The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-07-22
MR.. LORD OF THE SUN.

For the past twenty-five years Mr.
Lord has been the managing editor of
the New York Sun. To the staff of
men under him he is known as Boss
Lord" says a writer in the Saturday
Evening Post, but to men on other pa
pers, among whom he is well known
and much admired, he is known simply
as Mr.. Lord of the Sun" Some incl
dents illustrative of his methods of ad-
mfnistratiOn are cited by the writer
We read:
On the day President Mckinley was
shot one of the problems of the news
papers was to locate Mr.. Roosevelt who
was then vice president AT Buffalo
lay the president. mortally wounded;
somewhere in the wilds of New York
state Mr.. Roosevelt was hunting game
Mr.. Chester S. Lord. the managing ed
itOr of the New York Sun, was absent
from the city, and one of his assistants
gave the star reporter the assign
ment: Find Roosevelt" He started
at once for Albany At every station
along the way he got a bunch of tele-
grams from the Office suggesting places
where he was likely to find the vice
president At the Sun bureau at Al
bany there were half a dozen more He
decided to go to Buffalo.
At the railway station he called up
the bureau and, on being told that there
was a lcicSIdiu lIOil the ONCE, asked
the man to read ii. The man read.
Tell -- (the reporter) to use his
own judgment and act on his own ini-
tiative hereafter
Never mind reading the signature,
said the reporter; II know that Boss
Lord is back"
Mr.. Lord began to read newspapers
when he was a boy, during the civil
war. Everybody wanted news and he
ma
man. When he came out of college he
became reporter on an Oswego pa
per. Subsequently, during d vacation,
he went to New York and was given a
trial on the San. His first assignment
was to find out something about a re-
port telegraphed from Louisville, KY,
that q western syndicate had got a cor
ner on all the old whisky. The Sun was
fighting General Grant then, and the
city editor said to him: You'll prob
ably find that General Grant is some
where in that deal" Unlike some men
who made great successes with their
first story, Mr.. Lord wrote a column of
matter that the city editor threw into
the waste basket. What appeared was
a few lines written by him, with the
remark of the city editors about Gen
eTal Grant at the end But he devel-
Oped into a good reporter. At 90 he was
assistant to the managing editor, at 80
he was managing editor. In those days
the Sun was a member of the Associated
Press. There was some diSsensiOn
among the papers that had subscribed
to it, and they formed the United Press.
Mr.. Charles A. Dana was editor of the
Sun, and it was his habit to come into
the city room, where the reporters
write, every afternoon, take a chair by
the managing editors desk and say,
| "XVlat'S the news Mr.. Lord
One day he said, after his usual re-
mark: Can you get enough news, in
dependent of the United Press, to make
an interesting newspaper"
YES" said Mr. Lord.
''Do It," said Mr.. Dana.
That day the Sun left the United
Press 1t meant that henceforth it was
dependent upon it's own resources to get
the news of the whole world. 1t was
staggering job. When newspaper men
J heard of the SUMS determination to
gather it's own news. they said: They
can't do It, No paper can" But Mr.
Lord made it possible.
BY means Of a system of collecting
election returns which he perfected, Mr.
Lord was able to communicate to James
/ G. Blaine the first definite news of his
| defeat tt was the election of 1884, and
very close. Everything depended on the
way New York state went. Up at Au-
gusta, Me-, Mr.. Blaine's home, the re-
turns had indicated his election, and
there was a great demonstration. Bands
were playing. bonfires were burning and
crowds were cheering. About midnight
Mr.. Blaine's secretary, who knew Mr.
Lord, thought it was a good idea to find
out what news the Sun had, so he tel
| egraphed and received the following re-
ply: Looks as if Cleveland had car
ried the state by about 1000"
Mr.. Lord has an unerring ability to
get at news in large emergencies. For
| example, he located a man at Martin
iuue who cabled the first specific ac-
count OF the Mont Pelee disaster
| To Mr.. Lord, perhaps. more than any
other living man, is due that human
interest quality in Sun articles known
as the sun flavor" He believes in
making literature out of news" and,
above all, in making reports, ranging
from dog fights to conventions, interest
ing and entertaining. He asks reporters
to write things as they see them That
is why the Sun stories have personal
ity.