<div dir="ltr"><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><h1 itemprop="headline" class="">1871 | To Skewer Boss Tweed, The Times Spoke German</h1>
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By <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/author/david-w-dunlap/" class="" title="More Posts by David W. Dunlap" rel="author"><span itemprop="name">David W. Dunlap</span></a> </address>
May 25, 2015 5:45 am
<span class="">May 25, 2015 5:45 am</span></div><div class=""> </div>
<div class=""><div class=""><span class="">Photo</span><div class=""><img itemprop="url" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2015/05/14/blogs/tweed/tweed-tmagArticle.jpg" id="100000003684065" alt="An 1871 exposé of Boss William M. Tweed by The Times was turned into a supplement printed in English and German." height="208" width="592"></div><span class="">An 1871 exposé of Boss William M. Tweed by The Times was turned into a supplement printed in English and German.</span><span class="" itemprop="copyrightHolder"><span class="">Credit</span> Library of Congress</span></div>
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</div><p class="" itemprop="articleBody"><em>David W. Dunlap is a Metro reporter and writes the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/column/building-blocks">Building Blocks</a> column. He has worked at The Times for 40 years.</em></p>
<p class="" itemprop="articleBody">Among the many noteworthy <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/05/07/something-rotten-in-the-state-of-nail-salons/?_r=0">features</a> of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/at-nail-salons-in-nyc-manicurists-are-underpaid-and-unprotected.html">Unvarnished</a>
— Sarah Maslin Nir’s exposé of the wretched conditions, racism and
exploitation endured by many nail salon workers — was its simultaneous
publications in English, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/manicurists-in-new-york-area-are-underpaid-and-unprotected.html">Korean</a>, <a href="http://cn.nytstyle.com/living/20150507/t07nails/">Chinese</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/un-trabajo-tan-duro-como-las-unas.html">Spanish</a>.</p>
<p class="" itemprop="articleBody">Ambitious? Unquestionably. Public spirited? No question. Groundbreaking? Well, not by 144 years.<br>
</p><div class=""><span class="">Photo</span><div class=""><img itemprop="url" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2015/05/14/blogs/tweed2/tweed2-articleInline.jpg" id="100000003684066" alt="William M. Tweed" height="285" width="190"></div><span class="">William M. Tweed</span><span class="" itemprop="copyrightHolder"><span class="">Credit</span> </span></div>
<p class="" itemprop="articleBody">The Times’s <a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/a-happy-200th-to-the-timess-first-publisher-whom-boss-tweed-couldnt-buy-or-kill/">first triumph as an investigative newspaper</a>
came in 1871, under George Jones, when it meticulously unmasked the
extravagant fraud by which Boss William M. Tweed and his associates were
enriching themselves under the guise of constructing what is now called
the Tweed Courthouse.</p>
<p class="" itemprop="articleBody">After days of ladling
out details of the corruption, line by line, The Times printed a
supplement on July 29, 1871, recapping its reporting to date. Titled
“How New York Is Governed: Frauds of the Tammany Democrats,” the
pamphlet was a popular sensation, selling more than 500,000 copies,
according to “Boss Tweed,” by Kenneth D. Ackerman.</p>
<p class="" itemprop="articleBody">Included in that total
was a German-language version intended to reach what was then an
enormous bloc of New Yorkers. “The German-Americans at that time were a
much more distinct racial group than at present, and one which furnished
valuable to aid to municipal reform,” Elmer Davis wrote in “History of
The New York Times, 1851-1921.” (We might now say “ethnic group.”)</p>
<p class="" itemprop="articleBody">“For various motives,
of which partisanship was the most worthy, the German-American press had
hitherto given its support to Tweed,” Davis continued, “so The Times
let the Germans read the evidence in their own language.”</p>
<p class="" itemprop="articleBody">We apparently don’t
have a copy of “How New York Is Governed” — or its German counterpart —
in our newsroom archives. (The image shown here comes from the <a href="https://archive.org/stream/hownewyorkisgove00yapa#page/n6/mode/1up">Library of Congress</a>.) But it seems clear that bilingual reportage is a tradition almost as old as The Times itself.</p><p class="" itemprop="articleBody"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/05/25/1871-to-skewer-boss-tweed-the-times-spoke-german/">http://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/05/25/1871-to-skewer-boss-tweed-the-times-spoke-german/</a><br></p>
</div><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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