, " "Dick Tracy, " and "Little Orphan Annie"; indeed, the character of Mr. Bailey in "Smitty" was modeled after Patterson himself.
In 1921 Patterson added a Sunday edition, and by 1925 the News had a circulation of over a million. It grew steadily until by the late 1930's it had the largest daily circulation in the United States and the largest Sunday circulation (over three million) in the world. Other publishers tried to emulate Patterson's achievement, but no other tabloid was ever as successful as the News. Patterson was highly adept at judging the popular taste, and noting the decline of the overly lurid New York Evening Graphic, founded in the 1920's by Bernarr MacFadden, he realized that too much sensationalism could be as unprofitable as too little. As an editor Patterson could be ruthless, dictatorial, and suspicious. Yet he knew most of his workers by their first names and often accompanied his reporters on stories. During the 1930's the Daily News became somewhat more "respectable, " devoting more space to national and international affairs. The paper was an early supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt's domestic policies, and Patterson became a frequent guest at the White House. Indeed, his series of editorials in 1940 defending Roosevelt's bid for a third term helped him win a Pulitzer Prize.
Joseph Medill Patterson died in Doctors Hospital in New York, of a liver ailment complicated by pneumonia on May 25, 1946, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, D. C.
Achievements
Joseph Medill Patterson was founder of the Daily News in New York. Patterson's grasp of the techniques of popular journalism, his touch with the common people, and his editorial instincts, combined to give the Daily News a vitality that made it what it remains, the widest-selling newspaper in America.
Politics
Joseph Medill Patterson was a devoted isolationist, and he broke with Roosevelt immediately after this election when the president introduced the lend-lease bill. He attacked the administration bitterly in the editorial columns of the News, and although he unsuccessfully sought to reenlist in the army after Pearl Harbor, he continued throughout the war to question the wisdom of American involvement in Europe. Increasingly alarmed about the "Red menace, " he defended rightwing critics like Father Charles Coughlin and others accused of wartime sedition and vigorously opposed the reelection of Roosevelt in 1944.
Personality
In the boyhood Joseph Medill Patterson was tall and athletic, he dressed casually, even sloppily, and he disliked all ostentation. Usually charming, his personality was mercurial, and as a child he possessed a violent temper.
Interests
Joseph Medill Patterson enjoyed mingling with ordinary people, and throughout his life often frequented bars and restaurants in such unsavory urban areas as Chicago's first ward and New York's Bowery. An avid movie fan, Patterson also enjoyed hunting and fishing. Overcoming a fear of flying, he took lessons and became a licensed pilot.
Connections
On November 19, 1902, Joseph Medill Patterson married Alice Higinbotham of Chicago, daughter of a partner of Marshall Field. They had three daughters, Elinor Medill, Alicia, and Josephine Medill, and adopted a son, James. In 1938 Patterson divorced his wife, from whom he had been separated for many years, and on July 7 of that year he married Mary King, women's editor of the News.
