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This
cartoon reveals the political importance and independence of the Brooklyn
Eagle at the turn of the twentieth century. The Eagle building (top-center) is depicted as the local
office of the U.S. Weather Bureau, which the two presidential candidates
in 1904 contact for predictions on the upcoming election.
Telephoning from their respective country estates, Republican
Theodore Roosevelt (left) and Democrat Alton B. Parker
(right), seek the political forecast from the Brooklyn Eagle
editor, St. Clair McKelway (center), who speaks with both simultaneously
from the “Eagle Counting Room.”
The Brooklyn Eagle was
founded as a Democratic Party organ in 1841, and was edited by Walt
Whitman in 1846-1848. At
the onset of the Civil War in April 1861, it had the highest circulation
of any afternoon newspaper in the nation.
By that August, denunciation of the Union war effort landed the Eagle
and other New York metropolitan publications before a grand jury
on charges of disloyalty.
Although not indicted, the postal service refused to distribute
the papers, but reversed its decision in the case of the Brooklyn
Eagle after editor Henry McCloskey resigned the next day.
The new editor, Thomas Kinsella,
steered a more cautious course, but continued criticizing the Lincoln
administration. After the war, the Eagle promoted construction of the
Brooklyn Bridge (opened in 1883), and Kinsella eventually broke with the
city’s Democratic machine, calling for the ouster of Boss Hugh
McLaughlin and endorsing Seth Low, a Republican
reformer, for mayor in 1881.
In the late-nineteenth and
early-twentieth century, the Brooklyn Eagle reached the height of
its influence under editor St. Clair McKelway.
In 1905, Lord Northcliffe, publisher of the London Evening
News and the London Daily Mail, remarked that the Brooklyn
Eagle was “the only non-metropolitan newspaper--and I use the
phrase to distinguish it from the Manhattan dailies--that is known in
England and France.”
McKelway was born in Columbia,
Missouri, and in 1853 moved to Trenton, New Jersey, where he was
educated by his grandfather. Young McKelway attended New Jersey State Normal School, and
then studied law, passing the bar in 1866.
In the late 1860s, he was a reporter for the Trenton True
American, the Trenton Monitor, the New York Tribune,
the New York World, and the Brooklyn Eagle, serving as the
Washington correspondent for the latter two publications.
Thereafter, he rose to the position of editorial writer for the Brooklyn
Eagle (1870-1878) and the Albany Argus (1878-1884).
In 1884, the Brooklyn Eagle
hired McKelway as its editor-in-chief, and he resumed writing the
paper’s editorials. He
was characterized as “a field marshal of the pen,” who adhered to
the “strategy which deals the mightiest possible frontal blows at the
chosen point of attack.” The
opinionated McKelway also became a favorite after-dinner speaker.
He instilled a more business-like atmosphere at the publication
and, as the featured cartoon attests, introduced modern technology by encouraging telephone interviews
and fact checking and by giving each reporter a typewriter.
Like editor Kinsella before
him, McKelway's political principles were that of an independent-minded
Democrat, supporting the policies of President Grover Cleveland, but rallying the public against the corrupt Coney Island kingpin,
John
McKane. In an
1889 editorial, McKelway stated his belief that “The newspaper should
rise from the role of holding a brief for or against either party to the
more judicial function of sitting in judgment on both or on all
parties.”
During the 1890s, the Eagle
stood firmly, though unsuccessfully, against Brooklyn’s absorption
into Greater New York (achieved in 1897).
It was not against consolidation per se, however, since the paper
envisioned an expanding Brooklyn annexing communities eastward into Long
Island. Until his death in
1915, McKelway made sure that the Brooklyn Eagle promoted civic
pride in Brooklyn and maintained a large degree of political
independence. It ceased publication with the issue of January 28,
1955.
Robert C. Kennedy
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