a slur upon the name of Thompson

[George Thompson]

So, thanks to Stephen Goranson,  it seems that the original meaning of "Thompson's news" was "false news".  It makes sense that the original Thompson was a newspaper editor.  The early American newspapers were one-man operations, and served small towns (like NYC and Philly) where the editors would be known and recognized on the streets -- sometimes, in fact, horsewhipped on the streets, if they printed something someone didn't like.  So the newspapers were referred to as "Cheetham's Citizen" and "Coleman's Post" and so forth.

The change to "stale news" had happened by 1843, and Douglas Wilson turns up a half-dozen occurrences from the mid-century, and then a bizarre appearance supposedly from the mouth of Carl Jung -- can he have been so familiar with Engish to know this -- probably by then -- obsolete expression, or should I give credit to a translator giving an English equivalent to a German expression?

In any event, thanks to DW and SG.

GAT

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

----- Original Message -----
From: George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>
Date: Saturday, April 4, 2009 9:56 pm
Subject: a slur upon the name of Thompson
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> [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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org