Oral History Interview with Gerard Harrington, 1976 May 7

Contents List

Container Title
Tape No.   1
Side   1
How he entered newspaper business
Scope and Content Note: Early 1920s atmosphere that led people to newspapers; how he learned to write news stories; his first story.
Tape No.   1
Side   1
A newspaper's function
Tape No.   1
Side   1
Comparing his working at Newark, N.J. to working at Worcester, Mass.
Scope and Content Note: Why he went to Newark; Ledger's staff makeup at the time; general life in Newark; newspaperman's self concept then and now; today's news writers.
Tape No.   1
Side   1
Investigative reporting
Scope and Content Note: Way it works; Woodward and Bernstein; Waterbury Republican's 1940 Pulitzer Prize and the story behind it.
Tape No.   1
Side   1
Working at a smaller newspaper
Scope and Content Note: Importance of small papers; similarities between different size newspapers throughout the country; Meriden Record's quality of local coverage; small-town editor image.
Tape No.   1
Side   1
Outside influences on newspapers for which he worked
Scope and Content Note: Publisher's influence; William Pape's philosophy; Governor Cross on Pape; politician's influence; parents' influence; cutting corners with news judgement.
Tape No.   1
Side   1
How page one has changed over the past 50 years
Scope and Content Note: Original reason for big headlines; reasons for their diminishing in size; modern layout.
Tape No.   1
Side   2
Major force in horizontal layout of front page
Scope and Content Note: New York Herald Tribune in 1950s; influence of London; copied throughout the United States; inner page layout changes; New York Times layout today.
Tape No.   1
Side   2
East Coast style of journalism
Scope and Content Note: New England style; New York City style.
Tape No.   1
Side   2
Audience changes from 1920s to present
Scope and Content Note: 1920s was finale of life without fear; better education for both reader and writer; cultural assimilation over time.
Tape No.   1
Side   2
His admiration of Charlie McGurk, of Boston American
Scope and Content Note: Story of adoption of motorized hearses; McGurk's Hearst lead for same story.
Tape No.   1
Side   2
Public's right to know
Scope and Content Note: Newspaper's responsibility; enemy of the government; daily play of stories because of economics; Keene, N.H. and the problems of being managing editor; composing room anecdote; Keene Board of Education closed-meeting controversy.
Tape No.   1
Side   2
The Great Depression
Scope and Content Note: Stock Market crash; gloominess of life during the 1930s; Roosevelt's impact on Americans; the New Deal; newsman's perspective of recovery.
Tape No.   1
Side   2
His work with the British War Relief Society
Scope and Content Note: His staff and its clout; promotion of the Society's propaganda into the press and radio; nationwide development of committees and amount of money they made; his job as national publicity director.
Tape No.   1
Side   2
His career on New Haven Register
Scope and Content Note: Assistant to telegraph editor; being too good at the job; being appointed city editor after six months; getting job as managing editor of Journal-Courier.
Tape No.   2
Side   1
Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan interviews
Scope and Content Note: Darrow: personality description; thoughts on capital punishment. Bryan: strangeness of interview; idiosyncratic objects in the room.
Tape No.   2
Side   1
War Reporting
Scope and Content Note: World War II: coverage was running history; Korea; Vietnam: correspondents' disgust.
Tape No.   2
Side   1
Radio and Television's effect on newspapers
Scope and Content Note: Major factor in newspapers' extended in-depth reporting; differences between broadcast and print journalism; where television news money comes from; conversational nature of news over the air; second-guessing himself by monitoring television news and reading other newspapers.
Tape No.   2
Side   1
News control
Scope and Content Note: Governmental pressures on electronic medium; newspaper tradition.
Tape No.   2
Side   1
News Competition
Scope and Content Note: Situation in Wallingford, Conn.; self-competition of Washington Post; wire service improvements; Associated Press Managing Editors Association's influence on the service; United Press International's bargaining themselves to death.
Tape No.   2
Side   1
News reporting and news creation
Scope and Content Note: New York Graphic; television's reporting alters news incidents more than newspaper's report does; photojournalism's importance; circulation and newspaper improvement.
Tape No.   2
Side   1
Touching on persons he knew through the business.
Tape No.   2
Side   1
Presidents and the press
Scope and Content Note: Good Presidents exploit the press.
Tape No.   2
Side   1
High-quality newspapers he has admired
Scope and Content Note: New York World he would read after work in Worcester; New York Times and Washington Post.
Tape No.   2
Side   1
Journalism Schools
Scope and Content Note: Columbia School of Journalism, Medill, University of Missouri; not as good as they think they are; good general education is much more important.
Tape No.   2
Side   2
His move from the New Haven Register to the Journal-Courier
Scope and Content Note: History of John Day Jackson in New Haven journalism: worked on Register as young man, bought it, began to build it; Journal-Courier was failing; Jackson bought it but left it as it was; he continued building the Register, wiped out competition. Jackson's sons, Richard and Lionel, took over management of papers; Journal-Courier was doing poorly; Harrington was first to try to improve it; made gradual improvements rather than abrupt ones; hired new staff of reporters; hired Richard Harris to increase revenue; developed combination advertising in both newspapers; typographical changes; Harrington's thinking like a printer while being an editor; operation of The New Yorker similar to that of Journal-Courier; Thanksgiving Day and filling the paper; people finally took the paper seriously.
Tape No.   2
Side   2
The tabloid
Scope and Content Note: Invented with subway readers in mind; condenses reporting, leaving out background.
Tape No.   2
Side   2
Newspaper foldings
Scope and Content Note: New York papers and limited advertising spread over all of them; aggravated by typographical union problems; in past, over-supply of often unnecessary newspapers; very expensive to run a newspaper today.
Tape No.   2
Side   2
Recent printing advances
Scope and Content Note: Letterpress press conversion procedure to photo composition, and operation description.
Tape No.   2
Side   2
Public Broadcasting and public newspapers
Scope and Content Note: Government interference would create a public scandal; in newspapers, government interference would lead to loss of independence and loss of adversary role newspapers must necessarily take.
Tape No.   2
Side   2
Chain ownership
Scope and Content Note: Doesn't necessarily mean loss of independence and local strength; singly-owned papers similar to chains because of syndicated features.
Tape No.   2
Side   2
Newspaper dynamics
Scope and Content Note: Changed greatly since Hearst and Pulitzer, though still employs their innovations; Chicago Tribune's liberalization; changes with the people-and the times; bright future for papers.