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:''This article covers both the historical newspaper (1841–1955, 1960–1963), as well as an unrelated new Brooklyn Daily Eagle starting 1996 published currently'' The ''Brooklyn Eagle'' (originally joint name ''The Brooklyn Eagle'' and ''Kings County Democrat'', later ''The Brooklyn Daily Eagle'' before shortening title further to ''Brooklyn Eagle'') was an afternoon daily newspaper published in the city and later borough of
Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, for 114 years from 1841 to 1955. At one point, it was the afternoon paper with the largest daily circulation in the United States.
Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...
, the 19th-century poet, was its editor for two years. Other notable editors of the ''Eagle'' included Democratic Party political figure Thomas Kinsella, seminal folklorist Charles Montgomery Skinner, St. Clair McKelway (editor-in-chief from 1894 to 1915 and a great-uncle of the ''New Yorker'' journalist), Arthur M. Howe (a prominent
Canadian American Canadian Americans is a term that can be applied to American citizens whose ancestry is wholly or partly Canadian, or citizens of either country that hold dual citizenship. The term ''Canadian'' can mean a nationality or an ethnicity. Canadian ...
who served as editor-in-chief from 1915 to 1931 and as a member of the
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...
Advisory Board from 1920 to 1946) and Cleveland Rodgers (an authority on Whitman and close friend of
Robert Moses Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid 20th century. Despite never being elected to any office, Moses is regarded ...
who was editor-in-chief from 1931 to 1938 before serving as an influential member of the New York City Planning Commission until 1951). The paper, added "Daily" to its name as ''The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Kings County Democrat'' on June 1, 1846. The banner name was shortened on May 14, 1849, to ''The Brooklyn Daily Eagle'', but the lower masthead retained the political name until June 8. On September 5, 1938, the name was further shortened, to ''Brooklyn Eagle,'' with ''The Brooklyn Daily Eagle'' continuing to appear below the masthead of the editorial page, through the end of its original run in 1955. The paper ceased publication in 1955 due to a prolonged strike. It was briefly revived from the bankrupt estate between 1960 and 1963. A new version of the ''Brooklyn Eagle'' as a revival of the old newspaper's traditions began publishing in 1996. It has no business relation to the original ''Eagle'' (the name having lost trademark protection). The new paper publishes a daily historical/nostalgia feature called "On This Day in History", made up of much material from the pages of the old original ''Eagle''.


History

''The Brooklyn Daily Eagle'' was first published on October 26, 1841. Its address at this time, and for many years afterwards, was at 28 Old Fulton Street, Brooklyn (today the site of a landmark building known as the " Eagle Warehouse"). A few days after it started, the paper suspended publication for a month due to a printing press fire. From 1846 to 1848, the newspaper's editor was the poet Walt Whitman. The paper started as a combination of objective news and Democratic party organ. During the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...
, the ''Eagle'' supported the Democratic Party; as such, its mailing privileges through the
United States Post Office Department The United States Post Office Department (USPOD; also known as the Post Office or U.S. Mail) was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, in the form of a Cabinet department, officially from 1872 to 1971. It was headed by the postma ...
were once revoked due to a forged letter supposedly sent by the 16th President
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...
. The ''Eagle'' played an important role in shaping Brooklyn's civic identity. The once-independent city became the third-largest city in America at that time, across the water from old New York City. In the 1898, it became a
borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...
as part of the annexation and merger campaign that formed the City of Greater New York. The ''Eagle'' had editorially tried to forestall and stop this process, claiming that Brooklyn would go from being a great city on its own to a hinterland of the bigger city. In August 1938, Frank D. Schroth bought the newspaper from M. Preston Goodfellow. In addition to dropping the word "Daily" from the paper's front page, Schroth increased the paper's profile and readership with more active local coverage focused on the borough as opposed to the other competing dailies at that time in Manhattan, such as ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', '' New York Herald-Tribune'',
New York Journal-American :''Includes coverage of New York Journal-American and its predecessors New York Journal, The Journal, New York American and New York Evening Journal'' The ''New York Journal-American'' was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 t ...
, ''
New York Daily News The New York ''Daily News'', officially titled the ''Daily News'', is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, NJ. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in ...
'', ''
New York Post The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com. It was established ...
'', '' New York World-Telegram & Sun'', '' New York Daily Mirror,'' and, later, ''
Newsday ''Newsday'' is an American daily newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI", and fo ...
'', further out in the
Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United States and the 18 ...
suburbs. The newspaper received the
1951 Pulitzer Prize The following are the Pulitzer Prizes for 1951. Journalism awards *Public Service: **''The Miami Herald'' and the ''Brooklyn Eagle'', for their reporting on organized crime during the year. * Local Reporting: ** Edward S. Montgomery of the '' ...
for
Public Service A public service is any service intended to address specific needs pertaining to the aggregate members of a community. Public services are available to people within a government jurisdiction as provided directly through public sector agencies ...
for its "crime reporting during the year." Investigative journalist Ed Reid in an eight-part series exposed the activities of bookmaker Harry Gross and corrupt members of the
New York City Police Department The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act i ...
. This exposé led to an investigation by the Brooklyn District Attorney, and resulted in the eventual resignation of
Mayor of New York City The mayor of New York City, officially Mayor of the City of New York, is head of the executive branch of the government of New York City and the chief executive of New York City. The mayor's office administers all city services, public property ...
William O'Dwyer.


Hollow Nickel Case

On June 22, 1953, a newspaper boy, collecting for the ''Brooklyn Eagle'', at an apartment building at 3403 Foster Avenue in Brooklyn, was paid with a nickel that felt funny to him. When he dropped it on the ground, it popped open and contained
microfilm Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. ...
inside. The microfilm contained a series of numbers. He told the New York City Police Department, which in two days told a
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice ...
(FBI) agent about the strange nickel. The FBI was not able to link the nickel to KGB agents until a KGB (Committee on State Security of the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
) agent,
Reino Häyhänen Reino Häyhänen (; 14 May 1920 – 17 February 1961) was a Soviet intelligence officer of the KGB who defected from the Soviet Union to the United States in May 1957. Häyhänen surrendered information on Soviet espionage activities that solved ...
, wanted to defect to the West and the United States in May 1957, including Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher (aka Rudolph Ivanovich Abel) in the Hollow Nickel Case.


Closure

In the face of the continued economic pressure brought on by a strike by the local reporters' trade union, the Newspaper Guild, and later attempting to sell the ''Eagle'', the paper published its last edition on January 28, 1955, and shut down for good on March 16, 1955. Thomas N. Schroth, the publisher's son, served as the newspaper's managing editor in the last three years of its existence. Thereafter, he became editor of '' Congressional Quarterly'' and founded ''
National Journal ''National Journal'' is an advisory services company based in Washington, D.C., offering services in government affairs, advocacy communications, stakeholder mapping, and policy brands research for government and business leaders. It publishes d ...
'' in Washington, D.C. This occurred around the same time as the
Brooklyn Dodgers The Brooklyn Dodgers were a Major League Baseball team founded in 1884 as a member of the American Association before joining the National League in 1890. They remained in Brooklyn until 1957, after which the club moved to Los Angeles, Californi ...
professional
baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...
team (who had played since 1913 at
Ebbets Field Ebbets Field was a Major League Baseball stadium in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. It is mainly known for having been the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team of the National League (1913–1957). It was also home to five pr ...
in Crown Heights) shocked New Yorkers by joining Manhattan's
New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...
(a fellow
National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team s ...
team based at the
Polo Grounds The Polo Grounds was the name of three stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City, used mainly for professional baseball and American football from 1880 through 1963. The original Polo Grounds, opened in 1876 and demolished in 1889, was built fo ...
in Washington Heights) in moving to the West Coast, becoming the
Los Angeles Dodgers The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) National League West, West division. Established in 1883 i ...
and the
San Francisco Giants The San Francisco Giants are an American professional baseball team based in San Francisco, California. The Giants compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Founded in 1883 as the New Yo ...
in the process. The loss of both primary national icons of the borough's identity within two and a half years — compounded by such factors as longstanding institutional decline at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Brooklyn Army Terminal, which were both decommissioned in 1966; the precipitous contraction of the borough's
manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...
sector after state-level right-to-work laws were permitted by the 1947 Taft–Hartley Act; the advent of containerization and the 1956-1962 development of the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in
New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...
, largely supplanting the panoply of breakbulk cargo facilities that had scaled Brooklyn's western waterfront from Greenpoint to Bush Terminal for decades; and the deeply intertwined phenomena of
redlining In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services ( financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have sign ...
, suburbanization and
white flight White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
— sent the borough into a psychological and socioeconomic slump. Comparatively sanguine developments — ranging from the initial wave of
professional A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and sk ...
-driven
gentrification Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the ...
in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill,
Boerum Hill Boerum Hill (pronounced ) is a small neighborhood in the northwestern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, bounded by Schermerhorn Street to the north and Fourth Avenue to the east. The western border is variously given as either S ...
and Park Slope (leading to the former neighborhood's designation as New York City's first landmark historic district in 1965) to the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart–Celler Act and more recently as the 1965 Immigration Act, is a federal law passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The ...
(which removed racially-based restrictions on immigration to the United States, enabling many neighborhoods to be revitalized by migrants from
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...
,
Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...
,
Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...
and the
Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean ...
) — did not immediately attenuate the malaise in the popular consciousness. Notwithstanding the Heights and analogous enclaves, Brooklyn as a whole continued to elicit disproportionately vituperative scorn (first reified decades earlier in the stock "uneducated Brooklyn character" of classical Hollywood cinema, a trope that continued to manifest in such later films as John Badham's ''
Saturday Night Fever ''Saturday Night Fever'' is a 1977 American dance drama film directed by John Badham and produced by Robert Stigwood. It stars John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young Italian-American man from the Brooklyn borough of New York. Manero spends h ...
'' (1977), and in an array of deprecatory literary works emblematized by
James Agee James Rufus Agee ( ; November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955) was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, writing for ''Time Magazine'', he was one of the most influential film critics in the United States. ...
's ''Brooklyn Is'') from affluent, Manhattan-based New Yorkers working in the city's influential media and
FIRE Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition point, flames ...
industries. Ultimately, the publication of key counternarratives (such as the oeuvre of
Jonathan Lethem Jonathan Allen Lethem (; born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, '' Gun, with Occasional Music'', a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was publi ...
) and the broader maturation of the borough's postwar institutions would effectively render Manhattan's cultural hegemony moot by the late 2000s. As journalist
Pete Hamill Pete Hamill (born William Peter Hamill; June 24, 1935August 5, 2020) was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and editor. During his career as a New York City journalist, he was described as "the author of columns that sought to capture ...
(who worked as a delivery boy for the ''Eagle'') observed in '' New York'' in 1969, " venthough the ''Eagle'' was not a great paper, it had a great function: it helped to weld together an extremely heterogeneous community. Without it, Brooklyn became a vast network of hamlets, whose boundaries were rigidly drawn but whose connections with each other were vague at best, hostile at worst. None of the three surviving metropolitan newspapers really covers Brooklyn now until events ..have reached the stage of crisis; the ''New York Times'' has more people in Asia than it has in Brooklyn, and you could excuse that, certainly, on grounds of priorities if you did not also know that this most powerful New York paper has three columnists writing on national affairs, one writing on European affairs, and none at all writing about this city. Without the ''Eagle'', local merchants floundered for years in their attempt to reach their old customers; two large Brooklyn department stores — Namm's and Loeser's — folded up. If you were looking for an apartment or a furnished room in Brooklyn, there was no central bulletin board."


1960s revival attempts

In 1960, former
comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...
publisher Robert W. Farrell acquired the ''Eagle's'' assets in bankruptcy court, five years later after its closing, publishing five Sunday editions of the paper in 1960. In 1962–1963, under the corporate name Newspaper Consolidated Corporation, Farrell and his partner Philip Enciso briefly revived the ''Brooklyn Eagle'' newspaper as a daily. During the 1962–63 New York City newspaper strike, the paper had circulation grow from 50,000 to 390,000 until the strike ended. The final edition appeared on June 25, 1963.


1990s–present version

''The Brooklyn Daily Bulletin'', a much smaller newspaper also focusing on the Brooklyn borough began publishing when the original ''Brooklyn Eagle'' folded in 1955. In 1996, ''The Bulletin'' merged with a newly revived ''Brooklyn Daily Eagle'', and now publishes a morning paper five days a week under the ''Brooklyn Daily Eagle'' name. There is also a weekend edition published Saturdays as ''Brooklyn Eagle: Weekend Edition''. This revived ''Brooklyn Eagle'' has no business relationship with the original ''Eagle''; but it adopted the ''Eagle'' name adding it to its ''Bulletin'' title after the ''Eagle'' name fell into the public domain, and following a dispute with another Brooklyn publisher over ownership of the ''Eagle'' name. The new publication is published by J. Dozier Hasty. The ''Daily Eagle'' editorial staff includes 25 full-time reporters, writers, and photographers. As of 2014, it is one of three English-language daily newspapers published in the borough of Brooklyn (the others are the ''New York Daily Challenge'' and '' Hamodia''). As an homage to the original ''Eagle'', The Brooklyn Daily Eagle publishes a daily feature called "On This Day in History", made up of much material taken from the original ''Brooklyn Eagle''. Several exhibits have been held regarding the role of the paper in creating the identity of Brooklyn and its citizens at the Brooklyn Historical Society, including extensive mention and documentation in several histories published.


Everything Brooklyn Media

The new publication is published under the auspices of Everything Brooklyn Media (now stylized as ebrooklynmedia). The ''Daily Eagle'' editorial coverage has grown to include other areas with local publications under the ebrooklynmedia banner. These include: *''The Bay Ridge Eagle'' a weekly section in Western Brooklyn, particularly Bay Ridge area. *''Brooklyn Reporter'' in South Brooklyn *''Queens Daily Eagle'' in
Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
– first issue printed June 25, 2018.Katie Robertson
'Queens Man Impeached’: A Paper Gives Trump the Local Treatment
''New York Times'' (January 14, 2021).
*''Brooklyn Heights Press and Cobble Hill News'' in Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill, Brooklyn areas *''Brooklyn Barrister'', a legal practice publication


See also

* Media of New York City * Dave Anderson *
Allison Danzig Allison "Al" Danzig (February 27, 1898 – January, 27 1987) was an American sportswriter who specialized in writing about tennis, but also covered college football, squash, many Olympic Games, and rowing. Danzig was the only American sportswr ...
*
Tommy Holmes Thomas Francis Holmes (March 29, 1917 – April 14, 2008) was an American right and center fielder and manager in Major League Baseball who played nearly his entire career for the Boston Braves. He hit over .300 lifetime (.302) and every year ...
* Marie Frugone


References


Further reading

* Schroth, Raymond A. ''The Eagle and Brooklyn: a community newspaper, 1841–1955'' (Praeger, 1974).


External links

* ** * * * *Th
James Olinkiewicz Collection of Brooklyn Daily Eagle Postcards
at th
New-York Historical Society
{{Authority control Newspapers published in Brooklyn Newspapers established in 1841 Publications disestablished in 1955 1841 establishments in New York (state) 1955 disestablishments in New York (state) Pulitzer Prize for Public Service winners Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers Daily newspapers published in New York City