BENNETT, JAMES GORDON American journalist, founder and editor of the New York Herald, was born at Newmills, Banffshire, Scotland, in 1i95. He was educated for the Roman Catholic priesthood in a seminary at Aberdeen, but in the spring of 1819 he emigrated to America. After earning a meagre living as teacher, proof-reader and translator in Halifax (Nova Scotia), Boston, New York and Charleston (S.C.), he returned to New York, where he projected a school, gave lectures on political economy and did subordinate work for the journals. During the next ten years he was employed on various papers, was the Washington correspondent of the New York Enquirer and associate editor of the Courier and Enquirer, his articles attracting much attention. He founded the short-lived Globe in New York in 1832 ; and in 1833-34 was the chief editor and one of the proprietors of the Pennsylvanian at Philadelphia. On May 6 1835, he published the first number of a small one-cent paper bearing the title of New York Herald and issuing from a cellar in which the proprietor and editor played also the part of salesman.
In his initial issue he outlined his policy : "We shall support no party—be the agent of no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election, or any candidate from president down to con stable"; and to this he consistently adhered. By his industry, and sagacity he made the paper a great commercial success. He devoted attention particularly to the gathering of news and was the first to introduce many of the methods of the modern American reporter. He published on June 13 1835, the first Wall Street financial article to appear in any American newspaper; printed a vivid and detailed account of the great fire of Dec. in New York; was the first, in 1846, to obtain the report in full by telegraph of a long political speech ; during the Civil War maintained a large staff of war correspondents ; and was a leader in the use of illustrations. Bennett continued to edit the Herald almost till his death on June I 187 2.
His son, JAMES GORDON BENNETT (1841-1918), born May 10 1841, and educated abroad and by private tutors, shared his father's burdens after 1866, and succeeded his father in the control of the Herald. He founded the Evening Telegram, established a daily edition of the Herald in London and later in Paris, sent Henry M. Stanley on his mission to find Livingstone in Central Africa, fitted out the "Jeannette" Polar Expedition, and in 1883 organized (with John W. Mackay) the Commercial Cable Com pany. On May 14 1918, he died in France, whence he had long directed the policies of the New York Herald. In his will he provided for the establishment of the James Gordon Bennett Memorial Home for New York journalists, in memory of his father.
See I. C. Pray's Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and His Times (1855) ; also shorter accounts in James Parton's Famous Americans of Recent Times (1867) ; W. G. Bleyer's Main Currents in the History of American Journalism (1927) and 0. G. Villard's Some Newspapers and Newspaper Men (1926). The best biography is D. C. Seitz, The James Gordon Bennetts (1928). Personal impressions are given by A. S. Crockett, When James Gordon Bennett Was Caliph of Bagdad (1926).