Saturday, September 14, 2019

Mark Sullivan (journalist)

SlimVirgin: started article


[[File:Mabel Shea and Mark Sullivan (LCCN2016872532), 1937, cropped.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Mark Sullivan in 1937 with Mabel Shea, his secretary]]
'''Mark Sullivan''' (September 10, 1874 – August 13, 1952) was an American journalist and [[Print syndication|syndicated]] political columnist. Author of the six-volume, 3,740-page ''Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925'' (1926–1935), he was described as a "giant of American journalism"<ref name=Brown1975>Richard C. Brown, "Mark Sullivan Views the New Deal from Avondale", ''The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'', 99(3), July 1975, 351–361. .</ref> and the "[[Jeremiah]] of the United States Press".<ref name=Time1935>"Mark Sullivan", ''Time'' magazine, November 18, 1935, reproduced in "Mark Sullivan: His Training and his History", ''The Decatur Daily Review'', 22 November 1935, 10.</ref>

==Early life and education==
Sullivan was born the last of 10 children, including seven boys, to Julia Gleason Sullivan and Cornelius Sullivan, who had moved to the United States from Ireland and bought a farm near [[Avalon, Pennsylvania|Avalon]] in southern [[Chester County, Pennsylvania]].<ref name=Time1935/><ref>Maude C. Schilplin, "Mark Sullivan Tells of American Country Life in his Autobiography", ''St. Cloud Times'', January 17, 1940, 6.</ref> His father was also a rural mail carrier. After attending [[West Chester University|West Chester Normal School]] from the age of 14, Sullivan went to work for the ''Morning Republican'' in [[West Chester]] in 1892 as a reporter, then saved $300 to become co-owner, with John Miller, of the ''Phoenixville Republican'', which Sullivan edited.<ref name=Time1935/><ref name=Kennedy2004>Joseph S. Kennedy, [https://ift.tt/32MZtGB "Columnist's words influence politics: Chesco's Mark Sullivan informed the nation during the first half of 20th century"], ''Philadelphia Inquirer'', 2 May 2004. Archived 17 August 2016.</ref><ref name=Applegate2008>Edd Applegate, "Mark Sullivan (1874–1952)", ''Muckrakers: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors'', Scarecrow Press, 2008, 175–178.</ref> In 1896 he went to [[Harvard University]], obtaining an A.B. in 1900 and a law degree three years later; when he graduated, he sold his shares in the ''Phoenixville Republican''.<ref name=Applegate2008/> While at Harvard, he wrote for the ''[[Boston Transcript]]''.<ref name=Time1935/><ref name=Kennedy2004>Joseph S. Kennedy, [https://ift.tt/32MZtGB "Columnist's words influence politics: Chesco's Mark Sullivan informed the nation during the first half of 20th century"], ''Philadelphia Inquirer'', 2 May 2004. Archived 17 August 2016.</ref>

==Career==
In October 1901, the ''Atlantic Monthly'' published an article by Sullivan, "The Ills of Pennsylvania", on corruption among local and state officials, who were reportedly accepting bribes.<ref name=Applegate2008/> Sullivan briefly practiced law in New York City (he said his law career was "as brief as it was [[Brief (law)|briefless]]"),<ref name=Brown1975/> then returned to journalism. After writing for the ''[[Ladies Home Journal]]'' about misleading advertising for [[patent medicine]]s, he was hired in 1905 by ''[[McClure's]]'' as a staff writer.<ref name=Kennedy2004/><ref name=Applegate2008/> In 1906, along with [[Willa Cather]], [[Georgine Milmine]], [[Will Irwin]], and [[Burton J. Hendrick]], he became part of the ''McClure's'' team that produced a series of 14 investigative articles on [[Mary Baker Eddy]], founder of the [[Christian Science]] church.<ref>Mark Sullivan, ''The Education of an American'', New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1938, 202, cited in Harold S. Wilson, ''McClure's Magazine and the Muckrakers'', Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015, [https://ift.tt/2LxVl7u 303].</ref><ref>[[Gillian Gill]], ''Mary Baker Eddy'', Boston: Da Capo Press, 1998, 565.</ref><ref>[https://ift.tt/32Rz62n "Editorial announcement"], ''McClure's'', December 1906; [[Georgine Milmine]], [https://ift.tt/15XdMTn "Mary Baker G. Eddy: The Story of Her Life and the History of Christian Science"], ''McClure's'', January 1907&nbsp;– June 1908.</ref> Sullivan spent time fact-checking in New England.<ref>James Woodress, "Willa Cather: A Literary Life", University of Nebraska Press, 1989, [https://ift.tt/32HUW86 192–193].</ref><ref>L. Brent Bohlke, "Willa Cather and The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy", ''American Literature'', 54(2), May 1982, 288–294. </ref> The series was published as a book in 1909, ''[[The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science]]''.<ref>[[Willa Cather]] and [[Georgine Milmine]], [https://ift.tt/2LucSxo ''The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science''], Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993 [1909].</ref>

After ''McClure's'', he moved to ''[[Collier's Weekly]]'', where he became an associate editor, then editor in 1912.<ref name=Brown1975/> He also wrote a regular column, "Comment on Congress", from 1908 until 1919.<ref name=Time1935/><ref name=Applegate2008/> When he joined the ''[[New York Evening Post]]'' in 1919 as its Washington correspondent, the newspaper's president, [[Edwin Francis Gay|Edwin F. Gay]], wrote: "His ability, his vision, his knowledge of human reactions and twenty years of Political study are coupled with unquestionable sincerity, plus 100 percent of rugged Americanism."<ref>Edwin F. Gay, "Whose hat will cover a president?", ''New York Herald'', January 23, 1920.</ref> While living in Washington, on Wyoming Avenue, he and his wife became friends with [[Herbert Hoover]], who lived nearby on [[S Street]]; the close relationship continued when Hoover became president in 1929, to the point where Sullivan was viewed as one of Hoover's spokespersons.<ref name=Time1935/> He was reported to have said: "I don't like [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]], but I'm going to vote for Hoover because I'd rather eat than drink."<ref>[https://ift.tt/32HUXsG "National Affairs: Slogan"], ''Time'' magazine, August 27, 1928.</ref> Sullivan said in 1935 that he was a liberal ("[[Teddy Roosevelt]] was my only political god") and that consistent with liberalism he sought to "take power away from the state".<ref name=Time1935/>

In the 1920s he joined the ''[[New York Herald]]'' (later named the ''[[New York Herald-Tribune]]'') and became a syndicated political columnist.<ref name=Kennedy2004/> Between 1924 and 1952 he wrote nearly 6,000 columns, usually "Mark Sullivan Says", for the ''Herald-Tribune'' and others.<ref name=Brown1975/> During the same period, he wrote his six-volume ''Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925'' (1926–1935). [[Dan Rather]], who edited the material to produce one volume, wrote in 1996 that "no series of nonfiction books, all on the same general subject by the same author over such a compact space of writing time, ever captured the country so completely, sold so well, was so widely read and acclaimed, and had such a lasting, growing reputation for excellence".<ref>[[Dan Rather]], [https://ift.tt/2LyED7O "Our Times&nbsp;... And Mine], ''American Heritage'', May/June 1996.</ref>

==Personal life==
Sullivan had four children with his wife, Marie Buchanan. The couple married in 1907.<ref name=Kennedy2004/>

==Death==
Sullivan became the owner of his parents' farm in Avalon and continued to regard it as his home. When he died at 78 of a heart attack in 1952, he was taken to hospital from the same bedroom in which he had been born.<ref name=Brown1975/><ref>"Mark Sullivan, Columnist, 78", ''The Herald-News'', August 14, 1952, 34.</ref>

==Selected works==
*''Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925: The Turn of the Century, 1900–1904''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926.
*''Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925: America Finding Herself''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927.
*''Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925: Pre-War America''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930.
*''Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925: The War Begins, 1909–1914''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932.
*''Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925: Over Here, 1914–1918''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933.
*''Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925: The Twenties''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935.
*''The Education of an American''. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1938 (autobiography).

==See also==
*[[Muckraker]]
*[[Progressive Era]]

==References==


==Further reading==
*[https://ift.tt/32J8ssd "National Affairs: Mark Sullivan"], ''Time'' magazine, October 27, 1924.
*Kollock, Will. "The Story of a Friendship: Mark Sullivan and Herbert Hoover", ''Pacific Historian'', 18(1), 1974, 31–48.


[[Category:1874 births]]
[[Category:1952 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century American journalists]]
[[Category:20th-century American journalists]]
[[Category:20th-century American newspaper editors]]
[[Category:American columnists]]
[[Category:American male journalists]]
[[Category:Harvard University alumni]]
[[Category:McClure's]]
[[Category:Progressive Era in the United States]]


from Wikipedia - New pages [en] https://ift.tt/2Lv4EF6
via IFTTT

No comments:

Post a Comment