Blog

• Date: 1939
• Sculptor: Richmond Barthe
• Medium & size: Granite shaft with seat on one side; sunken medallion with profile portrait..
• Location: Outer wall of Central Park, facing Fifth Ave. at 101st Street.

Breaking News! Arthur Brisbane single-handedly started the Spanish-American War.

Well, OK, maybe that statement is a bit over the top. Maybe it’s a little too emphatic and a lot too general. Maybe the facts of the story aren’t quite what the statement suggests … But given Arthur Brisbane’s preferred style of journalism, it seems fitting to use such tactics on him.

Brisbane’s father was much admired by Horace Greeley and many other New Yorkers for his strong advocacy of social utopianism. Applying his theories to child-rearing, the elder Brisbane raised young Arthur (1864-1936) on yogurt, salad, and diluted red wine, insisted that he let his hair grow, and discouraged him from learning to read.

But when his father remarried, thirteen-year-old Arthur was abruptly shipped from a farm in New Jersey to a classy boarding-school in France. Despite, or perhaps because of, his peculiar upbringing, Brisbane began work as a journalist for the New York Sun on his eighteenth birthday.

He turned out to be a fast learner. By the time he hit twenty-six, he was the right-hand man of Joseph Pulitzer. Pulitzer’s New York World was known for the “crime, underwear and pseudoscience school of journalism.”

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At age thirty-three – we’re at 1897 now – Brisbane deserted the irascible Pulitzer in favor of William Randolph Hearst and the New York Journal. Brisbane ordered writers under his command, “Never forget that if you don’t hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.”

The following year, news of the catastrophic explosion aboard the USS Maine flashed in from Cuba. It was Brisbane who decided to run a story with a few facts scattered below incendiary headlines. The Journal offered a $50,000 reward for the “conviction of the criminals who sent 258 American sailors to their death.” That day, the Journal’s circulation jumped to a million.

Pulitzer hustled for readers with equal vigor. The circulation of his World skyrocketed to five million the day it published reports of divers who had investigated the wreck of the Maine – even before Navy divers reached it.

After two months of incendiary news coverage, the United States declared war on Spain in April 1898. There was (and still is) no evidence that Spain attacked the Maine.

For almost forty more years, Brisbane ran Hearst’s Journal, and, some said, Hearst as well. He also churned out daily syndicated columns, in which his views, said the New York Times, “were positive and irreconcilable, but always popular.” The Journal claimed that Brisbane’s thirty million daily readers made him the most widely read writer anywhere, any time.

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• For the story of Central Park in the 1850s-1870s, see my book Central Park: The Early Years.
• For early images of Central Park, see the pages on this site for through 1860, 1861-1865, and 1866-1870.
• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats. More here.
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