Synopses & Reviews
The story of the man who transformed The Wall Street Journal and modern mediaIn 1929, Barney Kilgore, fresh from college in small-town Indiana, took a sleepy, near bankrupt New York financial paperThe Wall Street Journaland turned it into a thriving national newspaper that eventually was worth $5 billion to Rupert Murdoch. Kilgore then invented a national weekly newspaper that was a precursor of many trends we see playing out in journalism now.
Tofel brings this story of a little-known pioneer to life using many previously uncollected newspaper writings by Kilgore and a treasure trove of letters between Kilgore and his father, all of which detail the invention of much of what we like best about modern newspapers. By focusing on the man, his journalism, his foresight, and his business acumen, Restless Genius also sheds new light on the Depression and the New Deal.
At a time when traditional newspapers are under increasing threat, Barney Kilgores story offers lessons that need constant retelling.
Richard J. Tofel is general manager of ProPublica, a not-for-profit investigative reporting venture, and previously was an assistant managing editor and the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Sounding the Trumpet (2005), about JFKs inaugural address; Vanishing Point (2004), about the disappearance of Judge Crater; and A Legend in the Making (2002), about the 1939 Yankees. Richard J. Tofel's Restless Genius tells the story of the man who transformed The Wall Street Journal and modern media.
In 1929, Barney Kilgore, fresh from college in small-town Indiana, took a sleepy, near bankrupt New York financial paperThe Wall Street Journaland turned it into a thriving national newspaper that eventually was worth $5 billion to Rupert Murdoch. Kilgore then invented a national weekly newspaper that was a precursor of many trends we see playing out in journalism now.
Tofel brings this story of a little-known pioneer to life using many previously uncollected newspaper writings by Kilgore and a treasure trove of letters between Kilgore and his father, all of which detail the invention of much of what we like best about modern newspapers. By focusing on the man, his journalism, his foresight, and his business acumen, Restless Genius also sheds new light on the Depression and the New Deal. Barney Kilgore is a legend to those of us who work in journalism. Now Richard Tofel brings him to life for a wide audience in this vivid, insightful, compelling biography. With traditional journalism under siege from the Internet, the story of how Kilgore created and implemented new and higher standards of reporting and writing couldnt be more timely. More than any single person, Kilgore made The Wall Street Journal the pillar of journalism it is today and hopefully will remain for many generations.”James B. Stewart, author of Den of Thieves and DisneyWar
Restless Genius, Richard J. Tofels compelling biography of Barney Kilgore, recounts the growth of The Wall Street Journal from narrow trade publication to national business daily. It is a must read for anyone who cares about business journalism and the business of journalism.”Norman Pearlstine, Chief Content Officer, Bloomberg, and author of Off the Record
Richard J. Tofel has given us an original, fascinating, and vivid account of the life of an original, fascinating, and vivid manBarney Kilgore, who, Tofel brilliantly argues, created modern journalism. As the architect of The Wall Street Journal, Kilgore, beginning at an amazingly young age, invented much of what we take for granted in newspapers, magazines, and online today. Too little known, Kilgore is one of those American figures who needed a great writer to bring him out of the mists of history, and Tofel has done it splendidly. Kilgore would be proud.”Jon Meacham, editor, Newsweek, and author of American Lion
"Short biography of the man who turned The Wall Street Journal into the most successful paper in America. Having taken only a single economics course at DePauw University, Barney Kilgore arrived in New York City in 1929 to accept a reporting job at the Journal a mere seven weeks before the biggest market meltdown in the nation's history. During the course of his nearly 40-year career he would hold every important position at the paper, revolutionize the notion of business news and turn the enterprise founded by Charles Dow and Edward Jones into a national force. As a field reporter during the Great Depression, Kilgore wrote not for bankers, but for bank depositors, for and from the perspective not of insiders, but of readers, believing business news should be broadly understood as affecting everyone who makes a living . . . The author supplies a potted history of the paper, a look at the Bancroft family (especially C.W. Barron), who owned the Journal for 105 years, and mini-portraits of Bill Kerby, Vermont Royster, William Henry Grimes and Casey Hogate, all instrumental to the rise of Kilgore and the Journal. The changes Kilgore wrought, stylistic and substantive, included using anecdotal leads and 'nut grafs' to give stories a magazine feel, employing front-page news summaries, establishing nationwide printing plants, adopting the Electric-Typesetter and attending to the new science ofopinion polling. All helped shoot the Journal ahead of competitors, giving the paper sufficient clout and credibility to prevail in a memorable 1955 face-off with the country's largest corporation, General Motors, when the unhappy giant threatened to pull advertising over a dispute with the paper's coverage. Good reading for students of journalism and for general readers interested in the history of an extraordinary institution, acquired last year by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation."Kirkus Reviews
"While Barney Kilgore might not be widely known to many outside of the newspaper industry, the Wall Street Journal, which evolved out of his lifetime of hard work, is certainly known to businesspeople and informed readers around the world. The story of Kilgore and this influential newspaper is captured in a compelling biography by Tofel, former managing editor and assistant publisher of the Journal. This is not only an account of one man's life during the Depression and the New Deal but also a history of the Journal in particular and business and financial newspapers in general. The cutting-edge ideas and writing style that Kilgore developed transformed the paper from a narrowly focused financial bulletin to the leading business news source it is today. What makes this work especially appealing is the incorporation of the many letters Kilgore wrote to his father, giving the reader a glimpse into this esteemed newsman's way of thinking about his newspaper and the news of the day."Donna Marie Smith, Library Journal
"One of the forgotten titans in American journalism, Barney Kilgore is the subject of a new book by Tofel, a former assistant publisher of the Wall Street Journal and author of Sounding the Trumpet. A Midwesterner from Indiana, Kilgore emerged from smalltown America to rise through the ranks at the Wall Street Journal on the eve of the Great Depression. Through the war years of the 1940s into the Cold War era, he reshaped the publication's news focus, visuals, composition, circulation and advertising. He championed a unique style of journalism as its top executive, with keen instincts, intelligence and a progressive view, transforming the broadsheet into a first-class national business newspaper. Innovative and unyielding, Kilgore had one of his finest moments when he faced down General Motors in a controversial 1954 advertising spat, bolstering the newspaper's reputation. Tofel's excellent work on this pivotal figure in journalism is a significant addition to the seminal books on American media."Publishers Weekly
Review
Advance praise for
Restless Genius“Barney Kilgore is a legend to those of us who work in journalism. Now Richard Tofel brings him to life for a wide audience in this vivid, insightful, compelling biography. With traditional journalism under siege from the Internet, the story of how Kilgore created and implemented new and higher standards of reporting and writing couldnt be more timely. More than any single person, Kilgore made The Wall Street Journal the pillar of journalism it is today and hopefully will remain for many generations.”James B. Stewart, author of Den of Thieves and DisneyWar
“Restless Genius, Richard J. Tofels compelling biography of Barney Kilgore, recounts the growth of The Wall Street Journal from narrow trade publication to national business daily. It is a must read for anyone who cares about business journalism and the business of journalism.”Norman Pearlstine, Chief Content Officer, Bloomberg, and author of Off the Record
“Richard J. Tofel has given us an original, fascinating, and vivid account of the life of an original, fascinating, and vivid manBarney Kilgore, who, Tofel brilliantly argues, created modern journalism. As the architect of The Wall Street Journal, Kilgore, beginning at an amazingly young age, invented much of what we take for granted in newspapers,magazines, and online today. Too little known, Kilgore is one of those American figures who needed a great writer to bring him out of the mists of history, and Tofel has done it splendidly. Kilgore would be proud.”Jon Meacham, editor, Newsweek, and author of American Lion
Review
“Barney Kilgore is a legend to those of us who work in journalism. Now Richard Tofel brings him to life for a wide audience in this vivid, insightful, compelling biography. With traditional journalism under siege from the Internet, the story of how Kilgore created and implemented new and higher standards of reporting and writing couldnt be more timely. More than any single person, Kilgore made The Wall Street Journal the pillar of journalism it is today and hopefully will remain for many generations.--James B. Stewart, author of Den of Thieves and DisneyWar
"[Restless Genius] could not have come at a better time. Here was a man far ahead of his time. And now, by a strange twist of circumstance, he is now ahead of our time, as well." --Columbia Journalism Review“Restless Genius, Richard J. Tofels compelling biography of Barney Kilgore, recounts the growth of The Wall Street Journal from narrow trade publication to national business daily. It is a must read for anyone who cares about business journalism and the business of journalism.”--Norman Pearlstine, Chief Content Officer, Bloomberg, and author of Off the Record
“Richard J. Tofel has given us an original, fascinating, and vivid account of the life of an original, fascinating, and vivid man—Barney Kilgore, who, Tofel brilliantly argues, created modern journalism. As the architect of The Wall Street Journal, Kilgore, beginning at an amazingly young age, invented much of what we take for granted in newspapers, magazines, and online today. Too little known, Kilgore is one of those American figures who needed a great writer to bring him out of the mists of history, and Tofel has done it splendidly. Kilgore would be proud.”--Jon Meacham, editor, Newsweek, and author of American Lion
Wall Street Journal
A portrait of the man who did so much to shape the modern Wall Street Journal.By Myron Kandel In August 1958, John Hay Whitney, who was days away from buying the New York Herald Tribune, tried to woo Barney Kilgore away from The Wall Street Journal and its corporate parent, Dow Jones & Co. Though Whitney failed in his effort -- he wanted Kilgore to leave the leadership of Dow Jones and run the Trib instead -- he did elicit from Kilgore a long outline suggesting ways in which the Trib could best position itself to thrive in an increasingly competitive newspaper environment. (For example, Kilgore said, make the news "more accessible to the average reader.") The Herald Tribune did manage to survive for a while -- before finally succumbing in 1966, after two devastating New York newspaper strikes.
Richard J. Tofel begins "Restless Genius" with this anecdote and rightly so: It shows Kilgore's high standing in the newspaper world of his time, a useful bit of instruction for readers -- especially readers of this newspaper -- who benefit from the legacy of Kilgore's ideas and innovations but who may not be aware of his name. Mr. Tofel's book is both an engrossing biography of Kilgore (1908-67) and an appreciation of his work as a newspaperman -- his role, as Mr. Tofel's subtitle has it, in "the invention of modern journalism."
Born and raised in Indiana, the son of a school superintendent turned insurance salesman, Leslie Bernard Kilgore (called "Barney" by nearly everyone) was intellectually precocious. At age 16, he entered DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., where he eventually edited the campus newspaper and developed friendships with some talented young journalists who would later become his colleagues at The Wall Street Journal. Nearing graduation, he applied for a job at the Journal and started work there in September 1929, seven weeks before the Crash. Three months later he was posted to the paper's West Coast edition, with the title of San Francisco news editor. At 23, he began writing a column, which to his delight was also published in the New York edition. He became Washington bureau chief at 26, managing editor at 32 and general manager of Dow Jones & Co. at 34.
Kilgore believed in humanizing articles on even complicated subjects, insisting that editors and writers try to make room in news stories, whenever possible, for anecdotes, narrative details and portraits of individuals, thus bringing topics alive for that "average reader." But he also had a sophisticated understanding of the Journal's core subject areas, not least economic matters. He was often sharply critical of FDR's New Deal programs, even though the president publicly praised his work on several occasions.
While researching his biography, Mr. Tofel -- who worked at the Journal in several capacities, including assistant managing editor and assistant publisher (he left the paper in 2004) -- was allowed access to 30 years of correspondence between Kilgore and his father. One letter, written when Barney was just starting at DePauw, epitomizes the elder Kilgore's stern but loving persona. "The main thing is to train your mind in clear and straight thinking," he wrote to his son. "The habits of thought you are forming now will stay with you as long as you live." It is not hard to see how such words themselves helped to form the man who would, for decades, define the Journal's reportorial voice and defend its integrity.
In his early years at the paper's helm, Kilgore introduced front-page summary columns and, more important, spruced up the paper's content and writing, introducing the famous anecdotal "leaders." His changes broadened the Journal's appeal beyond the financial community to the business world at large. He raised the paper's stature in other ways as well. While it may be hard to believe today, in the mid-1950s General Motors was so powerful, and its advertising so important, that few publications dared risk its displeasure. But the Journal engaged in some very aggressive reporting on the auto industry, culminating in a report that included unauthorized illustrations of upcoming GM models. The company was furious and pulled its advertising. Kilgore stood his ground, and GM backed down.
Although Kilgore led The Wall Street Journal to new levels of editorial achievement -- and also supervised its huge growth in circulation and revenue -- he did suffer one notable journalistic setback, with a paper he created. It was The National Observer, a weekly that began in 1962. Self-described as a "new kind of publication," the Observer strove to provide good writing and astute interpretation on a mix of subjects, including what it called "the business of living." It was the first truly general-interest national newspaper, and it arrived two decades before the birth of USA Today. Despite strong circulation, the Observer never obtained enough advertising to make itself profitable, and it died 15 years after its birth.
Mr. Tofel contends that The Observer, with its emphasis on explanatory journalism, was ahead of its time and even now could provide lessons to newspapers struggling to hold on to readers in a digital age. "More than a few reporters and editors," he writes, "thought that Kilgore, sometime during the sixties, would have found a way" to keep the Observer going.
Kilgore retired as president of Dow Jones in 1966, confident that he was leaving the company and the newspaper in good hands. He died the following year, just after his 59th birthday. The Journal's circulation, which was under 32,000 when he became managing editor in 1941, was then just about one million. It later rose to two million. It is hard not to think that, were Barney Kilgore alive today, he would be saddened by the perilous state into which most of the nation's newspapers have fallen but would also be hard at work trying to revive their fortunes.
Mr. Kandel was the last financial editor of the New York Herald Tribune and the founding financial editor of CNN.
Synopsis
The story of the man who transformed The Wall Street Journal—and modern mediaIn 1929, Barney Kilgore, fresh from college in small-town Indiana, joined a sleepy, narrow New York financial paper—The Wall Street Journal. He soon re-made it into a pioneer in journalism and the first national newspaper, one that eventually was worth $5 billion to Rupert Murdoch. Kilgore then invented a weekly newspaper, The National Observer, a precursor to many trends in the news business we see playing out today.
Barney Kilgore deserves to stand with Henry Luce and Harold Ross in the ranks of twentieth century journalism leaders; Restless Genius shows us why. By focusing on the man, his innovative journalism, his foresight, and his business genius, the book sheds revealing new light on the Depression and New Deal through Kilgore's own path-breaking writing—and a treasure trove of previously unknown letters between Kilgore and his father—as well as detailing Kilgore's contribution to what is best about modern newspapers.
"[Barney Kilgore] really invented modern journalism."—Rupert Murdoch, as quoted in Restless Genius
Synopsis
The story of the man who transformed The Wall Street Journal and modern mediaIn 1929, Barney Kilgore, fresh from college in small-town Indiana, took a sleepy, near bankrupt New York financial paper—The Wall Street Journal—and turned it into a thriving national newspaper that eventually was worth $5 billion to Rupert Murdoch. Kilgore then invented a national weekly newspaper that was a precursor of many trends we see playing out in journalism now.
Tofel brings this story of a little-known pioneer to life using many previously uncollected newspaper writings by Kilgore and a treasure trove of letters between Kilgore and his father, all of which detail the invention of much of what we like best about modern newspapers. By focusing on the man, his journalism, his foresight, and his business acumen, Restless Genius also sheds new light on the Depression and the New Deal.
At a time when traditional newspapers are under increasing threat, Barney Kilgores story offers lessons that need constant retelling.
Synopsis
The story of the man who transformed The Wall Street Journal and modern mediaIn 1929, Barney Kilgore, fresh from college in small-town Indiana, took a sleepy, near bankrupt New York financial paperThe Wall Street Journaland turned it into a thriving national newspaper that eventually was worth $5 billion to Rupert Murdoch. Kilgore then invented a national weekly newspaper that was a precursor of many trends we see playing out in journalism now.
Tofel brings this story of a little-known pioneer to life using many previously uncollected newspaper writings by Kilgore and a treasure trove of letters between Kilgore and his father, all of which detail the invention of much of what we like best about modern newspapers. By focusing on the man, his journalism, his foresight, and his business acumen, Restless Genius also sheds new light on the Depression and the New Deal.
At a time when traditional newspapers are under increasing threat, Barney Kilgores story offers lessons that need constant retelling.
About the Author
RICHARD J. TOFEL is general manager of ProPublica, a not-for-profit investigative reporting venture, and previously was an assistant managing editor and the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Sounding the Trumpet (2005), about JFKs inaugural address; Vanishing Point (2004), about the disappearance of Judge Crater; and A Legend in the Making (2002), about the 1939 Yankees.