Barney Kilgore, DePauw University Archives and Special Collections

By Caitlin McCabe

When Barney Kilgore became managing editor of The Wall Street Journal in 1941, he knew he had inherited a failing business.

The Journal, 52 years old at the time, had hit rock bottom in the 1930s.

With an eroded circulation of 33,000, the narrowly focused financial paper neared bankruptcy. Its credibility – devastated by misleading pro-market coverage of the Great Depression – showed no signs of restoration.

Kilgore knew The Journal needed to change, and he had the vision for its overhaul.

“The easiest thing for the reader to do is to stop reading,” Kilgore continuously advocated during his leadership.

With that in mind, Kilgore resurrected the newspaper that had given him his first job – revamping its entire content, style and focus to earn and maintain reader interest.

Twenty-six years later, by the time of Kilgore’s death at age 59 in 1967, The Journal’s circulation topped 1 million, and its annual earnings rose to $13 million, up from $200,000 when Kilgore took the reins in 1941.

“It’s clear that Barney Kilgore is pivotal in the history of The Journal and is a legend around the place,” said Richard Tofel, president of ProPublica and author of a book about Kilgore titled, “Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism.”

“He really conceived the modern Journal, and he set up a pattern and style that still has an enormous amount of influence in journalism today,” Tofel added.

Born into a traditional, humble home in Albany, Ind., Bernard “Barney” Kilgore was described as a precocious child. At age 16, he enrolled in DePauw University, where he majored in political science and gained experience as editor of his campus newspaper, said James “Jim” Kilgore, the son of Barney Kilgore and president of The Princeton Packet.

Upon graduation, Kilgore started work at The Journal in September 1929, seven months before the U.S. stock market crash. He rose through the ranks of The Journal quickly, becoming a columnist at age 23 in 1931, Washington bureau chief at 26, managing editor at 32 and general manager of Dow Jones & Co. at 34. He eventually became president and chairman of Dow Jones.

His influence extended beyond The Journal, a subsidiary of Dow Jones.

Warren Phillips, chairman of Dow Jones until 1991, worked as a reporter under Kilgore’s leadership. He said Kilgore’s pioneering concepts were threefold: news was not just what happened yesterday, but included trends that developed over time; business news was national, not local; and business news was not dull but could be lively and jargon-free.

“Barney was revolutionary because he made business news exciting for the consumer,” Phillips said. “His concept was that business news affects people’s lives – that there are more people taking out home mortgages and loans and saving their money than there are bankers.”

“He livened his stories with anecdotes, with quotes and with color. He made sure the issues of the consumer in Portland, Maine were of equal significance to the consumer in Portland, Oregon,” Phillips said. “People really struggled to emulate it.”

Kilgore also created the “What’s News” column at age 25, which – 80 years later – is still featured on The Journal’s front page. Serving as a succinct summary of the news, the column was also designed to explain the significance of the news.

Jim Kilgore said his father’s devoted and curious nature produced other breakthroughs that still characterize The Journal: “a-heds,” the quirky front-page stories, and the formula of the anecdotal lead followed by the “nut graf,” a paragraph that explains the heart of a story.

Kilgore made strides in developing a weekly national newspaper, The National Observer, which he had hoped would synthesize all of the week’s news into a condensed publication. The newspaper closed 10 years after his death.

“When (Kilgore) died, he hadn’t gotten The National Observer right. He knew he hadn’t,” said Tofel. “He might have if he had lived somewhat longer.”

The younger Kilgore said it was his father’s character that drove The Journal to excellence.

Jim Kilgore remembers the vacations he took with his father as a boy. On one trip to Florida in 1956 – as tensions of the civil rights movement began to boil – he recalled his father stopping at a gas station to change a tire.

“A white fellow, who was the manager of the gas station, couldn’t figure out how to change it. So, a black fellow came up and helped us and fixed it right away,” Jim Kilgore said. “As we drove away, my father said to us, ‘See, that shows us that the color of your skin makes no difference.’”

“It was powerful, and at that moment, I knew how ethical he was,” he said.

“People liked him. He wasn’t the kind of guy that would hug you or show a lot of emotion,” Jim Kilgore added. “But he cared about everyone at The Journal. He would make suggestions to people and make them feel like the ideas were theirs.

“He never would seek the glory of it – he just felt good about seeing things accomplished.”

Those who worked at The Journal said Kilgore’s impact was lasting. “He was a great fellow, and he really built up the company to what it is today,” said Don Carter, who served as executive director of The Wall Street Journal’s Newspaper Fund in the 1960s.

Phillips said Kilgore continued to ask about The Journal up until his final days of 1967, when he died of stomach cancer. In 2000, the TJFR Group, publisher of a newsletter about business journalists, and MasterCard International named Kilgore the ‘Business Journalist of the Century.’

Caitlin McCabe is a native of Winston-Salem, N.C., and a business journalism major in the Class of 2014 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Leonard Silk

By Caroline Schaberg

When Leonard Silk began his career as a journalist post-World War II, most business publications simply provided their readers with economic data and statistics. The information was neither newsworthy nor particularly interesting to read.

Silk changed all of that by bringing more of a personal approach to coverage of the economy. He wrote in layman’s terms so that his readers could more easily understand news from the business world.

“He came into the profession as an enterprise in educating and enlightening the business class in the post-depression period when they were at least somewhat persuadable,” said his son Mark Silk, director for Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College. “He really focused on economics as it had emerged after the war and brought economic awareness to his readers.”

Silk was born in Philadelphia on May 15, 1918. He began his career as a reporter while in college at Wisconsin, where he edited Octopus, a humor magazine. It was here that he encountered professors who argued that economists should focus not only on the big picture, but also on the effects of the markets on individuals.

From there, in 1940, Silk continued to Duke University to earn a Ph.D. in economics, a rare feat for a journalist at the time. Following the war, Silk used this degree to become an economist for the United States Mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

It was after this stint that Elliott Bell, Business Week’s new editor, hired Silk to head the economics section of the publication. Silk worked here from 1954 to 1969 and preferred to hire journalists who, like himself, had a background in economics.

“He was brought into Business Week with the idea that businessmen needed to be brought up to speed on the Keynesian revolution, and that if they simply subsisted on The Wall Street Journal, they wouldn’t know what they needed to know to get along in a new economy,” said Mark Silk.

A year after leaving Business Week, Leonard Silk went to work for The New York Times as a writer of economic columns and editorials. He worked there until retiring in 1992.

“If he had a striking bias, it was bias toward news,” said David Warsh, a journalist and author who has covered economics for the Wall Street Journal and other publications since the 1970s. “He just knew how to get a lot of people into the paper. He really set the standard, and until he stopped, there was no one better.”

One way that Silk got people into the paper was by profiling economists themselves.

“Silk’s profiles fit the age,” said Tiago Mata, a journalist and writer who has researched and written on Silk. “Post-Sputnik America saw a public affirmation of knowledge and knowledge producers. There were whiz-kids at the Pentagon and the White House. Claims about America’s congenital anti-intellectualism seemed not to apply any more. It was appropriate that Silk report on economists who were growing in their influence of public affairs. It was felicitous that there was an interest to learn more about them. Silk happened to have the right training, contacts and disposition to do the job.”

Silk also managed to find time to author a book, “The American Establishment,” which he co-wrote with his son Mark. It was published in 1980.

“The idea to write a book came before we actually had a topic in mind,” said Mark Silk. “He did have personal connections to a bunch of the institutions that we wrote about, so that’s how it ended up coming together.”

Leonard Silk also penned a variety of other books, including “Nixonomics,” “Making Capitalism Work,” and “Economics in Plain English.”

“I did not want to write down to people,” The Times quoted Silk shortly before his death. “I wanted to make economics accessible. I thought any idea could be plainly stated.”

Silk died in 1995 at the age of 76.

Caroline Schaberg is a native of St. Louis, Mo., and a senior business journalism major in the Class of 2013 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She interned for Bloomberg News in New York City last spring.

Irving Levine

By Landon Dowdy

NBC News correspondent Irving R. Levine said it best when he said, “Once a news junkie, always a news junkie.”

His dedication to his craft drove him to read three or four newspapers every morning and eventually led him to become the man responsible for “essentially creating economics reporting,” said Lynn University President Kevin Ross.

Time magazine agreed when it called him the “pioneer” of reporting economics on television.

Balding head, piercing blue eyes, and a signature bow tie added character to his slow-paced delivery and gave him a recognizable presence in television news for more than four decades. Former co-worker and Lynn University professor Denise Belafonte recalled Levine as “brilliant and witty… and he just silenced the room.”

Levine was born on Aug. 6, 1922, in Pawtucket, R. I., just outside of Providence and stayed local for college where he attended Brown University. He landed his first job in 1940 working for the Providence Journal as an obituary writer.

Levine had bigger aspirations as a journalist though, and his goal was to be abroad. Levine joined the Army during World War II as a photographer, which allowed him to travel to the Philippines and Japan. Levine still had his sights set on becoming a foreign correspondent.

After leaving the Army, Levine decided to hone in on his journalism, earning a graduate degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Following graduate school, Levine started working as a correspondent on the foreign desk for the International News Service. Levine said, “I had wanted to be a foreign correspondent since high school but INS was not the most generous outfit. The only way to go overseas was to pay your own passage.”

In 1949 at the beginning of the Cold War, Levine traveled to Paris by way of the Queen Mary to be the only INS correspondent in Vienna. When the United Nations sent troops to Korea in 1950, Levine wanted to cover the war and requested a transfer volunteering to cover it.

He began freelancing for NBC from there and nabbed the honor of becoming the first network reporter to be accredited by the Soviet Union in 1955. NBC went on to hire Levine full-time and sent him back to Europe traveling to more than two-dozen countries including Korea, Russia, Vietnam, Algeria, Poland, South Africa, Japan, Italy and England.

At the time NBC paid $50 per piece. Levine, being the witty man he was, remarked, “I always thought they looked at the $50 a broadcast and decided it would be cheaper to hire me full time. And that’s how I went to work for NBC.”

Levine wanted to cover the State Department, but NBC News had different plans for him. “It was a barren time,” explained Levine. “Producers just weren’t interested in those stories.” Instead, producers asked him to cover business and economics. It seems they had an eye for his skill, as he went on to be the first network correspondent to cover economics full time.

Former television news producer and Syracuse University professor Robert Lissit stated, “He’s grabbed so much air time over the years that a CBS News president once said all NBC had for correspondents was a bunch of guys named Irving. In response, Levine’s colleagues made up a button stating, ‘Irving, NBC News.’”

It was the height of economic excitement in 1970 with rising unemployment, inflation and business troubles that gave Levine much to report on. The problem was that the average viewer had trouble understanding heavy economic talk and issues.

With the challenge, Levine shined in his ability to break down the reports in a way that not only was understandable to the viewers but also taught his audience economics.

NBC Nightly News’ Washington producer at the time, Christie Basham, explained, “I told him if he could make me understand them, the viewer would too. And he did. He taught me economics.”

Forbes Editor-in-Chief Steve Forbes noted Levine “showed others how to take the economy and make it understandable and accessible to a wide audience… Levine stood out because of his ability to communicate and relay the essence of complex subjects.”

Levine was well known for being a stickler by using his name as “Irving R. Levine” in his sign-off even against the wishes of NBC producers who thought it was too long and added an unnecessary couple of seconds to the newscast. Levine recalled the producers “finally suggested I drop the R in my sign-off, Irving R. Levine. I held my ground. “’No,’ I said, ‘I’d rather drop the B in NBC.’”

Levine’s quick-witted humor is remembered fondly at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., where he went on to become the dean of the College of International Communications after he retired from NBC in 1995.

Current university President Kevin Ross explained that his father met Levine on a cruise to Europe at a time when he was planning to make a move back to his roots of Brown University. Ross Sr., then Lynn University president, invited him down to Lynn and persuaded him to join the university. It was at that time Levine dropped the R and insisted on becoming Dean Levine.

Ross told of “his wicked sense of humor, that was border-line inappropriate, but hilarious” and in a commencement speech to the graduating class where he advised students that “every year Mr. Forbes publishes a list of the 500 richest people in the world. After you wake up in the morning, look at the list. If you’re not on it, go to work.”

Levine was a hard-working visionary and a teacher to all. He went on to write three books about life in the USSR – all best sellers. He was a model public speaker that knew everyone, and everyone knew him. In the wise words of Levine himself, “It’s not who you know; it’s whom you know.”

Levine died March 27, 2009, at the age of 86 of prostate complications in Washington, D.C.