Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 318

This is the grave of Bernard Kilgore.

Born in Albany, Indiana in 1908, Bernard Kilgore, who preferred to be called Barney, graduated from DePauw University. For whatever reason, DePauw, which I think of as a good but not exactly elite liberal arts school, had a big presence at the Wall Street Journal, and Kilgore got a job there upon graduating in 1929. He proved to be a very good reporter, gaining the respect of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, among others and rose very quickly in the organization. He was only 32 years old when he became editor of the Wall Street Journal in 1941. He held the position for the next 24 years. When Kilgore started as editor, this paper of the capitalist classes only had a circulation of 33,000. When he left, it was one of the largest and most important papers in the country, despite being basically a running dog for the moneyed elite, with a circulation of 1.1 million. Regardless of what I might think about the rag, that’s impressive. He became president of the paper in 1945 and remained there until 1966. At the core of Kilgore’s ideas was to provide more analysis than up to the minute news, or at least so claimed his ex-colleagues. I don’t really know enough about the history of the newspaper business to really evaluate this claim. Throughout all of this, Kilgore worked very closely with Dow Jones & Company, making that an incredibly profitable enterprise.

Kilgore died in 1967, only 59 years old.

Bernard Kilgore is buried in Princeton Cemetery, Princeton, New Jersey.

If you would like this series to visit the graves of more important journalists and newspaper people, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Joseph Pulitzer is in New York and William Randolph Hearst is in Colma, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here.