Biography:

The New York Herald was first published on May 6th 1835, by James Gordon Bennett Sr., a former schoolteacher and Scottish immigrant. After years as a journalist in New York City, he rose to become the assistant editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer in 1823, and then quickly founded his own paper. The Herald became known for its salacious subject matter, which some critics found to be lowbrow; Bennett himself asserted that the paper’s mission was “not to instruct but to startle.” The paper was sold at a lower price than its competitors, and was edited to be consumed by the general public. It became the highest circulated and most profitable paper in the country.
Bennett’s Herald, was pioneering in several areas, running the first newspaper interview ever, which was in conjunction with the Herald’s high-profile coverage of the murder of Helen Jewett. He also conducted the first ever exclusive interview with a US President—Martin Van Buren. Additionally, Bennett was the first to use the industry standard of taking cash from advertisers in advance, rather than waiting for their adverts to run.
Bennett’s politics were essentially conservative—he was a Democrat and anti-abolitionist, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant. The paper remained supportive of the Democratic Party throughout the Civil War, but backed the Union cause.
In 1866, Bennett’s son, James Gordon Bennett Jr., assumed control of the paper. Bennett Jr. used the Herald to finance several high-profile trans-continental explorations, including Henry Morton Stanley’s expeditions to Africa in 1871, and George W. DeLong’s expedition to the arctic. He also infamously ran the New York Zoo hoax in 1874, in which almost an entire day’s paper was devoted to a wholly fabricated story about wild animals escaping from the Central Park Zoo and goring several people. Fine print at the end of the issue stated that the story was a fiction, and Bennett tried to assuage critics by arguing that the issue was meant to highlight inadequate safety precautions at the zoo.
The New York Herald acquired its smaller rival, the New York Tribune, after Bennett Jr.’s death in 1924, and published as the New York Herald-Tribune. It ceased publication in 1966.