The Birth of War Reporting
George Washburn joined the New York Tribune as a rookie reporter soon after the American Civil War broke out in 1861. He was assigned to follow the Union army’s commander, General George McClellan, to assess his ability to prevent the Rebel army under Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson from rampaging in Maryland and occupying the capital, Washington. After scrapes and scraps at the bloody Battle of Antietam, Washburn rides horseback, train and ferry to New York to deliver his account of the action, his assessment of the generals and his analyses of whether the state of the conflict will allow President Lincoln to add freedom for slaves to his war aims.
The Civil War created immense thirst for news which was eagerly satisfied by newspaper proprietors already engaged in circulation wars. Larger and faster presses printed millions of papers and illustrated weeklies for millions of literate Americans and their armies on the move. Railroads and their accompanying electric telegraphs spread news – and fake news - across the continent. The Tribune published Washburn’s scoop in a special edition on Saturday 20 September 1862, two and a half days after the battle ended. It was syndicated to 180 papers across the world.
That night George Washburn, the Father of War Reporters, celebrated with his fellow correspondents, the self-styled Bohemians, in their favourite watering hole at Pfaff’ Cave under Broadway – in the arms of Ida Godiva, the bareback rider from Vaudeville.
Christopher Dodd is a journalist specialising in rowing and author of books on its history from Viking times. Watermen serviced communities wherever there was water to cross and goods to carry until sail and steam sank them. In the 1860s rowing became a sport for amateurs, a time when books and newspapers boomed on both sides of the Atlantic. Rowing men were numerous among society’s higher strata, including the journalists s and proprietors in the pages of News Fit To Print.
Endorsements
Belinda Gledhill
‘I really enjoyed this fast-paced story of the American Civil War, told from the point of view of one of the very first war reporters. Having lived in Alexandria and visited some of the Civil War battlefields, I was absorbed by the story of the men who dogged the footsteps of the various generals and endured danger and hardship to get the true story of events into the newspapers.’