James Gordon Bennett Junior

James Gordon Bennett Jr.

James Gordon Bennett Jr. (born May 10, 1841 in New York City , † May 14, 1918 in Beaulieu-sur-Mer , France ) was an American newspaper publisher. To distinguish it from his father of the same name, he was usually called Gordon Bennett . He became famous for his enthusiasm for sports ( polo , regatta sailing , automobile sports and ballooning ). An expression of astonishment in British English goes back to him: "Gordon Bennett!".

Life

Bennett was the son and heir of the same name founder and editor of the New York Herald , James Gordon Bennett Sr. He joined the Army of the Northern States in the American Civil War , but did not take part in any combat. In 1866 he took over responsibility for the publishing house.

He initiated and financed several trips to little-known parts of the world, e.g. B. to Africa or the Arctic to increase the circulation of his newspaper with exclusive reports. He created the demand for information which he subsequently satisfied. His first major attempt at creating exclusive news was sending his reporter Henry Morton Stanley to Central Africa to look for the missing Scottish missionary and doctor David Livingstone . Bennett knew that finding Livingstone, who had had no contact with the western world for years, would be a big story. Stanley was successful and was sent back to Africa together by the New York Herald and the London Daily Telegraph in 1874 to find the source of the Nile. He succeeded in clearing up the most important outstanding questions about the location of the great rivers and lakes in Central Africa.

When whalers brought rumors about as yet unknown papers by John Franklin that were supposed to be in a stone monument on King William Island , Bennett initiated a privately funded expedition to retrieve these papers. The Herald journalist William H. Gilder (1838–1900) took part in the venture led by Frederick Schwatka , which was successful and efficient by adopting Eskimo survival techniques . Numerous relics of the Franklin expedition were found on a 5240 km sleigh journey , but no new documents.

In 1879 Bennett equipped the tragically ending expedition of the Jeannette under George W. DeLong over the Bering Strait to the North Pole . He declared it as a rescue expedition for Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld , who was on the Vega on the way through the Northeast Passage . The reporter Jerome Collins (1841–1881) was on board the Jeannette as a representative of the Herald . After the loss of the ship, 20 expedition members died of starvation. DeLong had previously named Bennett Island in the East Siberian Sea after its sponsor. Bennett sent the USS Rodgers out to rescue DeLong, and Gilder did the only dramatic reports for the paper. Another reporter for the Herald , John P. Jackson, traveled to the Lena Delta and exhumed the bodies of DeLong and his comrades.

After Bennett settled in Paris, he began editing the International Herald Tribune . He was the co-founder of the Commercial Cable Company . This daring venture was intended to break the Transatlantic Cable Company's monopoly held by Jay Gould .

Bennett returned to the United States and organized the first American polo tournament at the Dickels Riding Academy on Fifth Avenue in New York . He helped found the first American polo club , the Westchester Polo Club , in 1876. He donated the Gordon Bennett Cup as a trophy for an international sailing race and the Gordon Bennett Cup for automobile racing. In 1906 he donated a trophy for balloon races, the Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett , which still exists today. The 1909 Gordon Bennett Trophée d'aviation , a prize for airplane races, goes back to him.

Memorial stone to the race named after Bennett at the Saalburg

At the age of 73, Bennett married Baroness de Reuter, the daughter of Paul Julius Reuter , founder of the Reuters news agency . Bennet was buried in the Cimetière de Passy in Paris. Nearby is the Stade Roland Garros , the tennis stadium that hosts the annual French Open tennis tournament , on Avenue Gordon Bennett. After his death, his newspaper New York Herald was merged with the rival New York Tribune to form the New York Herald Tribune .

literature

• Oliver Carlson: The Man Who Made News: James Gordon Bennett. (1942)
• Don C. Seitz: The James Gordon Bennetts, Father and Son. (1928)
• Günter Schmitt / Werner Schwipps: Pioneers of early aviation , Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1995, ISBN 3-8112-1189-7
• Beau Riffenburgh: Bennett, James Gordon, Jr. In: Mark Nuttall (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Arctic . tape 1-3 . Routledge, New York and London 2005, ISBN 0-203-99785-9 , pp. 230–232 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

Commons : James Gordon Bennett junior  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Explanation of the term "Gordon Bennett" in Brit. English (English)
• History of the Gordon Bennett Cup for Balloons (Italian)
• Newspaper article about James Gordon Bennett junior in the press kit 20th Century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .