GREAT JOURNALIST

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 591, 18 February 1929, Page 9

GREAT JOURNALIST

MELVILLE STONE DEAD SUCCESSFUL AMERICAN (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) NEW YORK, Saturday. The death lias occurred of Mr. Melville Stone, the founder of the Associated Press and one of the most distinguished journalists in America. Mr. Melville Elijah Stone was born at Hudson, Illinois, in August, 1848. In 1875 he started the Chicago “Daily News,” and the venture became very prosperous. When the agency which distributed papers outside Chicago fell into the hands of a rival journal and disccriomicnated against the “Daily News,” Stone started the first purely mail train in the United States. He found that the “Post” and “Mail” was using his news, an d trapped it with a faked dispatch containing a phrase in “Serbian” which was really the sentence, “The McMullens will steal this, sure,” written backwards. This made the paper a laughing stock, and he bought it for a song in 187 S. In 1881 he started the “Morning News” (later the “Record and RecordHeralcl”), but in 1888 he was bought out and retired, taking a long holiday m Europe. On his return he founded the Globe National Bank, of which he became president. . . , In 1893 h joined the Associated Press of Illinois which had a long struggle with the United Press. Finding flaws in its method, he wound it up and started the present Associated Press in 1901, converting it by his enterprise into a great news agency.