Dorothy Schiff

  • Born: March 11, 1903
  • Birthplace: New York, New York
  • Died: August 30, 1989
  • Place of death: New York, New York

Publisher

The first female newspaper publisher in New York City, Schiff was owner of the United States’ oldest continuous newspaper, The New York Post, for thirty-seven years.

Early Life

Dorothy Schiff (shihf) was born into a wealthy and prominent Jewish family in New York City. Her paternal grandfather, Jacob Schiff, emigrated from Germany in 1865 and made his fortune in banking. A devout Jew, he was a leader in the city’s business and religious communities. Dorothy Schiff’s parents, Mortimer and Adele Neustadt Schiff, withdrew from the city’s Jewish community to an estate, Northwood, in Oyster Bay, N.Y., where Dorothy Schiff and her brother, John, grew up.

Schiff had an isolated and lonely childhood. She was educated at home for most of her childhood, attended Brearley School in New York City for one year and Bryn Mawr College for one year. She saw marriage as a way to escape from her emotionally distant yet controlling family, and at age twenty she married Richard Hall. They had two children, Morti and Adele.

Schiff would marry four times: to Hall, George Backer(with whom she had daughter Sarah Ann), Theodore Thackrey, and Rudolf Sonneborn. She also had close associations with powerful men, including British press lord Max Beaverbrook and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Although Schiff became a strong and independent woman, her religious, political, and social views were often influenced by the men in her life. During her marriage to Hall, she attended the Episcopal Church, but she reverted to Judaism after her divorce. During her marriage to Backer and her association with Roosevelt, she became a strong supporter of the Democratic Party and New Deal liberalism, and she was talked into buying The New York Post. She worked alongside her third husband, editor Thackrey, to rebuild the paper, but she disagreed with him on politics. She visited Israel with her fourth husband, Sonneborn, a businessman and a Zionist.

Life’s Work

Throughout her adult life, Schiff was a philanthropist and an ardent supporter of liberal political and social causes. During the 1930’s, she actively participated in community organizations until she took control of The New York Post. She served on the boards of Mount Sinai Hospital, the Henry Street Settlement, and the Women’s Trade Union. She also was a member of the New York Board of Child Welfare and the New York Joint Committee for the Ratification of the Child Labor Amendment. Despite being born into a wealthy Republican family, she became a strong supporter of the Democratic Party.

Schiff purchased the financially troubled New York Post in 1939 and turned most of the control over to her husband Backer. When the paper failed to prosper, Schiff took over. She and her third husband, Thackrey, a former Post features editor, worked together to turn the newspaper around. They were successful in increasing the newspaper’s appeal by switching to a popular tabloid format and, while continuing a dedication to liberal politics, adding more human-interest stories, gossip, and scandal.

Despite her elite upbringing, Schiff had a good understanding of what working-class New Yorkers wanted to read, and that’s what The New York Post delivered. “I’m fortunate in having average tastes—neither highbrow nor lowbrow—although I’m interested in serious reading, I love gossip, scandal and human interest,” she was quoted as saying.

The Post also became known for columns by luminaries, including Langston Hughes, Sylvia Porter, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, and Schiff herself. She wrote a popular column, first called “Publisher’s Letter,” then“Dear Reader,” from 1951 to 1958. The newspaper added, during her leadership, a foreign bureau and a short-lived Paris bureau.

During the 1950’s, The Post became known for its courageous coverage of issues, such as the Civil Rights movement, and for exposés on powerful men, such as Robert Moses, Walter Winchell, J. Edgar Hoover, and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Schiff and the newspaper opposed the Vietnam War and supported politicians Adalai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson.

The 1960’s brought financial turmoil in the form of a New York Newspaper Union strike, but The Post survived, and by the end of the decade it was the only surviving afternoon daily in New York. In 1976, age the age of seventy, Schiff sold The Post to Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch for thirty-one million dollars. She died in 1989 of cancer.

Significance

A member of a wealthy and influential New York family, Schiff was a lifelong crusader for causes of the working class. She made significant contributions through her service to numerous social-welfare causes and later through her efforts as owner and publisher of The New York Post to make the newspaper an important voice of liberalism. As the first female publisher of a major New York newspaper, she opened the door for future generations of female journalists.

Bibliography

Benjaminson, Peter. Death in the Afternoon: America’s Newspaper Giants Struggle for Survival. Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews, McMeel, and Parker, 1984. Focuses on the collapse of metropolitan afternoon newspapers and on Schiff’s determination to keep The New York Post afloat.

Nissenson, Marilyn. The Lady Upstairs: Dorothy Schiff and the New York Post. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007. A factual and detailed account of Schiff’s personal life and her years with The Post.

Potter, Jeffrey. Men, Money, and Magic: The Story of Dorothy Schiff. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1976. A book-length biography of Schiff written during her lifetime. It was a collaboration between the author and Schiff, who contributed extensive quotes and background materials.