In an interview on Newspaper Dynasties

Let’s turn to The Patriarch: The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty. Please introduce us to this book and the Kentucky clan that is its subject.

The Binghams are a fascinating family, not only because of the rise of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times but because of the size and the almost gothic history of the family. The Binghams definitely had a drive to publish newspapers as a public service within Kentucky. Like many other newspaper dynasts, Robert Worth Bingham – the patriarch of the Bingham family, often known as Judge Bingham, who built the papers into nationally respected publications – went from newspaper work into politics. He was very much for the New Deal and pro-Roosevelt. He ended up as one of Franklin Roosevelt’s ambassadors to the Court of St James [United Kingdom].

So in the Binghams’ history you once again see the smooth transition from publishing into politics. Like, for example, in the Medill family one McCormick brother was the senator for Illinois. And with the Harmsworths, a younger brother was a member of parliament. And then, like a number of other newspaper families, with the Binghams there was a struggle for domination over the paper that eventually resulted in the family losing ownership. That’s another commonality – squabbles within a press dynasty end up ending a paper or ending a family’s association with the paper.

Tell us about the gothic part.

Well, there are a lot of gothic parts. For example, both of Judge Bingham’s wives met odd ends. His first wife, I believe, died in a car crash cradling their son in her arms. The second wife, who was an heiress to the Flagler fortune and the source of Robert Worth Bingham’s eventual wealth, died under a cloud, because of syphilis, which she probably contracted from Robert Worth Bingham. But there were whisperings throughout his life that he may have done her in. And then the struggles for domination over the papers that eventually led to the families getting out of the newspaper business were rather dramatic, entailing sisters turning against brother. So The Patriarch makes for great reading and it is very well written and very well researched.