Silas Bent

Background

Silas Bent was born on May 9, 1882, in Millersburg, Kentucky, where his father, James McClelland Bent, was a Baptist clergyman. His mother, Sallie (Burnam) Bent, was a Kentuckian; his father, born in St. Louis, Missouri, was descended from John Bent, an Englishman who settled in Sudbury, Massachussets, in 1638. Among his forebears was Silas Bent (1820 - 1887), naval officer and oceanographer. Young Silas was the fourth among five children and the younger of two sons.

Education

Growing up in Kentucky, Silas was educated in public schools and at Ogden College in Bowling Green, from which he was graduated in 1902.

Career

Silas began his newspaper career in Louisville as a reporter on the Herald and the Times. Two years later he went to St. Louis, where he worked for the Post-Dispatch and, for a lesser period, the Republic. During the academic year 1908-1909 he taught in the new school of journalism at the University of Missouri. Returning to the Post-Dispatch, Bent was assistant city editor until 1912, when he went to Chicago to handle publicity for the National Citizens' League, whose "sound banking" campaign contributed to Congressional passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. For a short time he was on the Chicago Evening American. Bent moved in 1914 to New York and worked successively for the Herald, the Tribune, the World, and the Times. On the Times, he was a member of the Sunday magazine staff, 1918-1920. After directing newspaper and magazine publicity for the Democratic National Committee in the election year of 1920, Bent served as associate editor of Nation's Business in Washington through 1922.

Concluding now that "legislation and national elections are swayed by the drive of publicity agencies upon the press, " Bent turned to a career of free-lance writing and lecturing that was to make him a foremost critic of the policies and practices of the American press. Over the next two decades he wrote dozens of articles, largely critical and revelatory, for such magazines as the Atlantic, Collier's, Outlook, the Nation, and the New Republic, as well as nine books.

His first book, originally a series of lectures at the New School for Social Research in New York, was the much-discussed Ballyhoo: The Voice of the Press (1927). In it Bent shared with his readers debunking descriptions of many newspaper practices that editors and publishers had generally kept to themselves. Though he scourged the rising tabloids, it was the "standard-sized, respectable, substantial press" that he bore into hardest. He showed how esteemed dailies trespassed on proper privacy, sensationalized murders and trials, and while exploiting "illicit love" avoided recognition of the scientific aspects of sex. He urged editors to be political but not partisan, to be less timid in making improvements, to engage in research and more thorough investigations, to print more and better foreign news, to recognize that the price of distortion was loss of the reader's confidence, and to protect serious news from being overwhelmed by trivia. He was in the forefront in warning editors to be on guard lest they lose a major aspect of the news function to radio, which he regarded as even more controllable and hence more dangerous.

Bent's main criticism was that under pressure of profit-motivated advertisers, publishers consolidated newspapers as properties and in the process produced "big industry" journalism, managed by editors who, seeking to be as inoffensive as possible, expressed fewer and fewer convictions. These trends, he held, failed to provide readers with the factual information and the editorial illumination required in a self-governing democracy. To show how courageously earlier editors had discharged their trust, Bent wrote Newspaper Crusaders: A Neglected Story (1939).

Among his other books were a newspaper novel, Buchanan of the Press (1932), set in St. Louis and somewhat autobiographical, and two biographies, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes(1932) and Old Rough and Ready: The Life and Times of Zachary Taylor (1946), the latter in collaboration with a cousin, Silas Bent McKinley.

During his free-lance years Bent made his home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. His health weakened by excessive drinking, he died in the Stamford Hospital of bronchopneumonia at the age of sixty-three. He was buried in Fairview Cemetery, Bowling Green.

Achievements

• Silas Bent was a distinguished writer and journalist who during his career contributed his numerous articles to the Post-Dispatch, the Republic, the Herald, the Tribune, the World, the Times, Nation's Business, the Atlantic, Collier's, Outlook, the Nation, and the New Republic. Bent is also the author of: Ballyhoo: The Voice of the Press (1927); Newspaper Crusaders: A Neglected Story (1939); Buchanan of the Press (1932); Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes(1932); Old Rough and Ready: The Life and Times of Zachary Taylor (1946).

Works

More photos

• book

  • Old Rough and Ready: The Life and Times of Zachary Taylor

    (Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 - July 9, 1850) was the...)

  • Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Newspaper Crusaders; A Neglected Story. (Essay index reprint series)

    (Book by Bent, Silas)

  • Ballyhoo: The Voice of the Press

Connections

Silas Bent married Elizabeth Chism Sims of Bowling Green, Kentucky, on October 3, 1916. They had no children.

Father:

James McClelland Bent

He was a Baptist clergyman.

Mother:

Sallie (Burnam) Bent

Wife:

Elizabeth Chism (Sims) Bent