The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune

Few American newspapers, perhaps none, have matched the New York Herald Tribune in the crispness of its writing and editing, the bite of its commentators, the range of its coverage and the clarity of its typography. The “Trib”, as it was affectionately called, raised newspapering to an art form. It had an influence and importance out of all proportion to its circulation. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln went to great lengths to retain the support of its co-founder, Horace Greeley. President Eisenhower felt it was such an important institution and Republican organ that he helped broker its sale to its last owner, multimillionaire John Hay Whitney.

The Trib’s spectacularly distinguished staffers and contributors included Karl Marx, Tom Wolfe, Walter Lippmann, Dorothy Thompson, Virgil Thomson, Eugenia Sheppard, Red Smith, Heywood Broun, Walter Kerr, Homer Bigart, and brothers Joseph and Stewart Alsop. At the close of World War II, the Herald Tribune, the marriage of two newspapers that had done more than any others to create modern daily journalism, was at its apex of power and prestige. Yet just twenty-one years later, its influence still palpable in every newsroom across the nation, the Trib was gone.

This is the story The Paper, a 1986 finalist of the National Book Award for Nonfiction and winner of the George Polk Prize, tells.


“Probably the best book ever written about an American newspaper. But it is more than that — a brilliant piece of social history that recounts in vivid and telling detail the changing conception of ‘news’ in America... The book is chockablock with marvelous yarns... And what a cast of characters Kluger has to work with... Some of the most vivid pages in The Paper are Kluger’s portraits of these arresting personalities.” — J. Anthony Lukas, The Boston Globe

“Monumental... with a narrative sweep that is always absorbing and sometimes breathtaking... What invigorates this history is Mr. Kluger’s enthusiasm for his subject, which is apparent everywhere in the loving detail with which he tells the story... and in the liveliness of the prose with which he profiles some of the Tribune’s more unusual personalities.” — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

“Engrossing... if there is a better book about an American newspaper, I am unaware of it... It is loaded to the gunnels with newspaper anecdotes, but at its core The Paper is a book about the relationship between the press and the powerful, the press and the wealthy.” — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

“The romance of The Front Page, genteel anti-Semitism, the disaster of newspaper labor relations, and the rise and fall of newspaper fortunes. All are there in The Paper. It is irresistible.” — Anthony Lewis

“Compelling... most delightfully so when Mr. Kluger is limning the words and deeds of the people who made The Paper crackle with vitality for more than a century... He does a remarkable job of bringing these people to life on the printed page.” — David Shaw, The New York Times Book Review

“Remarkable... a fascinating account of a greatness that once was... This book will hold you in its narrative grip as you revel in a story of a grand venture and epic characters... Here the history of a newspaper is a graphic presentation of a nation’s life.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Richard Kluger is uniquely qualified to tell this tale... He brings a novelist’s imagination to some vivid material.” — Paul Gray, Time Magazine

“Fascinating from start to finish, the best book about American journalism since Swanberg’s Citizen Hearst. Huge and engrossing.” — Larry Lee, San Francisco Chronicle

“A magnificently romantic history not only of the ill-fated New York Herald Tribune but of New York newspapering generally... peopled with unforgettable heroes and knaves.” — Robert Sherrill, Chicago Sun-Times