Who Belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Journalists?

While scanning my Twitter feed, a picture of Mount Rushmore, sculpture in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota popped up.

Mount Rushmore, of course, features 60-foot sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865).

This got me to thinking, what if there was a Mount Rushmore for journalists? Which individuals would best represent the very best of American journalism?

So, I checked in with some prominent journalists to ask who they would put on Mount Rushmore, high above the dense forests and pristine streams of South Dakota.

Before getting to their personal preferences, I listed the four individuals who I thought best represented the "growth, development and preservation'' of American journalism, along with brief biographical sketches.

• Adolph S Ochs

When newspaper publisher and Cincinnati, Ohio native, Adolph Simon Ochs, age 36, bought the New York Times in 1896, he took over a publication whose circulation had plunged to 9,000 readers; with outstanding obligations of $300,000, while losing $1,000 a day.  In addition, it had a number of competitors to contend with.

Unlike other New York City dailies that were blatantly partisan, Ochs insisted his paper concentrate on objective reporting, and steer away from the sensational reporting involving murders, macabre crimes, and the “if it bleeds it leads,” mentality practiced by its chief competitors. He also reduced the price of the newspaper. As a way of consolidating its editorial independence, the Times refused advertising dollars and contracts from governments.

The New York Times under Ochs’ stewardship became the first national "newspaper of record." From 1896 to 1935 daily circulation increased dramatically, so much so that by the 1920s, the newspaper had nearly 800,000 readers.

Ochs was additionally instrumental in keeping his paper up to date with all the latest technology, giving the paper a fresh new look.

Descendants of Ochs still reside over the Times to this day and he will be glad to know his newspaper is still a powerful and influential news source in the 21^st century with a daily circulation of well over one million subscribers. The Times, moreover, have won 94 Pulitzer Prizes, a record seven in 2002 alone.

• Dorothy Thompson

International correspondent and political commentator, Dorothy Thompson, was known to many as the “First Lady of American Journalism”.

Before moving to New York City and launching her journalism career in 1917, she was a fierce Suffragist soon after graduating from Syracuse College in 1914.

During World War I, she became a foreign correspondent, first reporting from Vienna, then was named bureau chief in Berlin during the 1920s for the New York Evening Post.

She was one of the first American correspondents to warn of the terror Adolf Hitler would unleash on Europe. She wrote that the "National Socialist Revolution in Germany would prove to be the most world disturbing event of the century and perhaps of many centuries."

Thompson was back on American soil in 1936; and soon unveiled her widely read "On the Record" syndicated column which ran in the New York Herald Tribune and more than 150 other newspapers from 1936-1958.

Time Magazine ran a cover story on her on June 12, 1939, and described her and Eleanor Roosevelt as being “two of the most influential women in the country.”

• David Broder

David Broder, the "Dean of the Press Corps'' as he was dubbed, covered 11 U.S. Presidents in his famed reporting career, beginning with the Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“The high priest of political journalism “(another of his affectionate nicknames), first landed at the Washington Post in 1966. Previously, he reported for The New York Times, Washington Star and Congressional Quarterly.  He was one of the most prominent political scribes in the nation's capital, who cultivated, according to those who knew him best, some of the most authoritative and wide-ranging sources, from little known precinct officials to senior members of the U.S. Congress. Broder traveled more than 100,000 miles a year on his political beat.

Dan Balz, Chief correspondent covering national politics, the presidency and Congress for the Washington Post, once wrote that Broder "knew the details of everything but never lost sight of the big picture. In an era in which political reporting has become more and more focused on minutiae,'' Balz explained, "he kept his focus where it belonged — on the events and forces that move ordinary Americans and shape history.”

Mr. Broder was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in May 1973 for distinguished commentary, for explaining the importance of the Watergate scandal in a "clear, compelling way."

In a 1990 survey by Washingtonian Magazine, opinion-page editors of the largest 200 newspapers rated Broder as "Best Reporter," "Hardest Working" and "Least Ideological" among 123 columnists.

• Jimmy Breslin

Jimmy Breslin, who began his newspaper career as a sportswriter for the New York Herald Tribune, soon segued into a brash street-wise city reporter and columnist, who didn't write about the rich and famous--but rather--gave voice to the down and out raging through the city, the infamous, marginalized, the unscrupulous, and the deadbeats of society.

Writer Pete Hamill once said of Breslin, "I think he believes that it is his responsibility to let the voiceless have a voice. He's definitely not interested in interviewing [then U.S. Secretary of State] George Shultz."

In 1970, Breslin was viciously attacked by American mobster Paul Vario, who was later portrayed by actor Paul Sorvino in the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas. 

After the Herald Tribune folded, Breslin wrote for the New York Post from 1968-69; then the New York Daily News, from 1978-88, before landing at Newsday in 1988, where he stayed until writing his final column (as a staff member) on November 2, 2004.

The Queens native won a Pulitzer in 1986, when he was with the New York Daily News for a series of columns which "consistently championed ordinary citizens." In an interview, he said he wasn't surprised he won a Pulitzer, but was surprised " he hadn't won at least five Pulitzer's by now."

Some of Breslin's most noteworthy columns, include: interviewing the $3.01 gravedigger, Clifton Pollard, at John F. Kennedy's funeral; and in 1977, covering David Berkowitiz, the infamous "Son of Sam" who was terrorizing the New York City streets. Berkowitz began writing personal letters to Breslin.

Breslin, along with writers Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and others, have often been credited with being the early pioneers who ushered in "New Journalism," that is, a new breed of gifted writers who reported on the social and cultural earthquakes of the 1960s and '70s in newspaper and magazine journalism that read like compelling fiction.

Outside of the newsroom, Breslin wrote a number of books, including: "Can't Anybody Here Play this Game." (about the hapless 1962 New York Mets), "World Without End, Amen: A Novel" "Table Money," the biography "Damon Runyon: A Life," and "I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me," a memoir about his 1994 brain surgery.

Responses from Journalists on Who Should Be Included on the Mount Rushmore of Journalists?

• ) 1.) Horace Greeley 2.) Walter Lippmann 3.) James Reston 4.) Murray Kempton,

—Sam Tanenhaus, American historian, biographer, journalist, and former New York Times Book Editor. He currently is a writer for Prospect, a monthly British general interest magazine.

 

• ) 1.) Ralph McGill would be up there. 2.) H. L. Mencken 3.) Mike Royko.... Still thinking...."

—Bob Ryan, Sports columnist emeritus for the Boston Globe.

 

• ) 1.) Murray Kempton 2.) Nina Bernstein. 3.) Tom Robbins.

 —Jim Dwyer, reporter and columnist for The New York Times

 

• 1.) Don Graham) 2.) James Reston 3.) Katharine Graham 4.) Ben Bradlee  5.) Neil Sheehan 6.) Bob Woodward

—David Ignatius, associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post. 

 

• "I might add Otis Chandler "

—Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times

 

• ) 1.) William Allen White 2.) Edward R. Murrow 3.) Lincoln Steffens 4.) Dorothy Thompson

—George Vecsey, New York Times sports columnist

 

• ) 1.) Ben Bradlee  2.) Abe Rosenthal 3.) Murray Kempton 4.) Mary McGrory

—Warren Hoge, former New York Times reporter and currently vice president for external relations at the International Peace Institute, a New York-based think tank.

 

• ) 1.) Meyer Berger 2.) Edward R Murrow 3.) David Halberstam 4.) Thomas Nast

—Doug Clifton, former executive editor of The Miami Herald and Cleveland Plain Dealer

 

• "I’d be happy with Katharine Graham up there solo"

—Anne Kornblut, a Pulitzer Prize–winning recipient at the Washington Post, currently serving as director of strategic communications for Facebook.

 

• ) 1.) Murray Kempton 2.) A.J. Liebling 3.) I. F. Stone 4.) Edward R. Murrow 5.) Ida B. Wells, 6.) James Gordon Bennett 7.) Don Hewitt 8.) Adolph Ochs

—Sam Roberts, Urban Affairs Correspondent for The New York Times

 

• ) 1.) Ida Tarbell  2.) Carol Loomis 3.) Bob Woodward

—Clifton Leaf, Editor for Fortune Magazine

 

• 1.) Max Frankel ) Ben Bradlee 3.) Kay Graham

—Norman Ornstein, political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

 

• ) 1.) Bob Woodward (and Carl Bernstein) 2.) Mike Royko  3.) Jimmy Breslin 4.) Katharine Graham /Adolph Ochs “in owner wing.”

—Dave Hyde, award-winning sports columnist for the South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper, the main daily newspaper of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

 

             —Bill Lucey

            [email protected]

            October 4, 2018

Comments

[George Vecsey]

Bill, great enlarged Mount Rushmore of respondents, too.
omigosh, I forgot Murray Kempton. He was my model for writing columns, although he wrote about Mayor Lindsey and Ho Chi Minh and I wrote about Ali and BJ King. Nobody ever wrote about trials and public hearings than Kempton, a waspy-looking guy, rode a bike downtown to courts, and I got to know him in 80s and 90s, was proud that he knew who I was. GV