Harold Ross
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Harold Wallace Ross (November 6, 1892 - December 6, 1951) was an American journalist and co-founder of The New Yorker magazine, which he edited from 1925 to his death.
Born in Aspen, Colorado to George and Ida (Martin) Ross, he was the son of an Irish immigrant and a schoolteacher. When he was eight, the family left Aspen because of the collapse in the price of silver, moving to Redcliff and Silverton, Colorado, then to Salt Lake City, Utah. In Utah, he worked on the high school paper and was a stringer for the Salt Lake City Tribute. The young Ross had journalism in the blood, dropping out of school at thirteen and running away to his uncle's in Denver where he worked for the Post. Though he returned to his family, he did not return to school, instead getting a job at the Salt Lake Telegram.
By the time he was twenty-five he had worked for at least seven different papers, including the Marysville, California Appeal; the Sacramento Union; the Panama Star and Herald; the New Orleans Item; the Atlanta Journal, the Hudson Observer in Hoboken, New Jersey; the Brooklyn Eagle; and the San Francisco Call.
In Atlanta, he covered the murder trial of Leo Frank, one of the of "trials of the century".
In World War I, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Eighteenth Engineers Railway Regiment. In France, he edited the regimental journal and went to Paris to work for the Stars and Stripes, serving from February 1918 to April 1919. On the Stars and Stripes, he met Alexander Woollcott, Franklin Pierce Adams, and Jane Grant, who would become the first Mrs. Ross.
After the war, he returned to New York City and assumed the editorship of a magazine for veterans, The Home Sector. It folded in 1920 and was absorbed by the American Legion Weekly. He then spent a few weeks at Judge, a humorous magazine. These magazines were where Ross planned a new journal, one with metropolitan sensibilities and a sophisticated tone. This would be The New Yorker, the first issue of which was dated February 21, 1925. It was a partnership between Ross and yeast heir Raoul Fleishmann; they established the F-R Publishing Company to publish the magazine.
Ross, who was said to resemble "a dishonest Abe Lincoln" was a genius at attracting talent to his new magazine, featuring writers such as James Thurber, E.B. White, Katherine Angell, S.J. Perelman, Janet Flanner (aka "Genet"), Woolcott Gibbs, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker. Ross worked extremely long hours and ruined all three of his marriages as a result. He was a careful and conscientious editor who strived to keep his magazine clear and concise. One famous query to his writers was "Who that?" because Ross believed the only two people everyone in the English-speaking world was familiar with were Harry Houdini and Sherlock Holmes. Very aware of his limited education, his bible was Fowler's Modern English Usage. He edited every issue of the magazine from the first until his death--a total of 1,399 issues. He would be succeeded as editor by William Shawn.
He died in New York, New York during an operation to remove cancer.
He kept up a volumnious correspondence, which is available to researchers at the New York Public Library.
Bibliography
- Thomas Kunkel. Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of the New Yorker. New York: Random House, 1995. ISBN 0679418377.
- James Thurber. The Years With Ross. Boston: Little, Brown, 1959. ISBN 0060959711 (2001 reprint).
- Ben Yagoda. About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made. New York: Scribners, 2000. ISBN 0684816059.