EDWARD PAGE MITCHELL
Editor of “The Sun”
Mr. Reick, who was born in Philadelphia in 1864, entered newspaper work in that city when he was nineteen years old. A few years later he removed to Newark, New Jersey, where he became the correspondent of the New York Herald. He attracted the attention of Mr. Bennett, the owner of the Herald, and in 1888 he was made editor of the Herald’s London and Paris editions. A year later he returned to America to become city editor of the Herald, the highest title then given on a newspaper which refuses to have a titular managing editor. In 1903 he was elected president of the New York Herald Company, and he remained in that position until 1906, when he left the Herald to become associated with Adolph Ochs in the publication of the New York Times and with George W. Ochs in the publication of the Philadelphia Public Ledger.
When Mr. Reick assumed the control of the Sun properties, he devoted much care to the improvement of the Evening Sun, putting it under the managing editorship of George M. Smith, who had served for many years as news editor of the Sun under Chester S. Lord. As Mr. Munsey said when he acquired the Sun and the Evening Sun from Mr. Reick:
Very great credit is due Mr. Reick for the fine development of the Evening Sun since it came under his control. I know of no man who has done a better and sounder piece of newspaper work at any time, in New York or elsewhere, than Mr. Reick has done on the Evening Sun.
Among the events of the Reick régime were the retirement of Chester S. Lord from the managing editorship and of George B. Mallon from the city editorship, and the removal of the newspaper from its old home at Nassau and Frankfort Streets to the American Tract Society Building, one block farther south, at Nassau and Spruce Streets.
It was during Mr. Reick’s control of the Sun that Mr. Munsey, in the autumn of 1912, bought the New York Press, a one-cent Republican morning daily holding an Associated Press membership. The Sun had lacked the Associated Press service since the fateful night when Mr. Dana bolted from that organization and started the Laffan News Bureau.
Mr. Munsey bought the Sun from Mr. Reick on June 30, 1916, and four days later, on July 3, the Press, with its Associated Press service, its best men, and some of its popular features, was absorbed by the Sun. As the Press had been a penny paper, the price of the Sun was reduced to one cent, after having stood at two cents since the Civil War. It remained a penny paper until January 26, 1918, when the pressure of production-costs forced the price of all the big New York dailies to two cents.
The amalgamation of the Sun and the Press wrought no change in the editorial department of the Sun, Mr. Mitchell remaining as its chief. Ervin Wardman, long the editor of the Press, became the publisher of the Sun and vice-president of the Sun Printing and Publishing Association. Mr. Reick remained with the organization in an advisory capacity. Keats Speed, the managing editor of the Press, became managing editor of the Sun, Kenneth Lord remaining as city editor.
The Sun has had five homes—at 222 William Street, where Benjamin H. Day struck off the first tiny number; at 156 Nassau Street, rented by Day in August, 1835, when the paper began to pay well; at the southwest corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets, to which Moses Y. Beach moved the Sun in 1842; at Nassau and Frankfort Streets, the old Tammany Hall, which Dana and his associates bought; and at 150 Nassau Street, whither the Sun moved in July, 1915. It is expected that the Sun will presently move to another and a fine home, for in September, 1917, Mr. Munsey bought the Stewart Building, at the northeast corner of Broadway and Chambers Street, just north of City Hall Park. The site is generally admitted to be the most desirable building site downtown, so large is the ground space, so fine is the outlook over the spacious park, and so close is it to three subways, three or four elevated-railroad lines, and the Brooklyn Bridge.