Doubtless there were many young New Yorkers of that period who would have made bang-up reporters, but apparently, until Day’s time, with few exceptions they did not work on morning newspapers. One exception was James Gordon Bennett, whose work for Webb on the Courier and Enquirer helped to make it the leading American paper.
Nathaniel P. Willis and George P. Morris would probably have been good reporters, for they knew New York and had excellent styles, but they insisted on being poets. With Morris it was not a hollow vocation, for the author of “Woodman, Spare That Tree,” could always get fifty dollars for a song. He and Willis ran the Mirror and later the New Mirror, and wrote verse and other fanciful stuff by the bushel. Philip Hone would have been the best reporter in New York, as his diary reveals, but he was of the aristocracy, and he seems to have scorned newspapermen, particularly Webb and Bennett.
But somehow, by that chance which seemed to smile on the Sun, Ben Day got clever reporters. He wanted one to do the police-court work, for he saw, from the first day of the paper, that that was the kind of stuff that his readers devoured. To them the details of a beating administered by James Hawkins to his wife were of more import than Jackson’s assaults on the United States Bank.
When George W. Wisner, a young printer who was out of work, applied to the Sun for a job, Day told him that he would give him four dollars a week if he would get up early every day and attend the police-court, which held its sessions from 4 A.M. on. The people of the city were quite as human then as they are to-day. Unregenerate mortals got drunk and fought in the streets. Others stole shoes. The worst of all beat their wives. Wisner was to be the Balzac of the daybreak court in a year when Balzac himself was writing his “Droll Stories.”
The second issue of the Sun continued the typographical error of the day before. The year in the date-line of the second page was “1832.” The big news in this paper was under date of Plymouth, England, August 1, and it told of the capture of Lisbon by Admiral Napier on the 25th of July. Day—or perhaps it was Wisner—wrote an editorial article about it:
To us as Americans there can be little of interest in the triumph of one member of a royal family of Europe over another; and although we can but rejoice at the downfall of the modern Nero who so lately filled the Portuguese throne, yet if rumor speak the truth the victorious Pedro is no better than he should be.
The editor lamented the general lack of news:
With the exception of the interesting news from Portugal there appears to be very little worthy of note. Nullification has blown over; the President’s tour has terminated; Black Hawk has gone home; the new race for President is not yet commenced, and everything seems settled down into a calm. Dull times, these, for us newspaper-makers. We wish the President or Major Downing or some other distinguished individual would happen along again and afford us material for a daily article. Or even if the sea-serpent would be so kind as to pay us a visit, we should be extremely obliged to him and would honor his snakeship with a most tremendous puff.
Theatrical advertising appeared in this number, the Park Theater announcing the comedy of “Rip Van Winkle,” as redramatized by Mr. Hackett, who played Rip. Mr. Gale was playing “Mazeppa” at the Bowery. Perhaps these advertisements were borrowed from a six-cent paper, but there was one “help wanted” advertisement that was not borrowed. It was the upshot of Day’s own idea, destined to bring another revolution in newspaper methods:
TO THE UNEMPLOYED—A number of steady men can find employment by vending this paper. A liberal discount is allowed to those who buy to sell again.