Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [140]
“Joe got so abusive that I got at him and knocked him down, and then discharged him on the spot,” Pulitzer admitted to reporters from rival newspapers who chased him down later that day. But, he added, “I wouldn’t for the world hurt Joe, so don’t say anything about it, please.” Naturally, however, the fisticuffs made the front pages of the city’s papers, except for the restrained New York Times. The New York Herald, where Howard had once worked, wrote the incident up like a prizefight, complete with diagrams and sporting-style commentary.
Howard was not the only talent Pulitzer had plucked from Bennett’s staff at the Herald. While Bennett was in Paris, Pulitzer had persuaded the Herald’s managing editor, Ballard Smith, to move over to the World. When Bennett returned, he was so angry that he abolished the job, though others ended up doing the work under a different title.
Bennett’s wrath was understandable. In the competitive atmosphere of Park Row, staffing remained a constant worry. Reporters were not hard to come by and most jumped at the chance to work for the World. But editors were another matter. “It is the man,” Pulitzer said, “who decides what is to go into the paper and what is to be left out, and in what shape it is to go in, who has more to do with making the newspaper than the man who simply writes for it.” The problem of finding the right editors was even more vexing for Pulitzer than for most publishers because the success of the World rested on an approach to news for which most editors were not trained. Pulitzer was betting that Ballard Smith would take to it.
Smith was a Kentuckian who had once worked for Pulitzer’s friend Henry Watterson at the Louisville Courier-Journal. After coming to New York, Smith served briefly as an editor on the old World before going to the Herald. Debonair, with an aura of erudition from his education at Dartmouth, he married the only daughter of a wealthy merchant and gained an entrée rare for a journalist into the city’s close-knit social life—from which the Pulitzers were excluded.
Although Smith cut an unusual figure in the crass, tumultuous world of a newspaper’s city room, Pulitzer recognized in him news instincts similar to his own. Smith was daring, a master of headlines, and, most important, willing to be trained. “I have tried faithfully to reflect exactly your views,” Smith wrote to Pulitzer not long after joining the paper. “I confess they often conflicted much with what I thought I knew well before.”
Smith, however, did not hit it off with Cockerill, who felt threatened. Like two feral dogs, they circled each other. This was not displeasing to Pulitzer. He had no interest in building a team. Rather, he preferred having managers who competed with one another and for his approbation. Without making himself superfluous, he was taking the first steps toward assembling a structure of management that could run the paper without him.
With Cockerill overseeing the entire operation, Smith enforcing Pulitzer’s approach to news gathering, and Merrill writing editorials, Pulitzer was freed from the day-to-day operation of the paper. The change was a necessity. He had become irascible and moody, and his health woes grew more and more apparent to those around him. “Won’t you have enough confidence to let us run the place?” asked George Turner, a Bostonian, whom Pulitzer had hired as a business manager. “I am writing this to beg you to cease worrying about the paper and, if a sea voyage is possible, to take a long one where it will be impossible to get reports or issue directions.”
Pulitzer booked tickets to Liverpool for April 16.
While Pulitzer waited to depart for Europe, the needs of the paper weighed heavily on him. The libel suits continued to swarm like gnats, despite Pulitzer’s interminable precautions, including reading almost every word that went into the paper. The World Almanac also required his attention. He had revived the encyclopedic work, which was originally published by the