CUT THE RIBBON, HAROLD ROSS

Posted on November 19, 2012 by admin

The first man who imagined  “A new journal of metropolitan sensibilities and sophisticate tone” was Harold Ross. Born in Aspen in 1892 from a modest family, Ross had journalism in his blood. He never had a proper high school education but by the time he was 25 he had worked for at least seven newspaper and was famous for his terrible spelling and for being a rebellious. After some years in Paris where he directed “Stars and Stripes” ,from 1918 till 1919, and where he met his first wife Jane Grant, he returned to America with the intent of finding those metropolitan sensibilities and establish his creature, The New Yorker. The very first issue of the magazine is dated 21 February 1925 and Ross edited 1399 issues of it until  his death in 1951. In the quarter-century that he ran the New Yorker, he wrote more than one article for his publication always maintaining the good taste to never be named on its pages. His concept of the magazine ever-changing, never static  made it into the astonishing work that it became. Ross was a workalcoholic, he ruined three marriages,  and a master grammarian with an immense sense of style. He was also a member of the Algonquin Round Table and a genius in public relations. His charisma was legendary, especially  in attracting new talents to his publication. He was a perfectionist that overused commas, he was a master in establishing a concept and then letting contributors stretching his idea. He was the first, for sure, to cut the New Yorker’s Ribbon.