Looking Back, I Have This To Regret, That Too Often When I Loved, I Did Not Say So.
Ray Stannard Baker
Ray Stannard Baker, journalist, author, and
biographer of Woodrow Wilson, was born in Lansing, Michigan on April
17, 1870 and died in Amherst, Massachusetts on July 12, 1946. After
graduating from Michigan Agricultural College (later Michigan State)
he briefly attended the University of Michigan Law school (1891)
before launching a career as one of the leading journalists of his
generation. After four years as reporter for the Chicago
News-Record (1892-96), he joined the staff of McClure's
Magazine, a leader in the "New Journalism" then transforming the
national press. During the 190s he dreamed of writing the "Great
American Novel," and published numerous stories for young people in
the Youth's
Companion, a magazine he himself enjoyed as a boy. But with
McClure's colleagues Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, Baker
soon gained a national reputation as one of the leading "muckrakers,"
the term Theodore Roosevelt applied to crusading journalists in 1906.
That same year Baker published the first of a series of "adventures
in contentment" under the pen name "David Grayson." Totaling nine
volumes in all, the David Grayson adventures attracted millions of
readers world-wide. Uneasy with the "muckraker" label, Baker joined
several colleagues to found the American Magazine (1906). In
later years, he abandoned the hard-hitting journalism of the
McClure's years, but contined to chronicle the social and
political life of the nation. In Following
the Color Line (1908) and numerous articles during the 1910s,
he was the first prominent journalist to focus on America's racial
divide. After supporting President Theodore Roosevelt, Baker flirted
briefly with socialism for several years before embracing the
candidacy of Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Serving as Wilson's press
secretary at Versailles, he eventually published fifteen volumes on
Wilson and internationalism, including his 8 volume Woodrow
Wilson: Life and Letters (1927-39), and advised on Darryl F.
Zanuck's film Wilson
(1944).
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