The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism

In an age when newspapers were engines of revolution and reform, the New York Evening Post stood at the center of America's fiercest debates. This is the story of a paper that shaped a nation, told through the brilliant, often combustible editors who wielded it like a weapon: the poet-turned-editor William Cullen Bryant, who transformed the Post into a voice of abolition and reform; Carl Schurz, the German revolutionary who became a pillar of American liberalism; John Bigelow, who grappled with the newspaper's complex legacy. Nevins traces the Post's journey from its founding in 1801 through the turbulent decades of slavery, civil war, and industrial transformation, showing how one newspaper's editorial positions helped crystallize national opinion on everything from the Dred Scott decision to the rise of Big Business. But this is more than institutional history. It is a meditation on the power of the press, the responsibility of journalists, and the fragile bargain between profit and principle. For anyone who cares about the news today, this century-long saga reveals that the struggles over what newspapers owe their readers are as old as the republic itself.