Herbert Bayard Swope
| Herbert Bayard Swope | |
|---|---|
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Swope circa 1917
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| Born | January 5, 1882 |
| Died | June 20, 1958 (aged 76) |
| Occupation | Editor, Journalist |
| Nationality | American |
Herbert Bayard Swope Sr. (January 5, 1882 – June 20, 1958) was a U.S. editor, journalist and intimate of the Algonquin Round Table. Swope spent most of his career at the New York World newspaper. He was the first and three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting. Swope was called the greatest reporter of his time by Lord Northcliffe of the London Daily Mail.
Herbert Bayard (pronounced "by-ard") Swope was born January 5, 1882 in St. Louis, Missouri, to German immigrants Ida Cohn and Isaac Swope, a watchcase maker. He was the youngest of four children – the younger brother of businessman and General Electric president Gerard Swope. As a child, Swope was a loner.
Swope was the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1917 for a series of articles that year entitled "Inside the German Empire" The articles formed the basis for a book released in 1917 entitled Inside the German Empire: In the Third Year of the War, which he wrote with James W. Gerard.
He is known for saying, "I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time." He is also credited with coining the phrase "Cold War".
He was the first newspaperman to employ the "op-ed" concept of opinion pieces printed opposite the editorial page.
Although standard editorial pages have been printed by newspapers for many centuries, Swope established the first modern op-ed page in 1921. When he took over as editor in 1920, he realized that the page opposite the editorials, was "a catchall for book reviews, society boilerplate, and obituaries." He wrote:
"It occurred to me that nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting, so I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial, which became the most important in America... and thereon I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts."
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