News Fit To Print
George Washburn joined the New York Tribune as a rookie reporter soon after the American Civil War broke out in 1861. He was assigned to follow the Union army’s commander, General George McClellan, to assess his ability to prevent the Rebel army under Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson from rampaging in Maryland and occupying the capital, Washington. After scrapes and scraps at the bloody Battle of Antietam, Washburn rides horseback, train and ferry to New York to deliver his account of the action, his assessment of the generals and his analyses of whether the state of the conflict will allow President Lincoln to add freedom for slaves to his war aims.
The Civil War created immense thirst for news which was eagerly satisfied by newspaper proprietors already engaged in circulation wars. Larger and faster presses printed millions of papers and illustrated weeklies for millions of literate Americans and their armies on the move. Railroads and their accompanying electric telegraphs spread news – and fake news - across the continent. The Tribune published Washburn’s scoop in a special edition on Saturday 20 September 1862, two and a half days after the battle ended. It was syndicated to 180 papers across the world.
That night George Washburn, the Father of War Reporters, celebrated with his fellow correspondents, the self-styled Bohemians, in their favorite watering hole at Pfaff’ Cave under Broadway – in the arms of Ida Godiva, the bareback rider from Vaudeville.
Christopher Dodd spent 30 years editing and writing features at the Guardian before specialising in rowing. Reporting from Olympic regattas and World Championships led to a dozen books on the cultural history of oar propulsion that was a way of life for Vikings, Greeks and Venetians. Rowing boats fished and smuggled and serviced communities on rivers, lakes, coasts, harbours and docks all over the world until sail and steam sank them and their skilled operatives centuries later.
Moving boats by oars became a pioneering sport and a recreation for amateurs in England from the mid-nineteenth century. Rowing’s status and rules were influenced by the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race and Henley Regatta, and the British took it with them wherever they went trading or empire-building. In the 1990s Dodd helped to set up the River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames to record the history of amateur rowing and the craft of boat builders who sustain it.
The mid-nineteenth century was also a time when demand for books and newspapers was booming on both sides of the Atlantic. Rowing men were, of course, numerous among the higher strata of society and will be found among the editors and proprietors in the pages of "News Fit To Print". Dodd continues to write on rowing history for the magazine ROW-360 and the blog "Hear The Boat Sing".