Dana, Charles Anderson

Related Category: Journalism and Publishing: Biographies

(dā´nə), 1819–97, American newspaper editor, b. Hinsdale, N.H. He was a member of the Brook Farm community for five years. In 1847 he began 15 years on the New York Tribune, most of that time as managing editor. When Dana's views on the conduct of the Civil War became too militant for the editor, Horace Greeley, Dana resigned. His reports as a special investigator in the West for the War Dept. helped to build up official confidence in General Grant. In 1864, Dana became Assistant Secretary of War. His Recollections of the Civil War (1898) are valuable. He is best remembered for his great career as editor of “the newspaperman's newspaper,” which began in 1868 when Dana became editor and part owner of the New York Sun. Though his editorials were erratic—he denounced the corruption in Grant's administration and refused to support labor unions and civil service reform—and often cynical, as a news editor he established high standards of readability and maintained a famous staff of writers. He also wrote The Art of Newspaper Making (1895) and Eastern Journeys (1898).

See biography by C. J. Rosebault (1931); study by C. Stone (1938, repr. 1969).