Dorothy Schiff papers

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Description: Dorothy Schiff (1903-1989) was the publisher of the New York Post, the oldest daily newspaper in the United States, from 1942 to 1976. She wrote a column for the paper and served as editor-in-chief from 1961 until she sold the paper in 1976. She also published the Paris Post in France from 1945 to 1948 and owned several radio stations in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The collection contains editorial, operational, business, and legal files of the New York Post and Schiff's personal files and family letters. Editorial files, ca. 1938-ca. 1980, consist chiefly of memoranda between Schiff and her editors, columnists and others; materials relating to the editorial operations of the paper; and files, 1944-1948, of the Paris Post. Operational files are mostly memoranda between Schiff and her plant department heads and correspondence concerning the non-editorial operations of the Post. Business files relate to the business side of the paper and radio stations. Legal files reflect the Post's involvement in libel and anti-trust suits. Schiff's personal papers include memoranda and correspondence dealing with her life as a philanthropist and volunteer worker for various causes, family and personal financial papers, and materials for Jeffrey Potter's biography of Schiff. Of particular interest are transcripts of Potter's taped interviews with Schiff and her friends and associates. Also, photographs of Schiff and others; awards and citations she earned; newsclippings of her column; scrapbooks, 1946-1989, of clippings about her; and printed matter.
Names: Schiff, Dorothy, 1903-1989 (Creator); Braden, Thomas, 1918-2009 (Creator); Breslin, Jimmy (Creator); Buckley, William F., Jr., 1925-2008 (Creator); Flynn, E.P (Creator); Hamill, Pete, 1935-2020 (Creator); Hoge, Warren (Creator); Kempton, Murray, 1917-1997 (Creator); Mowrer, Paul Scott, 1887-1971 (Creator); Potter, Jeffrey (Creator); Roosevelt, Franklin D., Jr. (Franklin Delano), 1914-1988 (Creator); Sann, Paul (Creator); Seldes, Tim (Creator); Thackrey, Ted (Creator); Tierney, Paul (Creator); Wechsler, James A. (James Arthur), 1915-1983 (Creator); Welles, Orson, 1915-1985 (Creator)
Dates / Origin: Date Created: 1904 - 1989
Library locations: Manuscripts and Archives Division; Shelf locator: MssCol 2691
Topics: Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945; Sullivan, Harry Stack, 1892-1949; Schiff family; Charities -- New York (State) -- New York; Journalism -- New York (State) -- New York; Newspaper publishing -- France -- Paris; Newspaper publishing -- New York (State) -- New York; newspapers -- Ownership; Psychoanalysis; Publishers and publishing -- New York (State) -- New York; Radio stations; New York (N.Y.) -- Politics and government -- 1898-1951; New York (N.Y.) -- Politics and government -- 1951-; United States -- Politics and government -- 20th century; Philanthropists; publishers
Genres: Photographs; Scrapbooks
Notes: Biographical/historical: In her lifetime, Dorothy Schiff made the journey from youthful socialite to one of the most powerful and honored women in America. The New York Post, the oldest daily newspaper in the United States, which she ran for thirty-nine years, was a force for liberalism in the United States, respected and vilified as much for its style as for its stands, its local and national investigative reporting and its political crusades. Under Mrs. Schiff's direction, the newspaper opposed Senator Joseph McCarthy and the witch-hunting anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s, gave early support to the Civil Rights movement, and came out against the Vietnam War. For nearly forty years Dorothy Schiff was owner and publisher of the New York Post, arguably the oldest daily newspaper in the United States published continuously under essentially the same name. She was born in New York City on March 11, 1903, the daughter of investment banker Mortimer Leo Schiff and Adele Neustadt Schiff, and granddaughter of the banking magnate and philanthropist Jacob Henry Schiff. She graduated from the Brearley School in Manhattan, and attended Bryn Mawr College. Shortly afterwards she met Richard B. W. Hall, a socialite and broker. Her family opposed the match and sent her to Europe, but they relented in 1923, and she and Hall were married. Dorothy Schiff was born into a wealthy Republican family, and by her own account was a socialite and a nominal Republican interested chiefly in the glamour of the international set. That all changed when, after her divorce from Hall in 1931, she married George Backer, a writer and a liberal Democrat who was a City Councilman and the future publisher of the New York Post. He introduced her to the Algonquin Roundtable and the New Deal, and she became a staunch supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. She became very active in the social welfare movement as a member of the Social Service Committee of Bellevue Hospital. She also served on the Ellis Island Investigating Committee in 1934, the New York City Board of Child Welfare, 1937-39, and as the secretary-treasurer of the New York Joint Committee for the Ratification of the Child Labor Amendment, She was a member of the Boards of Directors of the Henry Street Settlement, 1934-1928, Mt. Sinai Hospital, 1934-38, and the Women's Trade Union League of New York, 1939. In that year at her husband's urging she acquired a controlling interest in the struggling New York Post from J. David Stern, who had earlier returned the paper to the Democratic Party. The beginnings of the New York Post The newspaper Dorothy Schiff and George Backer acquired in 1939 reached back in time, continuity, and tradition, to the earliest days of our constitutional government, and was the only living journalistic link to the era of Washington and Jefferson. It was also one of New York's oldest institutions, antedated only by such historical establishments as Trinity Church, Kings College (Columbia University), and Fraunce's Tavern. Despite its longevity it was not the first Evening-Post in New York. There was an Evening-Post published in 1746 and 1747 by Henry De Forest, but it did not last. The long history of the New York Post began in the aftermath of the stormy and momentous Presidential election of 1800-1801. John Adams ran behind a deadlocked Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, which caused the election to be thrown into the House of Representatives. Fearing Jefferson, the Federalist caucus backed Burr for the presidency, but Alexander Hamilton defied his own party and used his influence to deliver the presidency to his old adversary, whom he considered the lesser evil. Driven from public life by the setback suffered by the Federalists, Hamilton and several of his supporters and advisors, among them John Jay, Oliver Wolcott, and Rufus King, put together $10,000 in the autumn of 1801 to start a newspaper with which they hoped to check the rising tide of democratic republicanism following in the wake Jefferson's election, and to promote Hamilton's conservative political-economic principles. Hamilton himself wrote articles for the paper and, of course, was the chief draughtsman of the commercial policies, protective tariff, the development of manufacturing, and self-sufficiency as a nation, which the paper favored, and which were the views of New York's wealthy merchants, shipbuilders, and businessmen who were the core of the Federalist Party and the paper's supporters. The paper's first editor, William Coleman, is quoted as saying, "As soon as I see him he begins in a deliberate manner to dictate and I to note down in shorthand; when he stops, my article is complete." Three years later Hamilton was dead at the hands of Aaron Burr. But his young newspaper lived on. Alexander Hamilton's Post was a far cry from Dorothy Schiff's independent and liberal newspaper. The Post that emerged in the late 1930s as the champion of the New Deal and the daily national voice of American liberalism, Dorothy Schiff's Post, was the product of the reformist zeal of a succession of distinguished, often brilliant, editors. William Cullen Bryant, John Bigelow, William Leggett, Parke Godwin, Edward L. Godkin, and Carl Schurz loved the printed word, believed in the possibility of social progress, and changed the paper's editorial policies and party allegiance accordingly in response to the great social issues of 19th century America. The New York Post under Dorothy Schiff Initially acting as director, vice-president, and treasurer of the newspaper, in 1942 Mrs. Schiff became New York's first woman publisher when she assumed total control of the newspaper after illness forced George Backer to resign from the position of publisher and president. In April of the same year the paper shifted to tabloid, with a new emphasis on pictures. Columns and features were added, and local coverage began to push international news off the front page. In 1943 Dorothy Schiff divorced Backer and married the Post's executive editor, Theodore Olin Thackrey, who then became editor and assistant publisher. Thackrey joined the Post in 1936 after his return from Shanghai where he had been editor and publisher of the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury, East Magazine, and a Chinese language daily. In 1944 Mrs. Schiff and Thackrey acquired Radio Station WLIB in Brooklyn. Later they also bought two radio stations on the west coast, KMTR in Los Angeles and KYA in San Francisco. In 1945 Mrs. Schiff became the owner, publisher, and chairman of the Board of Directors of the newly constituted New York Post Corporation. In the same year she acquired the Bronx Home News, a daily newspaper, which three years later merged with the Post. Over these early postwar years Mrs. Schiff continued to strengthen the Post's position as a champion of liberalism. In May of 1945 Mrs. Schiff launched the Paris-Post, a milestone in the history of the Post, and only the second American newspaper to be published in the French capital. This edition was discontinued in 1948. Mrs. Schiff and her husband, Ted Thackrey, had a falling out in 1948 over which Presidential candidate the Post would support. Both opposed Truman, but Thackrey supported the Progressive Party candidate, Henry Wallace, and Mrs. Schiff supported Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey. As the election approached Mrs. Schiff and Thackrey carried on a lively editorial dispute in the pages of the Post. The election and the presidential qualifications of the candidates were the ostensible considerations of the debate. What was undoubtedly really being disputed were the social and political implications for American society of the ideological entrenchment, the Cold War, caused by Western fear of Communism, and Soviet distrust of its former allies. The personal and editorial rift widened between Schiff and Thackrey, and when Thackrey refused to voice his editorial support for the North Atlantic Treaty and Truman's Fair Deal program, Mrs. Schiff accepted his resignation as Post editor in April of 1949, stating that between them there existed "unreconcilable differences on fundamental questions of policy." In the following year they were divorced and Thackrey founded the short-lived New York Compass. In the wake of Thackrey's departure, Mrs. Schiff surprised everyone by appointing as the new editor James Wechsler, the paper's 33-year-old Washington correspondent. Few insiders were surprised, however, when she named as executive editor the seasoned newsman and veteran Post editorial worker, Paul Sann, with Henry Moscow as managing editor. In the opinion of many readers and former staff writers, it was Wechsler who ushered in and presided over the Post's golden age. This is certainly true; but it also seems likely that the merging of Wechsler's and Sann's contrasting but complementary personalities and journalistic concerns and styles, orchestrated by Mrs. Schiff, created an exciting newsroom where the sparks that flew must have attracted the attention of many good writers. During the era of their collaboration, 1948-1961, the paper won a national reputation for investigative reporting and for its controversial and risky crusades against powerful men of the Right, such as J. Edgar Hoover, Walter Winchell, Westbrook Pegler, and Robert Moses. It was also the first major daily to take on Senator Joseph McCarthy, and it broke the Richard Nixon "slush fund" story which prompted Nixon to deliver his famous "Checkers" speech. At this time also the Post developed its long-standing reputation as an employer of top rank columnists, among them well-known writers such as Langston Hughes, Murray Kempton, William Shannon, Jimmy Cannon, Sylvia Porter, Victor Riesel, and Max Lerner, and celebrities including Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Robinson, and the historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Later, in the 1970s, she added the earthy and unruly Jimmy Breslin, and the street-smart Pete Hamill to the list of distinguished Post columnists. Mrs. Schiff also wrote her own column, "Publisher's Notebook", later known as "Dear Reader", from 1951-1958. Among the outstanding reporters and feature writers the Post employed during Mrs. Schiff's long reign are James Thurber, Nora Ephron, Joseph Lash, Norman Poirier, Anthony Scaduto, and Robert Spivak. In 1958, having endorsed Governor Averell Harriman for reelection, Mrs. Schiff caused a major controversy by abruptly switching her support to Nelson Rockefeller twenty-four hours before the election. The Post's front page featured a "Notice to Readers", in which she stated that she had changed candidates, and had gone against Wechsler, because of Harriman's "snide insinuation that Nelson Rockefeller is pro-Arab and anti-Israel". The Post's switch put Rockefeller over the top and launched his national political career. During the decade of the 1950s the Post was profitable; but Mrs. Schiff had never lost her sense of financial insecurity from the early years of the Post. She cut back on costs by gradually eliminating foreign and out-of-town coverage, and permitting many skilled writers to leave for higher-paying jobs. In 1961 Paul Sann took over as editor and Wechsler became chief of the editorial page and columnist. This change was generally seen as favoring human interest over crusading. A year later Schiff became editor in chief of the Post. When the Post was shut down by the strike of the International Typographic Union, Local #3 for 86 days from Dec. 8, 1962 through March 3, 1963, Mrs. Schiff took the Post out of the Publishers Association and made a separate pact with the Union. In a decade that saw the death of the Daily Mirror and the merger into the World Journal Tribune of the Post's afternoon competitors, the Post not only survived the merger and the devastating 1965 strike, but outlasted many of its giant competitors and went on to become New York's only afternoon daily. During the 1960s the Post lent its support to the budding civil rights movement and was one of the first newspapers to come out against the war in Vietnam. The 1970s saw several increases in the price of the paper and a drastic drop in its circulation, much of it probably due to the migration to the suburbs that characterized the decade, and the growing reliance on television coverage of the war in Vietnam, and of the anti-war protests at home and in Europe. In 1976, the year in which the Post's circulation reached a low of 489,000, Jeffrey Potter's authorized biography, Men, Money and Magic: The Story of Dorothy Schiff, hit the bookstores and generated considerable publicity. In the same year Mrs. Schiff startled the public and her staff by selling the Post to the Australian publisher, Rupert Murdoch, for a reported $31 million. Although at first she did not give a reason for the sale, it was widely assumed that she was pessimistic about the future of afternoon papers in New York. Later she said in an interview, "The reason has been widely misconstrued. It was not sold for 'estate purposes'. Evening papers in urban areas have not survived. The Post had a deficit in 1975, and was a heavy loser in 1976; I could no longer meet the deficits". Mrs. Schiff stayed on a few years as a consultant. She died in 1989 at the age of 86. Subsequently the newspaper has been sold several times, but it remains in circulation.; Content: The papers consist of editorial, operational, business, and legal files of the New York Post; and Mrs. Schiff's personal papers. New York Post Records: Editorial files The editorial files consist chiefly of memoranda between Dorothy Schiff and her editors, among them Ted Thackrey, James Wechsler, Paul Sann, Tim Seldes, Paul Tierney, E. P. Flynn, Paul Mowrer, Warren Hoge, and others; editors with editors; and Schiff and her editors with editorial staff, reporters, rewritemen, columnists such as William F. Buckley, Tom Braden, Orson Welles, Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, feature writers, cartoonists, and others; and correspondence, newsclippings, and other material, relating to the paper's daily makeup, editorial policies, departmental administration, the coverage of daily and ongoing city, national, and international news stories, the political and public response to the paper's handling of the news, and to its editorials, columns, and feature articles. In his obituary of her in the Post Jerry Tallmer described these memoranda: "Every other line of the paper she read personally, and commented on them by way of yellow half page memos to her executives, memos which became famous in their time." Included in these files are Dorothy Schiff's memoranda for the record, in which she set down her perceptions of significant events and impressions of prominent people, many of whom were her personal friends or social acquaintances. Among the profiled are Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Edward M. Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Alex Rose, Gerald Ford, John V. Lindsay, J. Edgar Hoover, Eugene McCarthy, Richard M. Nixon, Allard K. Lowenstein, and Henry Kissinger. Very often these memoranda initiated feature articles, editorial commentaries, and follow-ups, and many are distinguished by their precise and thoughtful treatment of their subjects, such as the memoranda dealing with the Post's controversial series on J. Edgar Hoover to which she contributed shrewd and witty reflections on his long years as head of the F. B. I.; a wise and affecting study of a Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis too shy to ask Mrs. Schiff to pass the butter; a critical and wary, but not wholly unsympathetic, assessment of Richard M. Nixon; her theory about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy; and her sharp-eyed and affectionate appraisal of her celebrated columnists, Murray Kempton, Jimmy Breslin, and Pete Hamill. This series also gives a good picture of her relationship with her editors. The files relating to Jeffrey Potter's biography of Mrs. Schiff, Men, Money and Magic which are in the Personal Files, contain similar examples of Schiff's impressionistic for-the-record profiles of newsworthy people, including Joseph Kennedy, Rose Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy, which were pulled or created at Potter's request. Some of these are duplicates of memoranda in the Editorial Files. Also in this section are the files, 1944-1948, of the Paris Post which was published in Paris from May 1945 until 1948. It was edited by Paul Scott Mowrer from an office at 6 Boulevard Poissonniere. The files deal with the daily problems, shortages of ink, paper, and qualified editorial personnel among them, confronted by the newspaper in a war-torn city still recovering from the recent uprising by the Resistance and subsequent fighting and ultimate liberation by the Free French and American armies. The Editorial Files are arranged alphabetically by name and subject, and contain cross references to other files. One small chronological run of files precedes the alphabetically arranged files. Processed at a later date, these files primarily contain memorandums to and from Schiff with a variety of individuals, including editors and other staff members of the Post. Researchers should consult these files in addition to the alphabetical files, as there may be overlap in coverage. Boxes 1-109, and 297. New York Post Records: Operational files Chiefly memoranda between Schiff and her plant department heads, and correspondence reflecting all aspects of the complex daily non-editorial operations of the newspaper, including composing, printing, and delivering the newspaper; maintenance of the newspaper plant and equipment; accounting; payroll; personnel; union matters; and labor/management relations. Like the Editorial Files the Operational Files are arranged alphabetically by name and subject, and contain cross-references to other files. Boxes 110-164. New York Post: Business Files Memoranda and correspondence relating to the business side of the New York Post such as advertising, circulation, promotion, and other businesses, such as the radio and television stations in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, which were owned or controlled by Mrs. Schiff, the New York Post Corporation, or the Theodoro Corporation, and which were generated by excess capital accumulated by the Post Corporation. Arranged alphabetically by name or subject. Boxes 165-204, and 297. New York Post: Legal Files Memoranda and correspondence reflecting the Post's involvement in various libel suits and antitrust suits, including an anti-trust suit against the World Journal Tribune, and several libel suits against the Village Voice. Arranged alphabetically by name and subject. Boxes 205-214. Dorothy Schiff's Personal Papers Memoranda and correspondence dealing with Mrs. Schiff's daily practical and social life as a philanthropist who contributed to many causes and organizations, and as a volunteer worker. Most of the material deals with her life outside the Post, although, because of her very intense relationship to the paper, much of it is related to the Post. Included in this section are family and personal financial papers, and papers dealing with her properties at Hyde Park and Oyster Bay. Also in the personal files are memoranda, correspondence, transcripts of taped interviews, drafts, and other material relating to Men, Money and Magic, Jeffrey Potter's controversial biography of Mrs. Schiff. Of particular interest are the transcripts of Potter's taped interviews with Mrs. Schiff in which she speaks very candidly about her years as publisher of the Post, her relationship with Franklin D. Roosevelt, her husbands, her psychoanalysis with Harry Stack Sullivan, and of the men and women, chiefly of the editorial staff, with whom she worked. There are also valuable interviews with friends such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. and many people she worked with, including her seasoned editor, Paul Sann, and her third husband and editor, Ted Thackrey. The last section consists of photographs of Mrs. Schiff, her family and friends, and notable political figures; awards and citations earned by Mrs. Schiff over her long career as publisher and editor and supporter of worthy causes; clippings of her column, "Dear Reader"; scrapbooks, 1946-1981, of newspaper clippings chiefly relating to Mrs. Schiff, scrapbooks of obituaries of Mrs. Schiff; a scrapbook of New York cartoons; and miscellaneous items. Arranged alphabetically by name and subject. Boxes 215-296.
Physical Description: Extent: 119.8 linear feet (298 boxes)
Type of Resource: Text
Identifiers: NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b12035512; MSS Unit ID: 2691; Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 6c7f1f50-02e9-013c-795c-0242ac110004

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Jacob Henry Schiff

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