Raymond Gram Swing

Raymond Gram Swing (March 25, 1887 – December 22, 1968) was an American print and broadcast journalist. He was one of the most influential news commentators of his era, heard by people worldwide as a leading American voice from Britain during World War II. Known originally as Raymond Swing, he adopted his wife's last name in 1919 and became known as Raymond Gram Swing.

Swing was born in Cortland, New York on March 25, 1887. He attended Oberlin College in Ohio, where his father was a professor of theology. As a youth, Swing was the proverbial "minister's son" and felt unable to live up to his parents' high expectations. Describing himself during his student days as "a prankster who found freshman math 'totally incomprehensible,'" Swing only lasted for a year at Oberlin. He later expressed gratitude for "how much Oberlin had given me—in music, in the first interest I had in the other arts, and in the basic liberalism of racial and sexual equality." "Just being a part of Oberlin gave me an innate sense of the political equality of men and women—all men and all women."

After leaving Oberlin, Swing worked briefly in a barber shop. His first foray into journalism came at age 19, in 1906 with the Cleveland Press. This was followed by stints at the The Richmond (Indiana) Evening News, the Indianapolis Star and The Cincinnati Times-Star. Determined to prove himself after what he saw as his early failure, he worked to the point of exhaustion. His career was meteoric. At age 23 he became Managing editor of the Indianapolis Sun. Then he was named London bureau chief for the Philadelphia Public Ledger. He also wrote for the journal The Nation during this time.

By 1913, Swing was working as Berlin and Germany bureau chief for the Chicago Daily News. When World War I broke out in 1914, he covered major battles and was the first to report on the existence of Big Bertha, a massive 420 mm artillery cannon. In 1915 the Chicago Daily News sent him to Turkey, where his coverage of the attack on the Dardanelles and other stories made him legendary.

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