June 14, 2007

Associated Press, in new book, examines its history

By ERIN McCLAM
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- In a neglected vault buried under New York's Rockefeller Center -- a hot and musty space with little space between rows of rusted-shut file cabinets -- The Associated Press found pieces of history.

The unearthing of thousands of documents, fragments of the 161-year history of the news cooperative, led to the publication of a new history of the AP -- the first since the outbreak of World War II.

"Breaking News: How The Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace and Everything Else" tells the stories behind AP's documentation of world events since 1846, from James K. Polk to George W. Bush, the Civil War to Iraq.

"These are the stories of the storytellers," said Valerie Komor, director of AP's corporate archives, who has led an effort to centralize and organize the papers and artifacts that tell the news agency's story.

The papers were retrieved from storage space under 50 Rockefeller Plaza, the AP's headquarters from 1938 until 2004, when the cooperative moved to 450 W. 33rd St.

The notion of an updated book emerged as the AP began sifting through its own history -- interoffice memos, correspondence between its main office and bureaus, letters from newspaper members.

"As we began to dig into this, we discovered how big the treasure chest was," said Tom Curley, AP's president and CEO.

The 432-page result, published by Princeton Architectural Press, traces a history of the United States and the world, from Custer's defeat at the hands of the Sioux to the stories that define modern life.

The book was written by current and former Associated Press reporters and editors, and is illustrated with nearly 200 classic photos.

It is populated by characters like Joseph I. Gilbert, who approached Abraham Lincoln after he delivered the Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19, 1863, asked the president whether he could borrow the document, and wrote it up for the AP.

And Kathryn Johnson, of the AP's Atlanta bureau, who cooked meals in the home of Martin Luther King Jr. during the days after his 1968 slaying, filing dispatches for AP on the family's mourning _ part of years covering the civil rights movement.

"We wanted the book to be a general interest book as much as possible," said Kelly Smith Tunney, a former AP vice president who, before her retirement, coordinated the efforts to expand the agency's archives and update its oral histories.

"We wanted to define the book in a way that would allow us to tell a moving story about how we do our business, and yet make it interesting, make a narrative out of it," she said.

Still, Curley himself noted in the preface to "Breaking News" that AP's effort since 2003 to unearth more of its own past turned up some unattractive snippets of history. During the civil rights era, for example, newspaper editors had pressured the AP to scratch the courtesy title "Mrs." before the names of black women.

Among other chapters, the book includes examinations of how the AP has covered sports, elections, aviation and disasters -- including AP's description of the World Trade Center site as "ground zero" in an early-afternoon report on Sept. 11, 2001.

The foreword was contributed by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam, who was killed in a car crash in California in April. He wrote admiringly of the AP reporters who covered the Vietnam War.

Since the last comprehensive history of the AP, Oliver Gramling's 1940 "AP: The Story of News," two other substantial projects had been mounted -- one in the 1970s and one in the 1980s -- but neither was published.

"The other books had been sort of chronological -- start at the beginning, go to the end," said Walter R. Mears, who reported for the AP for a half-century, helped lead the project and contributed a "brief history" of the cooperative for the book.

"It was my thinking that where they failed to grab attention and become what they hoped they would be, it was too much about the organization and not enough about the stories, since the interesting thing about the AP is what we cover," Mears said.

Among the finds as AP delved into its own history, a collection of 19th-century documents revealed the cooperative was actually two years older than commonly believed, dating to 1846 rather than 1848.

The documents showed that an owner-publisher of the original New York Sun had offered to share news of the Mexican-American War with rival newspapers -- a cooperative that ultimately evolved into the AP.

As the updated history of AP hits bookshelves, its corporate archives are more carefully tended today, set among row after row of cabinets in an antiseptic, climate-controlled chamber below the AP's new headquarters.

Curley said that the archives initiative and book show that while news technology has shifted, repeatedly and tumultuously, since the 19th century, the critical mission of what journalists do has remained the same.

"The need to speak truth to power, the need to ask tough questions, the need to put half an idea with half of a tip together to figure out what really happened, that takes special work and special commitment," he said.

He added: "To see that that has endured over more than a century and a half was actually inspiring, especially in this moment of great media change."

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On the Net:

AP: http://www.ap.org

Princeton Architectural Press: http://www.papress.com

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January 31, 2006

19th-century papers shed new light on origin of The Associated Press

By RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - A collection of 19th-century documents newly acquired by The Associated Press shows that the world's largest newsgathering organization traces its origins to 1846, two years earlier than traditionally accepted by journalism historians and the AP itself.

The documents were provided to the AP's corporate archives by Brewster Yale Beach, a great-great-grandson of Moses Yale Beach, the second owner-publisher of the original New York Sun and the driving force in creating the alliance of newspapers sharing news dispatches that became known as The Associated Press.

The papers show that, in May 1846, Beach offered to share news from the U.S. war with Mexico with rival newspapers. The resulting agreement formed the basis for cooperative news gathering by telegraph just as Samuel F.B. Morse's revolutionary invention began a swift expansion throughout the country, linking New York to points north, west, and south.

Those agreements evolved into the AP that today has 4,000 employees and delivers news around the clock to more than 130 countries and 1 billion readers, listeners and viewers.

A copy of Moses Sperry Beach's June 1872 memorandum is shown in this undated photo. In the memorandum, Moses Sperry Beach describes an 1846 arrangement whereby Mexican war reports arriving at Mobile, Ala., by boat were rushed by special pony express to Montgomery, then 700 miles by U.S. mail stagecoach to the southern terminus of the telegraph near Richmond, Va. The collection of 19th-century documents newly acquired by The Associated Press shows that the world's largest newsgathering organization traces its origins to 1846, two years earlier than traditionally accepted by journalism historians and the AP itself. The collection is on display at The Associated Press' headquarters in New York. (AP Photo)

Historically, the AP has dated its origins to a meeting of New York City publishers at the Sun office in May 1848. According to the Beach documents, the inaugural meeting took place two years earlier, with the agreement to share news from the war with Mexico.

"These documents are a significant discovery, not only for the historical record of The Associated Press but because they also reaffirm the AP's fundamental role, covering the news in war and peace, as envisioned by the member newspapers that created it," said Tom Curley, AP's president and CEO.

For scholars of the era, they clarify what historian Richard Schwarzlose called "maddeningly imprecise" and conflicting information about the AP's origins.

Schwarzlose, author of the 1989 book "The Nation's Newsbrokers," was among historians who had accepted the 1848 date, as was former AP executive Oliver Gramling, whose 1940 book, "AP: The Story of News," has served the AP as its official history.

The key document in the Beach collection is a June 1872 memorandum by Moses Yale Beach's son, Moses Sperry Beach.

In the memorandum, Moses Sperry Beach describes an 1846 arrangement whereby Mexican war reports arriving at Mobile, Ala., by boat were rushed by special pony express to Montgomery, then 700 miles by U.S. mail stagecoach to the southern terminus of the telegraph near Richmond, Va. That express gave the Sun an edge of 24 hours or more on papers using the regular mail.

But Moses Yale Beach relinquished that advantage by inviting other New York publishers to join the Sun in a cooperative venture. Five papers joined in the agreement: the Sun, the Journal of Commerce, the Courier and Enquirer, the Herald and the Express.

The occasion for his son's memorandum, notes on the back of it indicate, was the death of James Gordon Bennett, the flamboyant publisher of the New York Herald. Bennett's boast of having effected the founding of the AP, dating it to 1848, had gained credence through repetition.

In an interview in the New York World of Jan. 20, 1884, Moses Sperry Beach said the Mexican War express "was the beginning of The Associated Press. It all grew out of this."

Moses Yale Beach's decision to share news with rivals was "neither altruistic nor cost-driven," but recognized that "nothing could compete with the telegraph for speed, and all newspapers, rich or poor, would now be on a par," historian Menahem Blondheim said.

Blondheim first cited the Beach documents as evidence of the AP's 1846 origins in his 1994 book "News Over The Wires." Blondheim's correction of AP's founding date, tucked into the narrative, received little attention.

Brewster Yale Beach, an 80-year-old Episcopal priest and Jungian psychotherapist who lives in Millbrook, N.Y., said recently that he "never really got serious" about the family papers until AP executives expressed interest in acquiring them for the news agency's corporate archives.

"I'm most happy that the telling letter of Moses Yale didn't get lost in the shuffle down the decades and that it is safely in AP's hands," he said.

The 1872 memorandum is the most important of the 11 items in the collection, said Valerie Komor, director of the AP archives.

"Most journalism historians have accepted the 1848 date, based on evidence at hand. But the Beach memorandum allows us to accept with confidence an 1846 dating for the AP's beginnings," Komor said.

Compared to the newspapers it served, the early AP remained a low-profile organization. Yet as the first news organization to operate on a national scale, its influence was profound from the beginning.

"Through the newspapers, it connected all Americans by a common stream of instantaneous information, fostering a national outlook. It represented one of the most powerful integrating forces shaping American society in the modern era," said Blondheim, a professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and currently visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

The date change comes as AP continues organizing long-neglected historical corporate records following its 2004 move from Rockefeller Plaza, its home for 67 years, to a new world headquarters on Manhattan's west side.

A team of nearly 20 writers, editors and researchers is working on a new history of the AP, updating Gramling's "AP: The Story of News."
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On the Net: http://www.ap.org

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