- Shopping Bag ( 0 items )
Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, the Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism [NOOK Book]
( 3 )
One of the forgotten titans in American journalism, Barney Kilgore is the subject of a new book by Tofel, a former assistant publisher of the Wall Street Journal and author of Sounding the Trumpet. A Midwesterner from Indiana, Kilgore emerged from smalltown America to rise through the ranks at the Wall Street Journal on the eve of the Great Depression. Through the war years of the 1940s into the Cold War era, he reshaped the publication's news focus, visuals, composition, circulation and advertising. He championed a unique style of journalism as its top executive, with keen instincts, intelligence and a progressive view, transforming the broadsheet into a first-class national business newspaper. Innovative and unyielding, Kilgore had one of his finest moments when he faced down General Motors in a controversial 1954 advertising spat, bolstering the newspaper's reputation. Tofel's excellent work on this pivotal figure in journalism is a significant addition to the seminal books on American media. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.While Barney Kilgore might not be widely known to many outside of the newspaper industry, the Wall Street Journal, which evolved out of his lifetime of hard work, is certainly known to businesspeople and informed readers around the world. The story of Kilgore and this influential newspaper is captured in a compelling biography by Tofel (Legend in the Making: The New York Yankees in 1939), former managing editor and assistant publisher of the Journal. This is not only an account of one man's life during the Depression and the New Deal but also a history of the Journal in particular and business and financial newspapers in general. The cutting-edge ideas and writing style that Kilgore developed transformed the paper from a narrowly focused financial bulletin to the leading business news source it is today. What makes this work especially appealing is the incorporation of the many letters Kilgore wrote to his father, giving the reader a glimpse into this esteemed newsman's way of thinking about his newspaper and the news of the day. Recommended for all libraries, especially those with business and communications collections.
—Donna Marie Smith
Introduction 1
1 Hoosier Beginnings 5
2 A Newspaper's Origins 17
3 "Dear George" 28
4 Covering the Great Depression 48
5 "What's News" 71
6 Washington 85
7 Managing Editor 108
8 Over the Hump 126
9 The Boom Begins 147
10 "A Classic in the History of Newspapering" 161
11 National Success 177
12 A Newspaper with "Flair" 185
13 Interrupted 197
Epilogue 207
Notes 213
Sources 249
Acknowledgments 253
Index 257
Anonymous
Posted January 7, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
The story of the man who transformed The Wall Street Journal and modern media
In 1929, Barney Kilgore, fresh from college in small-town Indiana, took a sleepy, near bankrupt New York financial paper—The Wall Street Journal—and turned it into a thriving national newspaper that eventually was worth $5 billion to Rupert Murdoch. Kilgore then invented a national weekly newspaper that was a precursor of many trends we see playing out in journalism now.
Tofel brings this story of a little-known pioneer to life using many previously uncollected newspaper ...