Voting Station

Herbert Bayard Swope

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Commentator

The Resume

    (January 5, 1882-June 20, 1958)
    Born in St. Louis, Missouri
    Reporter and editor for the New York World (1909-24)
    Considered the creator of the modern op-ed page
    Public relations consultant for Alcoa, Standard Oil, RCA, 20th Century Fox, NBC, and CBS
    Inducted into the National Croquet Hall of Fame (1979)

Why he might be annoying:

    He was a chronic gambler who was fired from an early newspaper job when he got into a craps game and did not return to work for several days.
    The boisterous parties that he threw at his Long Island estate would cause his neighbor, writer Ring Lardner, to occasionally check into a Manhattan hotel for a respite from the noise.
    He was frequently late to social events; he once called George S. Kaufman at 10 PM to ask what he was doing for dinner and received the reply, 'Digesting it.'
    He was a shameless name dropper.
    He made an unsuccessful attempt to buy the World when the Pulitzer family sold it.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He won the first Pulitzer Prize for reporting (1917) for a series of dispatches from Germany during World War I.
    As editor of the World, he oversaw investigations of the KKK and of prison conditions in Florida, which won the World two Pulitzer Prizes for public service (1921, 1924).
    He successfully disguised himself as a diplomat to write a first-hand account of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles (1919).
    He said, 'I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 39 Votes: 5.13% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying