From The Washington Post

((This message may be taken INC for anyone whose characters would bother to read a newspaper.))

The Washington Post
June 12, 2011


In a special press release today, Carrie Christoffersen, the curator of collections at the Smithsonian’s Washington D.C. Museum of News, announced that the Boston Globe has made a significant contribution to the museum’s exhibit of News History. The exhibit, which is the largest of the galleries, currently traces more than five centuries of news through a collection of more than 30,000 historic newspapers. However, with the significant contributions donated by the Boston Globe, the Newseum will be able to create a special section in the News History exhibit devoted to the life of one of its founders and first publisher in chief, General Charles H. Taylor.

Taylor, who took his position at the Globe in early January of 1896, is most famously remembered for his efforts to create a profitable, large-circulation newspaper. He succeeded in doing so by reducing the price to an affordable two cents per copy, by laying down a strict rule that all news should be given impartially, and by adding stock quotations, women's pages, and sports coverage to the previous menu of political, national and foreign news. To the disbelief and shock of many Bostonians of his day, and to the bafflement of modern scholars, within three weeks of his advent as publisher, the Globe’s circulation jumped from 8,000 to 30,000. In many circles today, Taylor is attributed with creating the prototype of the modern, family newspaper.

While General Taylor himself went on to lead an enormously successful public life, serving as the private secretary to the Governor of Massachusetts and later as a member of the state’s House of Representatives, the famed publisher was rumored to have a darker private side. Shortly before the ascendancy of the Globe under his direction, his young daughter Christina Taylor passed away in a tragic accident just days before Christmas, 1895. The following years were fraught with tragedy: his wife, Georgiana Olivia Davis, succumbed to mental illness, fled his home in the night, and was found dead a year and a day after their daughter’s death. The final blow came when Taylor’s eldest son Charles committed suicide by hanging himself in the family home. The new exhibit investigates the grand public life of General Taylor, father of the impartial news story, and the shadows that eventually eclipsed him.

The Newseum is Located at:
555 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
Washington D.C., DC 20001
(202) 292-6100

Subway: Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter Station
Get directions - Is this accurate?

Open Daily 9am-5pm

Little do they know just who (or what!) was behind those deaths and disappearances...

Awesome job MC, +4 XP