AP at 175, Part 4: Modernity, 1926-45
The Associated Press (AP) celebrates its 175th birthday in May 2021. To mark this milestone, the AP Corporate Archives has assembled a concise visual history of the organization, offered here in an eight-part monthly blog, “AP at 175.” This is the fourth of eight installments.
Valerie S. Komor
Director, AP Corporate Archives
Part 4: Modernity, 1926-45
No one had more ambitions for the Associated Press (or, it must be said, for himself) than Kent Cooper. Joining AP in 1910 at age 30, he rose from head of traffic to assistant general manager, succeeding Frederick Roy Martin as general manager in 1925. Special correspondent Hal Boyle would call him a “tradition-smasher” and an “applecartupsetter.” He was both.
Almost singlehandedly, he made AP modern. He elevated its global stature by ending the cartel control of international news. He redefined the nature of news as “the true day to day story of humanity,” expanding the field of play to include longform features, sports, finance and entertainment. And he built up the organization’s institutional strength by implanting a culture of innovation that has long survived him. Throughout his career, he displayed an uncanny ability to identify emerging technologies and modify them to meet AP requirements. In 1943, he prophesied an “automatic, pocket ‘bulletin’ newspaper, to which you could subscribe from your regular newspaper and carry around with you.”
Cooper began early to lay the groundwork for his biggest triumph, Wirephoto. In 1926, he told the Board of Directors he wanted a faster way to get photographs into newspapers. He set up the News Photo Service in 1927, which distributed pictures by mail to members--the kind of service already used by Scripps Howard, Hearst and the New York Times. In 1928, AP hired its first photographers. Now Cooper went after the big prize: a rapid-transmission picture network.
AT&T had introduced a network of sorts in 1924. The Telephoto service sent pictures city to city over telephone lines, but Cooper never considered it seriously. He was not keen on submitting AP photos to AT&T for individual transmission on a per-occasion basis. He wanted a leased wire system-- like the one established for text in 1875--of permanent circuits operated by AP that would link all receiving points simultaneously. When AT&T cancelled Telephoto in 1934, Cooper seized the opportunity to gain exclusive access to the technology and make it work on a network. In the meantime, he and the Board began selling the expensive service to the membership.
Wirephoto came into its own during World War II, as newspapers clamored for pictures from the front. And the expansion of AP’s presence in Europe after 1934 (when AP gained the right to do its own reporting instead of relying on the European agencies) made it possible to contend with the sudden avalanche of war news. Pre-war wordage from all cables had been about 18,000 words transmitted daily. On September 1, 1939, the day Hitler invaded Poland, that number rose to 41,000 in a single day.
From 1939 to 1945, more than 175 correspondents and photographers brought the war home to 1271 U.S. member newspapers. Six staffers won Pulitzers for their work during the war.
Hal Boyle, Dan DeLuce and Larry Allen won for reporting. Frank Filan, Frank Noel and Joe Rosenthal won for photography. Witt Hancock, Harry Crockett, Bede Irvin, and Asahel “Ace” Bush died while covering the war. Joseph Morton was executed at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in 1945. He was the only Allied correspondent to be killed by the Axis powers.
Kent Cooper, general manager of the Associated Press from 1925 to 1948, photographed in September 1936. (AP Photo)
Design sketches of Associated Press logotypes, also know as the “AP bug,” 1931. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
The famous AP “bug” was originally conceived by Melville Stone in the 1920’s, but it was Kent Cooper who envisioned the AP logo as the symbol of AP’s news values and principles: “We want the public to consider,” he wrote, “that The Associated Press is the hall mark of accuracy and the little character represented by the logotype...will become the mark upon accurate news as sterling is the mark on genuine silver, or as is the chemist’s mark to the genuineness of gold.”
Rescuers with survivors of the plane which went down in the Adirondacks are shown on Dec. 31, 1934. Left to right are, R. W. Hambrook, passenger, John Pertrello, J. W. Brown, Dale Dryer, Lester Pertrello and Floyd Kreutzer. The Pertrellos and Kreutzer are rescuers.
(AP Photo)
As news staff and technicians gathered around the newly installed Wirephoto equipment in the AP newsroom, Harold Carlson, AP’s chief engineer, placed a photo on the cylinder and alerted twenty-five cities: “This is New York calling all points. The first picture will be a shot of the plane survivors just rescued in the Adirondacks. Are you ready?” Under the hood of the Wirephoto transmitter, a photocell scanned the picture as it turned, converting it into electronic impulses which were flashed to the receiving unit and reconverted into a negative that was then printed. Transmission took less than 15 minutes. The obstacles of time and distance that had prevented pictures from arriving alongside words were overcome.
Diagram showing how photos are received and transmitted via AP Wirephoto, circa 1935-1936. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
A Wirephoto receiver showing the cylinder in which the negative is contained, is shown in the Associated Press' photo department in New York, 1935, with Eddie Nittoly, right, attending to the machine and engineer Harold Carlson at left. (AP Photo)
The German dirigible Hindenburg crashes to earth, tail first, in flaming ruins after exploding on May 6, 1937, at the U.S. Naval Station in Lakehurst, N.J. The 1920s and 1930s were the golden age of dirigibles which crossed the Atlantic Ocean in about three days -- faster than a ship. The Hindenburg was the largest airship ever built at 804 feet long. It could fly up to 85 miles per hour while held aloft by hydrogen, which was highly flammable. The disaster, which killed 36 people after a 60-hour transatlantic flight from Germany, ended regular passenger service by the lighter-than-air airships. (AP Photo/Murray Becker)
Associated Press booklet promoting AP's Wirephoto service, 1939. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
Envelope used by The Associated Press for its Wirephoto Service, circa 1939. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
Cover of The AP Inter-Office, a News Bulletin for AP Bureaus Around the World. This issue highlighted AP's coverage of D-Day. Cover image shows Henry P. Jameson, AP's first casualty of the invasion and the first to be injured of the entire press corps.
(AP Photo/AP Corporate Archives)
Page from AP promotional brochure, "AP War Correspondents, First at the Front for a Century," highlighing AP correspondents Yates McDaniel, Wes Gallagher, Clark Lee, Edward Kennedy, Vern Haugland and Henry Cassidy, circa 1944. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
War correspondent Wes Gallagher (who served as AP General Manager from 1962 to 1975), after following Lt. Gen. George Patton's tanks on the dusty roads of Normandy and Brittany in this 1944 photo. The white circles on Gallagher's face are the result of dust goggles.
(AP Photo)
D-Day coverage was planned with meticulous precision by Robert Bunnelle, AP’s London bureau chief. Eighteen staffers were assigned to various phases of the expeditionary force, with a full complement of editors, transmission staff and support personnel, working behind the scenes to insure the success of the operation. Wes Gallagher’s pre-censored flash of the D-Day invasion cleared London’s wire less than a minute after arriving from SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) by special military courier. Gallagher’s strong, colorful writing still arouses powerful emotion.
D-Day invasion story (second lead) filed by Wes Gallagher, June 6, 1944. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
U.S. assault troops, laden with equipment, wade through the surf to a Normandy beach from landing craft in June 1944 to support those who had gone before in the D-Day assault. (AP Photo)
U.S. Army medical personnel administer a plasma transfusion to a wounded comrade, who survived when his landing craft went down off the coast of Normandy, France, in the early days of the Allied landing operations in June 1944. (AP Photo)
U.S doughboys are brought ashore on the Northern Coast of France following the D-Day invasion of Normandy in World War II on June 13, 1944. The exhausted soldiers on the rubber life raft are being pulled by a group of comrades. AP Photo/U.S. Army Signal Corps)
U.S. reinforcements wade through the surf as they land at Normandy in the days following the Allies' June 1944, D-Day invasion of occupied France. (AP Photo)
Canvas bag used by AP photographer Marty Lederhandler for transporting film during the Normandy Invasion. Gift of Marty Lederhandler. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
Staff in the AP's Washington, D. C. Bureau examine the layout of 153 pictures sent by Washington by Wirephoto during the first four and a half days of the Normandy Invasion, from June 6 through June 10, 1944. During that same period, all other points combined sent only 111 pictures. (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
Associated Press photographer Harry Harris in London, March, 1944. Harris was among the AP photographers who crossed the English Channel with the invasion forces on D-Day. (AP Photo)
Journalist Ed Kennedy wears a metal helmet in this March 1944 photo made at the Anzio beachhead in Italy. As Paris Bureau Chief, for AP, Kennedy achieved instantaneous renown when he bypassed a political embargo and broke the biggest story of the era: the war in Europe was over. (AP Photo)
On May 6, 1945, the AP’s Ed Kennedy was one of 17 Allied correspondents selected by SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) to witness the unconditional surrender of the German armies to the Allies at a schoolhouse in the French city of Reims. The surrender ceremony took place on Monday, May 7th at 2:41 a.m. French time (at 8:41 p.m. on Sunday, May 6, in New York).
Kennedy (1905-1963), who joined the AP in 1932, had been reporting the war in North Africa, Italy and Paris since 1940. Members of the press pool had been asked to withhold news of the surrender until SHAEF granted permission to release the story. SHAEF initially called for an embargo of several hours on the news of the surrender, then extended it to 36 hours. The plan, agreed to by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Harry Truman, would suppress the news to accommodate Soviet premier Joseph Stalin’s desire to announce Russia’s victory over Germany in Berlin.
On the afternoon of May 7th, at the Hotel Scribe in Paris, Kennedy heard a radio broadcast from the German city of Flensburg, already in Allied hands, announcing the German surrender. Realizing that the radio broadcast had been authorized by the same censors now holding up the story of the end of the war in Europe, Kennedy made his decision. He called in the story to AP’s London bureau using a military phone. Kennedy maintained that his job was to report the news and that he did not feel bound by considerations of political censorship, especially when lives were at stake. “The absurdity of attempting to bottle up news of such magnitude was too apparent,” he said later. “I knew from experience that one might as well as try to censor the rising sun.”
While the world celebrated, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, revoked Kennedy’s accreditation and suspended AP service in Europe temporarily. Kennedy’s actions, widely debated in the press, evoked both support and cries of betrayal. In the midst of the controversy, Cooper ordered Kennedy to return to New York. In September 1945, Kennedy was quietly dismissed.
In a May 2012 interview, 67 years after Kennedy’s scoop, AP CEO Tom Curley officially acknowledged AP’s error in firing Kennedy. “It was a terrible day for the AP. It was handled in the worst possible way,” he said.
"Once the war is over, you can't hold back information like that. The world needed to know”.
This news bulletin, filed by Paris Bureau Chief Ed Kennedy, was received in New York on the morning of Monday, May 7, 1945 and quickly annotated in red pencil, likely by executive editor Alan Gould: “Flash sent 9:35 AEW [9:35 a.m. Eastern War Time] based on this dispatch.” (AP Photo/Corporate Archives)
Associated Press photographer Max Desfor is pictured with AP wartime correspondent Bonnie Wiley on Okinawa, 1945. (AP Photo)
An Indian sailor pleads for water from a lifeboat adrift on the Indian Ocean in January 1942. AP photographer Frank "Pappy" Noel shot this photo Pulitzer-winning photo from his own lifeboat after a Japanese torpedo sank a ship carrying Noel, the sailors and others from Singapore. Noel and his fellow survivors eventually reached Sumatra. (AP Photo/Frank Noel)
Associated Press staff photographer Joe Rosenthal is pictured in San Francisco prior to this departure for Honolulu for a pool assignment with the Pacific fleet, March 25, 1944. (AP Photo/Ernest K. Bennett)
On February 23, 1945, 33-year old AP photographer Joe Rosenthal captured what may be the most famous photograph of World War II: an image of six U.S. Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Rosenthal, who was himself too nearsighted for military service, was already a veteran of the Pacific theater, having covered the battles for New Guinea, Hollandia, Guam, Peleliu and Angaur. His photo won the Pulitzer in 1945.
U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945. Strategically located only 660 miles from Tokyo, the Pacific island became the site of one of the bloodiest, most famous battles of World War II against Japan. (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal)
Arriving at the brow of the hill on D-Day Plus four, AP photographer Joe Rosenthal saw the small flag waving in the breeze and briefly considered shooting it. As he approached a group of Marines, he asked them what was going on and they told him they were about to put up the larger flag. Right away, he imagined trying to shoot the two flags at once but ruled that out as too difficult to line up. Robert Campbell would take that picture.
Instead, Rosenthal began mentally composing the picture of one flag going up. He assembled a platform of stones and sandbags for his feet. He set his shutter timing to 1/400th of a second and the aperture between f8 and f11. It was about noon, with the sun directly overhead and a strong wind blowing.
In his oral history interview with Hal Buell, Aug. 15, 1997, Joe recalled how he made the picture.
“About that time—and then I estimated where they would be, where the flag would be, how tall is this thing…..Well, my being already built close to the ground in height, this foot and a half gave me just enough clearance. Again, these were the things that you –chance.
Just about the time I climbed aboard, Bill Genaust, the Marine photographer with the movie camera, came across in front, and went just to my right. The flag’s out there, and he’s just to my right, I’d say just an arm’s length, maybe just off the tips of my fingers, and said, “I’m not in your way, am I, Joe?” And I turned, and I said, “No, that’s fine—hey, there it goes, Bill!”
This is a full frame scan of the 4x5 negative of Joe Rosenthal's iconic Iwo Jima flag-raising photo from Feb. 23, 1945 and seen Oct. 24, 2017 in the Associated Press Photo Library in New York City. (AP Photo)
In his first post-war letter to the staff, Cooper thanked AP’s war correspondents and the more than 600 staffers still serving in the armed forces, and laid out the new challenge that awaited them. “With the combat phase of the war over, we are entering new phase of news coverage, one in which I earnestly hope there will be no repetition of the hazards and the suffering, but which nevertheless is perhaps an even greater challenge to our talents and our determination to get the truth and report it fully, accurately and without bias.” (AP World, Sept. - Oct. 1945)