The Boston Post

{{short description|Former daily newspaper in New England}} {{Use mdy dates|date=February 2025}} {{Infobox newspaper | name = The Boston Post | image = 225px|centre|The Boston Post | caption = The January 16, 1919 front page of ''The Boston Post'' | type = Daily newspaper | format = Broadsheet | founded = 1831 | ceased_publication = 1956 | price = | owners = Post Publishing Company (former) | publisher = | editor = | language = English | political_position = | circulation = | headquarters = 42 Congress Street Boston, Massachusetts Corner Devonshire & Water Streets Boston, Massachusetts 15–17 Milk Street Boston, Massachusetts 259 Washington Street Boston, Massachusetts United States | oclc = | ISSN = | website = }} '''''The Boston Post''''' was a daily newspaper in New England for over a hundred years before its final shutdown in 1956. The ''Post'' was founded in November 1831 by two prominent Boston businessmen, Charles G. Greene and William Beals.<ref>{{Cite EB1911|wstitle= Newspapers |volume= 19 |last= Chisholm |first= Hugh |author-link= Hugh Chisholm | pages = 544–581; see page 567, para seven |quote=Among modern Boston papers the most important are....and Post (1831). }}</ref><ref>{{Cite EB1911|wstitle= Boston (Massachusetts)/Art and Literature |volume= 4 | pages = 292–293; see page 293, last line |quote=Among the city’s daily newspapers.....and the Post (1831) are the most important. }}</ref>

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 suffered a total physical breakdown in 1920, and turned over day-to-day control of the ''Post'' to his son, Richard. Upon Edwin's death in 1924, Richard inherited the paper. 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.

Facing increased competition from the Hearst-run papers in Boston and New York and from radio and television news, the paper suffered a decline in the 1940s and '50s from which it never recovered.

When it ceased publishing in October 1956, its daily circulation was 230,000.<ref name="ceases">{{cite news|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tXsgAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA2 |title=Former Boston Post publisher died obscure and penniless|date=January 24, 1985|newspaper=The Lewiston Daily Sun|agency=Associated Press|page=3}}</ref>

==Former contributors== *Olin Downes, music critic.<ref>{{Citation |last = Tommasini | first = Anthony| title = Edward Downes, 90, Opera Quizmaster | work = The New York Times | location = New York, NY | date = December 28, 2001}}</ref> *Richard Frothingham Jr., a Massachusetts historian, journalist, and politician who was a proprietor and managing editor of ''The Boston Post''. *Frederick E. Goodrich, journalist and political figure who worked for the ''Post'' for 54 years, including a five years as editor-in-chief.<ref>{{cite news |title=For 54 Years on The Boston Post |work=The Boston Globe |date=January 12, 1925}}</ref> *Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator; correspondent for ''The Boston Post'' in 1948, 1951<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://rfkhumanrights.org/legacy/bio|title = Robert F. Kennedy: A Brief Biography | RFK Human Rights}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/kennedy-robert-francis|title = Attorney General: Robert Francis Kennedy|date = 23 October 2014}}</ref> *Bernard G Richards *Kenneth Roberts *Olga Van Slyke Owens Huckins, literary editor, 1941–1954.<ref>{{Citation |last = Special to ''The New York Times'' | title = Olga Huckins, Ex-Editor At Boston Transcript, 67| page = 27| work = New York Times | location = New York, NY | date = July 13, 1968 }}</ref> Huckins letter to Rachel Carson inspired the book ''Silent Spring''.<ref>{{Citation | last = Matthiessen | first = Peter | title = Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson | page = [https://archive.org/details/courageforearthw00matt/page/135 135] | publisher = Mariner Books | location = Boston, MA; New York, NY | year = 2007 | isbn = 978-0-618-87276-3 }}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last = Himaras | first = Eleni | title =Rachel's Legacy – Rachel Carson's groundbreaking 'Silent Spring' was inspired by Duxbury woman | publisher = The Patriot Ledger| location = Quincy, MA | date = May 26, 2007}}</ref> *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" supplement==

[[File:Cover_for_Sunday_Magazine_(Boston,_Massachusetts),_1912.jpg|thumb|180px|right|Cover by Alonzo Myron Kimball, 1912]]

From 1904 through 1916, "Sunday Magazine" was a regular syndicated supplement to Sunday editions of newspapers in various cities across the United States, including the ''Boston Post'', ''Philadelphia Press'', ''New-York Tribune'', ''Chicago Tribune'', ''St. Louis Republic'', ''Detroit Free Press'', and ''Minneapolis Journal''.<ref name="SunMag">To see 1912 covers of [https://archive.org/search.php?query=Sunday+Magazine%2C+1912 ''Sunday Magazine''] in various cities, refer to the gallery of images at Internet Archive (San Francisco, California). Further searches of other years from 1904 through 1916 at the same site provide many other cover examples of this supplement. Retrieved December 15, 2020.</ref> The supplement in Boston was initially titled "Sunday Magazine of the Boston Sunday Post"; later, as "Boston Sunday Post Sunday Magazine". The regular 20-page periodical has a magazine-like format that is essentially identical to the versions that accompanied other major newspapers in the early 1900s, featuring the same cover illustration, articles, short stories, serials, and advertisements.<ref name="SunMag"/><ref>The full contents of the [https://archive.org/details/SundayMagazine19050820LOCAutolycus0152/mode/2up August 20, 1905] and [https://archive.org/details/Sunday_Magazine_Of_The_Boston_Post_1912-02-25_Darwination-McCoy/mode/2up February 25, 1912 issues] of the ''Sunday Magazine Of the Boston Sunday Post'' are also available for viewing at the Internet Archive. Retrieved December 15, 2020.</ref>

==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.<ref>Ponzi's Scheme, Mitchell Zukoff.</ref>

==''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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://web.maynard.ma.us/bostonpostcane/|title=The Boston Post Cane Information Center - News and History of a New England Tradition|website=web.maynard.ma.us|access-date=April 14, 2010|archive-date=September 2, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110902021206/http://web.maynard.ma.us/bostonpostcane/|url-status=dead}}</ref>

==Usage== According to H. W. Fowler, the first recorded instance of the term O. K. was made in the ''Boston Morning Post'' of 1839.<ref>H W Fowler, ''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' (Oxford 1965) p. 413</ref>

==See also== * ''Boston Daily Advertiser'' * ''Boston Evening Transcript'' * ''The Boston Globe'' * ''Boston Herald'' * ''The Boston Journal'' * ''The Boston Record''

==Image gallery== <gallery>

Image:Boston Post Sunday Magazine.jpg|"Sunday Magazine of the Boston Sunday Post" (September 18, 1910) Image:The Boston Post Building Milk Street.png|The Boston Post Building, 15–17 Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts Image:Sunday Boston Post Magazine July 1914.jpg|"Boston Sunday Post Sunday Magazine" (July 5, 1914) </gallery>

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== {{commons category}} * [http://web.maynard.ma.us/bostonpostcane/ "The Boston Post Cane" Information Center.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110902021206/http://web.maynard.ma.us/bostonpostcane/ |date=September 2, 2011 }}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boston Post, The}} Category:Newspapers established in 1831 Category:Publications disestablished in 1956 Category:Pulitzer Prize–winning newspapers Category:Defunct newspapers published in Massachusetts Category:Defunct companies based in Massachusetts Category:Newspapers published in Boston Category:1831 establishments in Massachusetts Category:1956 disestablishments in Massachusetts Category:Pulitzer Prize for Public Service winners