Malcolm Wallace Bingay

Background

Malcolm Bingay was born on December 16, 1884, in Sandwich, Ontario, Canada, the son of John George and Isabella McIntyre Bingay. His father, he later wrote, "didn't like to work. " In March 1885 the family moved to Detroit.

Education

Bingay attended local public schools in Detroit. He was expelled from Central High School following an argument with a teacher.

Career

Malcolm worked briefly as a baker's apprentice and as a messenger before starting his newspaper career, at fourteen, as a printer's apprentice on the Michigan Farmer. In 1900 Bingay applied for a job as a reporter on the Detroit News but was turned down by managing editor Patrick C. Baker. He was then hired as an office boy by Detroit Today, a new newspaper, and soon became a reporter covering labor, the riverfront, and hotels. Three months later he joined the News in the lesser position of office boy. He spent nights taking typing lessons and reading history and literature and although news editors considered Bingay too young for reporting assignments, he was soon permitted to write short fictional articles. One of his stories, "The Adventures of a New Policeman, " became a regular editorial-page feature. As a result of its popularity, he was in September 1901 promoted to reporter, covering general assignments and the police and maritime beats.

Bingay tried, without success, to become the Ann Arbor correspondent for the newspaper so that he would cover the celebrated "point-a-minute" University of Michigan football teams coached by Fielding Harris Yost. At 19 he became sports editor of the News. His major responsibility was writing about the Detroit Tigers baseball team and their superstar Ty Cobb, traveling with the team and producing four columns a day. After covering the 1908 World Series (which the Tigers lost) Bingay was made city editor. He was reluctant to take over the city desk because he was the youngest man on the staff and also because he had reservations about his older colleagues. He soon made a college degree a requirement for new reporters - and veteran reporters retaliated, passing up promising leads to let other newspapers get exclusive stories, much to Bingay's embarrassment.

In 1914 Bingay became managing editor of the News. In that position, which he held for the next 14 years, he was an unabashed champion of the coming of age of Detroit as an industrial metropolis. He cherished friendships with Henry Ford and other leaders of the automobile industry and was able to exert some influence in state politics when necessary. In 1928 the News fired Bingay from the managing editorship because, as he himself later wrote, "I was saying the right things in the wrong way and doing a lot of drinking. " He was then appointed as the newspaper's London bureau chief. Lonely and frustrated as a foreign correspondent, Bingay believed that his work was unappreciated. When he returned to Detroit a year later, he therefore left the newspaper to become a consultant for a national advertising agency. He found this work unsatisfying, however, and in May 1930 accepted an offer from E. D. Stair, owner and publisher of the Detroit Free Press, to edit a special centennial edition. Shortly afterward, Stair appointed him editorial director. Bingay was in charge of all editorial departments: news, sports, features, and the editorial pages.

Bingay coordinated a story on an American Legion parade in 1931 that won five Free Press reporters a Pulitzer Prize. In preparation for the story, Bingay had reporters spending weeks researching statistics and background material on where Legion posts had fought in World War I.

Bingay vented his boosterism by writing a sports column under the pseudonym "Iffy the Dopester. " Written in a breezy, anecdotal, folksy style, the column began during the 1934 baseball season. The column was his most popular innovation. The Free Press distributed 500, 000 "Iffy" buttons, and "Iffy" clubs proliferated throughout the state. In 1939 the Saturday Evening Post disclosed that Bingay was "Iffy. "

When John S. Knight bought the Free Press in 1940, he took Bingay out of the news operation, leaving him only the editorial page. Resentful about losing the news columns, Bingay avoided the newsroom for weeks, using his page to contradict and embarrass the new management. Nonetheless, he soon began to sense the futility of his position and became cooperative. In 1945 Knight arranged for Bingay to travel to Europe to report on Nazi concentration camps. Bingay's dispatches from Dachau and Buchenwald were widely syndicated. That same year Bingay began promoting General Dwight D. Eisenhower as a presidential candidate. His greatest blunder was his editorial, the day after the 1948 presidential election, announcing Thomas E. Dewey's victory. Concerned staff members tried to persuade him to drop the editorial, but he stubbornly refused. Bingay suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while writing his "Good Morning" column on August 20, 1953, and died one day later.

Achievements

• Malcolm bingay is better remembered as editorial director of the Detroit Free Press. As a columnist for the Detroit Free Press, he authored two daily features, "Good Morning" and "Iffy the Dopester". Bingay received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Wayne University in 1932, and Olivet College made him a Doctor of Laws in 1946. Bingay won the Pulitzer Prize for a series of medical articles which were cited for their sharp insight and brilliant style. As a direct result of that honor, the Wayne County Medical Society named Mr. Bingay to the Detroit Medical Hall of Fame and conferred upon him an honorary membership.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Detroit Is My Own Home Town (Classic Reprint)

    (The Saturday Evening Post IN GRANTING ME PERMISSION TO MA...)

  • Of Me I Sing

Politics

In politics Bingay was a hard-line conservative. He used his column to attack Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United Auto Workers Union and wrote an abusive obituary of Senator James Couzens that angered many readers. Sometimes Bingay's political prejudices led to Free Press investigations of public figures he disliked.

Membership

Bingay was an honorary member the Wayne County Medical Society.

Connections

Bingay married Sarah Ross on October 28, 1908, after he was appointed city editor; they had one daughter. After Sarah Ross Bingay died on October 14, 1930, Bingay married Cecelia Fuhrman in December of the following year.

Father:

John George Bingay

Mother:

Isabella (McIntyre) Bingay

Spouse:

Cecelia (Fuhrman) Bingay

Spouse:

Sarah (Ross) Bingay