The Brooklyn Eagle's Washington bureau office, street view from 1916. |
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| Type | Daily |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner | Frank D. Schroth |
| Editor-in-chief | Thomas N. Schroth |
| Founded | October 26, 1841 |
| Language | English |
| Ceased publication | January 29, 1955 |
| Headquarters | Brooklyn |
The Brooklyn Eagle, originally the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, was a daily newspaper published in Brooklyn, New York, for 114 years from 1841 to 1955. At one point it was the most popular afternoon paper in the United States. Walt Whitman was its editor for two years. Other notable editors of the paper included Thomas Kinsella, St. Clair McKelway, Cleveland Rogers, Frank D. Schroth, and Charles Montgomery Skinner. The paper ceased publication in 1955 due to a prolonged strike and was briefly revived between 1960 and 1963.
A new version of the Brooklyn Eagle began publishing in 1996. It has no relation to the original Eagle, although it publishes a daily feature called "On This Day in History," made up of much material from the original Eagle.
The Brooklyn Public Library maintains an online archive of the original Brooklyn Daily Eagle encompassing the years 1841 through 1902.
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The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was first published on October 26, 1841. Its address at this time, and for many years afterwards, was 28 Old Fulton Street, Brooklyn (today the site of a landmark building known as the Eagle Warehouse). From 1846 to 1848, the newspaper's editor was Walt Whitman.[1]
During the American Civil War, the Eagle supported the Democratic Party; as such, its mailing privileges were revoked due to a forged letter supposedly sent by President Lincoln. The Eagle played an important role in shaping Brooklyn's civic identity, even after the once-independent city became part of the City of Greater New York in 1898, which it had tried to stop.
Frank D. Schroth bought the newspaper from M. Preston Goodfellow in August 1938. In addition to dropping the word "Daily" from the paper's tile, Schroth increased the paper's profile and readership with more active local coverage.[2]
On June 22, 1953, a newspaper boy, collecting for the Brooklyn Eagle, at an apartment building at 3403 Foster Avenue in Brooklyn, was paid with a nickel that felt funny to him. When he dropped it on the ground, it popped open and contained microfilm inside. The microfilm contained a series of numbers. He told the New York City Police Department, who in two days told an FBI agent about the strange nickel. But it wasn't until a KGB agent, Reino Häyhänen, wanted to defect in May 1957, that the FBI would be able to link the nickel to KGB agents, including Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher (aka Rudolph Ivanovich Abel) in the Hollow Nickel Case.
In the face of a strike by The Newspaper Guild, the paper published its last edition on January 29, 1955, and shut down for good on March 16, 1955.[3] Thomas N. Schroth, the publisher's son, served as the newspaper's managing editor in the last three years of its existence, before moving on to become editor of Congressional Quarterly and founder of The National Journal.[4]
In 1960, former comic book publisher Robert W. Farrell acquired the Eagle's assets in bankruptcy court,[5] publishing five Sunday editions of the paper in 1960. In 1962–1963, under the corporate name Newspaper Consolidated Corporation, Farrell and his partner Philip Enciso briefly revived the paper as a daily, with its final edition appearing on June 25, 1963.[6]
| Type | Daily |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner | Everything Brooklyn Media |
| Publisher | J. Dozier Hasty |
| Founded | 1966 |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters | Brooklyn |
| Official website | Brooklyn Eagle |
The Brooklyn Daily Bulletin began publishing when the original Eagle folded in 1955. In 1996 it merged with a newly revived Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and now publishes a morning paper five days a week under the Brooklyn Daily Eagle name. The revived Brooklyn Eagle has no relationship with the original Eagle; it adopted the Eagle name (adding it to its Bulletin title) after the Eagle name fell into the public domain, and following a dispute with another Brooklyn publisher over ownership of the Eagle name.[7] It is one of three English-langugage daily newspapers published in Brooklyn (the others are the New York Daily Challenge[8] and Hamodia).
As an homage to the original Eagle it publishes a daily feature called "On This Day in History," made up of much material from the original Eagle. It is currently published by J. Dozier Hasty under the auspices of Everything Brooklyn Media. The Eagle editorial staff has grown to include 25 full-time reporters, writers and photographers. Thus, it has seen an increase in original, locally geared news stories and spot news photographs.
Its coverage has grown to include the Bay Ridge section, where a weekly version of the paper, The Bay Ridge Eagle, is published.
Its mascot is "Eddie the Eagle."
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