a slur upon the name of Thompson

[George Thompson]

[James Gordon Bennett was the publisher/editor of the New York Herald.  Here, he is boasting that because he publishes an issue on Sundays, his Herald gets reports of events of Saturday to his readers before the Sabbath-observing papers do.  The Herald's  reports will be copied and garbled by the other city papers on Monday, but his readers will already know the stories]

It will be "Thompson's news" to the majority of the public. . . .
New York Herald, February 6, 1843, p. 2, col. 2

So who was this Thompson, and how does his name come to be synonymous with stale news?  As you all well know, some of us Thompsons provide our readers with only the freshest advices.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately

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