The Boston Post

The Boston Post was a daily newspaper in New England for over a hundred years before it folded in 1956. The Post was founded in November 1831 by two prominent Boston businessmen, Charles G. Greene and William Beals.

The Boston Post
The Boston Post
The January 16, 1919 front page
of The Boston Post
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)Post Publishing Company (former)
The Boston Post Media Group (current)
Founded1831[1]
LanguageEnglish
Ceased publication1956
Headquarters42 Congress Street
Boston, Massachusetts
Corner Devonshire & Water Streets
Boston, Massachusetts
15–17 Milk Street
Boston, Massachusetts
259 Washington Street
Boston, Massachusetts
 United States

Edwin Grozier bought the paper in 1891. Within two decades, he had built it into easily the largest paper in Boston and New England. Grozier passed the publication to his son, Richard, upon his death in 1924. Under the younger Grozier, The Boston Post grew into one of the largest newspapers in the country. At its height in the 1930s, it had a circulation of well over a million readers. At the same time, Richard Grozier suffered an emotional breakdown from the death of his wife in childbirth from which he never recovered.

Throughout the 1940s, facing increasing competition from the Hearst-run papers in Boston and New York and from radio and television news, the paper began a decline from which it never recovered.

When it ceased publishing in October 1956, its daily circulation was 255,000, and Sunday circulation approximately 260,000.[2]

Since 2019, The Boston Post Media Group has operated a digital version on www.thebostonpost.com with plans to launch a print newspaper by the end of 2019.

Former contributors
  • Olin Downes, music critic.[3]
  • Richard Frothingham, Jr., a Massachusetts historian, journalist, and politician who was a proprietor and managing editor of The Boston Post.
  • Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator; correspondent for The Boston Post in 1948, 1951[4][5]
  • Kenneth Roberts
  • Olga Van Slyke Owens Huckins, literary editor, 1941–1954.[6] Huckins letter to Rachel Carson inspired the book Silent Spring.[7][8]
  • Newton Newkirk was hired by the Post in 1901 and produced the Bingfield Bugleville comic strip that lent its name to Bing Crosby

Sunday Magazine

A weekly magazine was included in the Sunday paper. At first it was called The Sunday Magazine of The Boston Sunday Post and later The Boston Sunday Post Sunday Magazine.

Pulitzer Prizes
  • 1921 – Meritorious Public Service. The Boston Post was awarded the Pulitzer prize for its investigation and exposure of Charles Ponzi's financial fraud. Ponzi was first exposed by the investigative work directed by Richard Grozier, then acting publisher, and Edward Dunn, long time city editor, after complaints by Bostonians that the returns Ponzi offered were "too good to be true". It was the first time that a Boston paper had won a Pulitzer, and was the last Pulitzer for public service awarded to a Boston paper until the Globe won it in 2003.[9]

Boston Post Cane tradition

In 1909, under the ownership of Edwin Grozier, The Boston Post engaged in its most famous publicity stunt. The paper had 700 ornate, ebony-shafted, gold-capped canes made and contacted the selectmen in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island towns. The Boston Post Canes were given to the selectmen with the request that the canes be presented in a ceremony to the town's oldest living man. The custom was expanded to include a community's oldest women in 1930. More than 500 towns in New England still carry on the Boston Post Cane tradition with the original canes they were awarded in 1909.[10]

Website

Since May 1, 2019, The Boston Post has been planning to go online. The Boston Post Media Group has acquired the www.thebostonpost.com.

Usage

According to H. W. Fowler, the first recorded instance of the term O. K. was made in the Boston Morning Post of 1839.[11]

See also
  • Sunday Magazine of
    The Boston Sunday Post
    September 18, 1910.
  • The Boston Post Building, 15–17 Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts
  • The Boston Sunday Post
    Sunday Magazine
    July 5, 1914.

References
  1. The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, Vol. 19, New York, NY: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911, p. 567.
  2. (4 October 1956). Boston Post Ceases Publication For 3rd Time in Last Three Months, Miami News (Associated Press story)
  3. Tommasini, Anthony (December 28, 2001), Edward Downes, 90, Opera Quizmaster, New York, NY: The New York Times
  4. https://rfkhumanrights.org/legacy/bio
  5. https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/kennedy-robert-francis
  6. Special to The New York Times (July 13, 1968), Olga Huckins, Ex-Editor At Boston Transcript, 67, New York, NY: New York Times, p. 27
  7. Matthiessen, Peter (2007), Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson, Boston, MA; New York, NY: Mariner Books, p. 135, ISBN 0-618-87276-0
  8. Himaras, Eleni (May 26, 2007), Rachel's Legacy – Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking 'Silent Spring’ was inspired by Duxbury woman, Quincy, MA: The Patriot Ledger
  9. Ponzi's Scheme, Mitchell Zukoff.
  10. "The Boston Post Cane Information Center - News and History of a New England Tradition". web.maynard.ma.us.
  11. H W Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford 1965) p. 413
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