Sunday Papers

Back in the days when titans named Hearst and Pulitzer controlled the newsstands, Morris Goddard 1885 was hot property. Graduating from Dartmouth at age 19, Goddard made his way to New York, where he worked as a freelance writer covering the morgue. Pulitzer made Goddard editor of the World at age 21, and in return Goddard made the publisher a bundle by pioneering the mainstays of modern tabloid journalism sensationalism and full-page photographs.

By the time he was 33, Goddard was the editor of the staid Sunday World, which he began transforming into a new kind of weekend literature. He introduced halftone photography, lively art, and color comics, and earned himself the title "father of the Sunday paper."

His peers were less than enthusiastic. An obit in Editor & Publisher Magazine concluded, "It can be doubted that Goddard contributed greatly to the information or edification of the masses that followed him, but it can be asserted that he did them no harm."

Goddard's gift: weekend lit.