Harold W. Ross

Harold Wallace Ross (November 6, 1892 - December 6, 1951) was an American journalist and founder of The New Yorker magazine, which he edited from the magazine's inception in 1925 to his death.

Life

Born in Aspen, Colorado to George and Ida (Martin) Ross, Harold was the son of an Irish immigrant and a schoolteacher. Ida Ross sponsored poetry readings and “similar occasions of an edifying nature.” George Ross was something of an observant satirist who liked to argue against organized religion. This skill, combined with mother ida’s morals and teacher’s sense, shaped Harold’s perspective in life.

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 Tribune. 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 Denver Post. Though he returned to his family, he did not return to school, instead getting a job at the Salt Lake Telegram, where he often joined police offices and firefighters on assignment. Ross read dime novels of the time and followed news reports of international conflicts, such as the Russo-Japanese Conflict. These stories inspired him to join the US Army as a war correspondent.

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 (the only military-sponsored media US soldiers had to read at the time) , serving from February 1918 to April 1919. On the Stars and Stripes, he met Alexander Woollcott, Cyrus Baldridge, Franklin Pierce Adams, and Jane Grant, who would become his first wife and helped back The New Yorker.

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.

The New Yorker

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, of which the first issue 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 was one of the original members of the Algonquin Round Table. He used his contacts from "The Vicious Circle" to help get The New Yorker off the ground. 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, Katharine S. White, S. J. Perelman, Janet Flanner (aka "Genet"), Wolcott Gibbs, Alexander Woollcott, John O'Hara, 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 he?" because Ross believed the only two people everyone in the English-speaking world was familiar with were Harry Houdini and Sherlock Holmes. He also was notorious for overusing commas. Very aware of his limited education, his bible was Fowler's Modern English Usage.

The New Yorker was intended as a more refined humor magazine compared to The Judge and other magazines of the day, and … (would not be edited for safety) In 1924, while working at The Judge, Ross created a prospectus and a prototype for the New Yorker, and was circulating them in his search for potential backers.

The New Yorker was launched in February, 1925 and its first issue immediately sold out, but the magazine floundered in the following months. Ross attributed the sales drop from early issues to the magazine’s confusing and unpromising content, which lead to circulation plummeting drastically by May. He was so concerned about the magazine’s aimlessness that he apologized with a letter addressed to the writing staff. He argued that the magazine was too humorous and that content needed to be ‘more serious and purposeful.’ He set to make the New Yorker to be more topical and relevant to public discourse. The magazine’s art soon became a major staple and helped increase appeal, but Ross felt that its written text wasn’t a match for its artistic quality.

Ross considered closing the magazine but instead decided to regroup for the fall season with improved content and a more confident tone. The magazine lost an average of $2,000 a week for three years, and sales had to reach $700,000 to make it profitable. Gradually, the New Yorker began attracting Ross’ intended audience of sophisticated, humorous, socially-aware readers. Ross maintained that, in order for the magazine to survive and avoid its past mistakes, the advertising department be kept totally separate from the editorial staff, lest content suffer from a conflict of interest that would return the magazine to its earlier, unorganized issues. With a more refined approach and a steadily-growing readership, the magazine eventually attracted writers, editors, and artists of a higher caliber, either experienced or beginner. The magazine’s stature quickly rose to a level that established celebrities of the day, such as Groucho Marx and F. Scott Fitzgerald, actively pursued Ross and submitted work as contributors.

Prospectus

Ross' Style

Ross’ writing style was self-taught, as he was a reader of few books and had never worked for a book or drama department that would have taught him how to edit a magazine. As a high school dropout, he had a suspicion of the fickleness of words with multiple meanings, and he would always aim for simplicity and clarity, limiting metaphors, similes, and figures of speech.

Literary ignorance, however, meant that Ross did not consider reputation and experience when he hired writers. He focused on whatever skills they could display in front of him. Thus, a famous and renowned writer had just as much chance to write for the magazine as a budding amateur. All writers were subject to the same standards.

As an editor, Ross would evaluate every line of copy two or three times over, with notes for authors that ranged from a brief note of advice to long comments about verbosity. 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.

Ross would obsess over punctuation usage and word searches for the sake of precision. He was known to search obsessively through Webster and Roget dictionaries for ideal words, and he would spend several hours experimenting with punctuation to improve article progression. These habits spilled over to the rest of the New Yorker’s writing and editorial staff, a tradition that continues to this day.

The New Yorker is known for limiting swear words in its articles, a practice started in part by Ross’ awareness that vulgarity indicated class while the magazine’s intended purpose was supposed to reflect a “cultured New York City.” Ross himself was famous for his liberal use of curse words, yet he would be the first to point out the double standard of print versus spoken word.

Legacy

He died in Boston, Massachusetts 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 0-679-41837-7.
James Thurber. The Years With Ross. Boston: Little, Brown, 1959. ISBN 0-06-095971-1 (2001 reprint).
Ben Yagoda. About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made. New York: Scribners, 2000. ISBN 0-684-81605-9.

External links

Credits

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