Swope, Herbert Bayard
SWOPE, HERBERT BAYARD
SWOPE, HERBERT BAYARD (1882–1958), U.S. journalist and public official; brother of Gerard *Swope. One of the leading newspapermen of his time, he continued to exert wide influence for 30 years after his retirement from journalism. A man of colorful personality and with a variety of interests, he was equally at home in journalism, business, politics, sports, the theater, and society. Born in St. Louis, he joined the staff of the liberal New York World in 1909 after short periods on other papers and was soon recognized as one of New York's outstanding reporters. When the Pulitzer prizes were established in 1917, he won the first award for reporting with his war dispatches from Germany. These were collected in the book Inside the German Empire (1917). In 1920 he became executive editor of the World, and directed a number of expos é s, among them the Ku Klux Klan, working conditions in Florida, and crime in New York. Retiring in 1929, he became a policy consultant to corporations, individuals, and government agencies. He was also a member of the first State Racing Commission of New York, served as a consultant to the U.S. secretary of war from 1942 to 1946, and as an alternate United States representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.
bibliography:
E.J. Kahn, Jr., World of Swope (1965), incl. bibl.
[Irving Rosenthal]