Oliver Kirby Bovard was born on May 27, 1872, in or near Jacksonville, Illinois. He was the first of two sons and second among five surviving children of Charles Wyrick Bovard and Hester (Bunn) Bovard.
His mother was descended from English-Irish Presbyterians; his father's forebears, of French Huguenot ancestry, had come from Northern Ireland to Hannastown, Pennsylvania, before 1783.
Oliver Bovard attended public school, that he left at fourteen.
A printer and a native of East Liverpool, Ohio, Charles Bovard lived in a succession of central Illinois towns before settling in St. Louis by 1880. There he worked on several newspapers, among them the Post-Dispatch owned by Joseph Pulitzer of which he became telegraph editor in 1891.
Bovard worked as a clerk in a number of St. Louis offices, including that of the Post-Dispatch; but he disliked clerking and determined to become a newspaperman. His interest in the currently popular sport of bicycling led to a job on the St. Louis Star in 1896 as general reporter and bicycle editor. Two years later, when the Star failed to print his disclosure of bribery in connection with a street railway franchise, Bovard took it to the Post-Dispatch, which published it and hired the young reporter. Rising rapidly, Bovard became city editor in 1900.
He quickly improved the quality of local reporting, initiated crusades against traction and utility frauds, and supported the efforts of such city reformers as Joseph W. Folk.
In 1908, he became acting managing editor, and the following year he was summoned by Pulitzer to work on the New York World. After ten months, however, he gave up a chance to become assistant managing editor of the World and chose to return to the Post-Dispatch as permanent managing editor. A believer in the "one-man" school of journalism, Bovard consolidated his control over all news departments.
Bovard worked closely with two successive editors of the Post-Dispatch's editorial page, George Sibley Johns (1857 - 1941) and Clark McAdams, on the Sacco-Vanzetti and other important cases.
After the onset of the Great Depression, Bovard had his staff probe its causes and consider possible remedies. He looked to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 to restore the nation's economic health, but as the New Deal progressed, Bovard came to believe that it did not go far enough.
A political moderate, Pulitzer disliked the reflection of Bovard's individual views in the Post-Dispatch and would not let the paper support the program of nationalization Bovard proposed.
On July 29, 1938, citing "irreconcilable differences" with Pulitzer over the management of the Post-Dispatch, Bovard resigned as managing editor. Declining invitations to news or writing positions elsewhere, he retired to Windridge Farm, his estatenear Clayton, Missouri.
He died of cancer in a St. Louis hospital and after Episcopal rites was buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis.
Oliver Bovard's great contribution was in broadening of the national and international news coverage and, distrusting the wire services, established his own Washington bureau in 1918. That year his insistence on accuracy gave him what he regarded as his proudest moment in journalism: his refusal to print the false first report of the World War I armistice because his analysis of other news dispatches made him doubt its veracity. During the 1920's Bovard developed and stood behind a brilliant team of reporters, including Raymond P. Brandt, Richard L. Stokes, and four future Pulitzer Prize winners: Charles G. Ross, Marquis W. Childs, John T. Rogers, and Paul Y. Anderson. Avoiding the limelight, Bovard had remained almost unknown in St. Louis, although he was a major influence in the community's life for more than thirty years. When he retired, his reputed salary of $75, 000 made him probably the highest paid of managing editors; undoubtedly he was among the most highly esteemed by his craft. O. K. B. , as he invariably signed himself, had never bothered to fill out the form for inclusion in Who's Who in America, but by his relentless investigative reporting he had written an unduplicated chapter in the history of crusading daily journalism.
To remedy this, Bovard advocated a reduction of the tariff and public ownership of natural resources, banks, public utilities, and railroads, even though this might require amending the Constitution. Rejecting Communism as authoritarian, he sought a middle ground, similar to the Swedish system, between capitalism and pure socialism and urged that the press educate the people to the value of such a system.
Bovard's philosophy brought him into conflict with Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. (1885 - 1955), who as editor and publisher increased his direction of the Post-Dispatch in the 1930's.
The chief problem of American society, Bovard concluded, was the unequal distribution of wealth.
A courageous and hardworking editor, Bovard in later years could seem aloof, imperious, and even severely abrupt, but his newsgathering abilities were always highly regarded.
In his personal appearance Bovard was tall, erect, and handsome.
Bovard had married Suzanne Thompson of San Antonio, Texas, on June 16, 1902; they had no children.
25 July 1882 - 26 November 1972
reporter
American journalist
American journalist
American journalist
White House Press Secretary between 1945 and 1950 for President Harry S. Truman
