How the Lincoln Assassination Changed Journalism

Introduction:

New York Herald- April 15 1865

This research blog intends to describe the evolution in newswriting that had been building 

during the Civil War, and came to a head the morning of April 15, 1865. Following President Lincoln’s assassination, the practice of journalism takes a marked turn in how news was disseminated to the public, mostly in the name of efficiency. In newsrooms of today, the merits of the 24-hour cycle and inverted pyramid leads are well known, and both of these qualities have their roots in the reporting done that fateful night.

Introduction and Lawrence Gobright

New York Herald- April 15 1865

“This evening at about 9:30 P.M., at Ford’s Theatre, the President, while sitting in his private box with Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Harris and Major Rathburn, was shot by an assassin, who suddenly entered the box and approached behind the President.” – Secretary of War Edward M. Stanton, New York Herald, April 15, 1865. (3)

This lead has it all. Who, what, where, when, the only thing left out was “why?” And this was the question on the minds of everyone in the north the following day.

Any journalist today would commend this lead as an effective one, it sets the stage, it tells the readers why they are here, reading this now. The only odd thing about it is that this had rarely been done before. Even more odd was the fact that it wasn’t even a journalist who brought it about, but the country’s Secretary of War at the time. (5)

The inverted pyramid style, as it would one day be called, is the gold standard today. It’s an efficient way to begin telling a news story. We’ll expand on Stanton’s contributions later on, but now we’ll look at the first man to send telegraphs about the Lincoln assassination, Lawrence A. Gobright.

Lawrence Gobright, AP Corespondent

Lawrence Gobright was the Washington D.C. correspondent for the Associated Press for 30 years and had begun reporting in Washington in 1849. During this time he covered the Civil War and a particularly focused view on President Lincoln. (2)

Gobright was reported to be a cautious man, un-objective in his reporting and was trusted. At a time when many newspapers were sensational Gobright’s reporting looked to tell the news as it was. (3) This however did not mean he was without fault. During the Battle of Bull Run, Gobright prematurely filed a telegraph detailing a Union victory, when in fact the Rebel’s would later route the Northerners. Gobright later corrected the mistake, but not before the North had begun celebrating the first victory of the war. (2)

Gobright's Reporting

Gobright’s redemption would come April 15, 1865. In his own memoirs of his time as the AP correspondent in Washington, Gobright described the events of the night as such:

New York Herald- April 15 1865

“On the night of the 14^th of April, I was sitting in my office alone, everything quiet: and having filed, as I thought, my last dispatch, I picked up an afternoon paper, to see what especial news it contained. While looking over its columns, a hasty step was heard at the entrance of the door, and a gentleman addressed me, in a hurried and excited manner, informing me that the President had been assassinated, and telling me to come with him!” (2)

Gobright began to leave for the theatre, but before he did he sent the first telegraph of the event to be sent that night at 12:30 a.m:

“WASHINGTON, APRIL 14, 1865

TO THE ASSOSIATED PRESS: THE PRESIDENT WAS SHOT IN A THEATRE TONIGHT AND PERHAPS MORTALLY WOUNDED” (5)

This telegraph was the first of many Gobright would send that night and into the early morning, becoming the basis of many newspapers front-page headlines. When Gobright arrived at the theatre he gathered as many sources as possible and after hearing that Secretary Steward had also been attacked, travelled to his residence to gather information on that story. On returning to his office Gobright began to write a full dispatch on the events that occurred that night. His telegraph began as follows:

“President Lincoln and wife, with other friends, this evening visited Ford’s Theatre, for the purpose of witnessing the performance of the ‘American Cousin.’” (2)

When viewed against Stanton’s recount of the events, Gobright’s lead is much weaker. It attempts a chronological recreation of events, rather than getting right to the point. (5) But Gobright’s telegraph meant something else for the way journalism would come to be: the evolution of the 24-hour news cycle.

With the advent of the telegraph, reporting in the Civil War was a much more timely affair than it had been before. (1) What Gobright’s all night coverage did was set a precedent to be followed, even if not at first. Technology would still need to catch up but it was now known that people needed news as it happened, and valued this timeliness.

The Assassination of President Lincoln, sourced from Wikipedia

The government had been collaborating with the AP during the Civil War as a means of spreading official messages that could be read in papers almost instantly. It had been the AP’s routine to consolidate news dispatches from their New York offices to be sent out late at night. This not only provided clearer telegraph lines, but also allowed the newspapers that subscribed to the AP a competitive edge against others in printing news first. (1) This competition is obvious in today’s 24-hour news sphere, the faster you are to get news out the better your paper as a whole does.

Stanton's Dispatch and The New York Herald

During the same time that Gobright was gathering witnesses for his report, Secretary of War Edward M. Stanton was doing reporting of his own. His high position in government allowed him to not only take control of the government, but also gather nearly all of the assassin’s names by 1 a.m.

Stanton wrote dispatches to be released to New York newspapers, which were full of information. The New York Herald ran Stanton’s dispatch the next day on the front page, contents unedited. Later in the Herald’s article are Gobright’s dispatches included, the earliest being at 12:30 a.m. (5)

Read the original paper here: 

Stanton’s reporting style in his first dispatch exhibits the way of things to come. The inverted pyramid style of reporting is starkly familiar, but this was not the way reporting was done at the time. Gobright’s report was much more representative of the methods reporters used, a stream of consciousness account of how things came to be. It takes the reader four paragraphs to get to the President’s injury, whereas it only takes one sentence in Stanton’s account. (5) Today inverted pyramid is taught in introduction journalism classes across the world.

Conclusion

The innovations of Civil War journalism are practiced widely today, without them we still be writing long, chronological accounts that read more like plays than news stories. The work of Gobright and Stanton on the night Lincoln was assassinated provides two perfect examples of the types of trends news writing would encompass in the following years, from the 24-hour news cycle to the inverted pyramid lead. Civil War use of the telegraph had been bringing these innovations to life since use of the technology began, but April 15, 1865 was a turning point for their usage in the newsroom. The world of journalism owes a lot to these two men, and by extension the President who died and allowed them to do the work that they did.

Bibliography

Blondheim, Menahem, (1994). News Over the Wires: The Telegraph and Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897. 1st ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard College.

           

Gobright, L. (1869). Recollection of men and things at Washington, during the third of a century. Philadelphia, Penn.: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger

Important. Assassination of President Lincoln. (1865, April 15). The New York Herald. Retrieved March 3, 2015, from https://archive.org/stream/newyorkherald18650415newy#page/n0/mode/2up

Later, N. (Ed.). (2007). Breaking News: How the Associated Press has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.

Sachsman, D., Rushing, S., & Reddin van Tuyll, D. (Eds.). (2000). The Civil War and the Press. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction.