Partisanship in Balance: The New York Times Coverage of the Spanish Civil War, 1936- 1939 Julie Prieto
[email protected] 208 Rosse Lane #105 Stanford, CA 94305 (650) 380-6286 Partisanship in Balance: The New York Times Coverage of the Spanish Civil War, 1936- 1939 Introduction In 1896, The New York Times was a small, conservative newspaper tottering on the brink of death with a readership of only 9,000 and years of mounting financial losses. Within three years of its purchase by Adolph Simon Ochs though, the paper had increased its readership to 25,000 and was on firm financial footing, having changed its format to eliminate the short fiction, comics, and gossip columns in favor of a heavy emphasis on news and book reviews.1 Ochs and his managing editor Carr Van Anda revitalized the paper not by competing directly with their main rivals, Hearst and Pulitzer, but by changing the paper to attract a different readership, one that was more interested in “hard” news with a heavy emphasis on foreign reporting. Particularly in the years after WWI, the New York Times under Ochs focused on increasing the number of foreign bureaus and correspondents around the world, even opening in 1924 its own radio station in order to receive messages direct from Europe.2 By the late 1920s, The New York Times had a reputation as being one of if not the most important news source in the United States for both national and international news. It was almost the national newspaper of record, with a readership of 780,000.3 No other newspaper came close in readership, scope of reporting, and importance in the national sphere.