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Foreign Correspondents

History

James Gordon Bennett Sr., a prominent United States journalist and publisher of the New York Herald, was responsible for many firsts in the newspaper industry. He was the first publisher to sell papers through newsboys, the first to use illustrations for news stories, the first to publish stock-market prices and daily financial articles, and he was the first to employ European correspondents. Bennett's son, James Gordon Bennett Jr., carried on the family business and in 1871 sent correspondent Henry M. Stanley to central Africa to find Dr. David Livingstone, a famous British explorer who had disappeared.

In the early days, even magazines employed foreign correspondents. Famous American poet Ezra Pound, for example, reported from London for Poetry and The Little Review.

The inventions of the telegraph, telephone, typewriter, portable typewriter, the portable laptop computer, and the Internet all have contributed to and reshaped the field of foreign correspondence.

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