“Don’t let that fret you, Mr. Dana,” replied Lord. “You’ve got a Dante class on hand to-night. You just go home and enjoy yourself. I’ll have the news for you all right.”
Dana always said that he didn’t enjoy his Dante class a single bit that night; but he didn’t go near the Sun office, neither did he communicate with the office. He banked on Lord, and the next morning and ever afterward Lord made good on the independent service. He built up the Laffan Bureau, which more recently has become the Sun News Service, and the special correspondents of the paper in all parts of the world see to it that the Sun gets the news.
A task like that which Dana thrust on Lord might have paralyzed the average managing editor of a great metropolitan newspaper confronted by keen and powerful competitors. It was unheard of in journalism. It had never been attempted before. Lord, with calm courage and confidence, sent off thousands of telegrams and cable despatches that night. Many were shots in the air, but the majority were bull’s-eyes, as the next morning’s issue of the Sun proved.
Was Dana delighted? If you had seen him hop, skip, and jump into the office that morning, you’d have received your answer. When Lord turned up at his desk in the afternoon, Dana rushed out from his chief editor’s office, grasped him about the shoulders, and chuckled:
“Chester, you’re a brick, you’re a trump. You’re the John L. Sullivan of newspaperdom!”
The Laffan Bureau, which assimilated the old United Press, became a news syndicate the service of which was sought by dozens of American papers whose editors admired the Sun’s manner of handling news. The Laffan Bureau lasted until 1916, when the Sun, through its purchase by Frank A. Munsey, absorbed Mr. Munsey’s New York Press, which had the Associated Press service.
Among Mr. Lord’s fortunate traits as managing editor were his ability to choose good correspondents all over the world and his entire confidence in them after they were selected. No matter what other correspondents wrote, the Sun stood by its own men. They were on the spot; they should know the truth as well as any one else could.
Months before Aguinaldo’s insurrection the Sun man at Manila, P. G. McDonnell, kept insisting that the Filipino chieftain would revolt. The other New York newspapers laughed at the Sun for seeing ghosts, but McDonnell was right.
Newspaper readers will remember that in 1904 the fall of Port Arthur was announced three or four times in about as many months, and each time the Sun appeared to be beaten on the news until the next day, when it was discovered that the Russians were still holding out. All the Sun did about the matter was to notify its Tokyo correspondent, John T. Swift, that when Port Arthur really fell it would expect to hear from him by cable at “double urgent” rates. At midnight of January 1, 1905, four months after these instructions were given to Swift, the Sun got a “double urgent” message:
Port Arthur fallen—Swift.