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New York Herald Tribune

The New York Herald Tribune was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed with The New York Times in the daily morning market. The paper won twelve Pulitzer Prizes during its lifetime.

A "Republican paper, a Protestant paper and a paper more representative of the suburbs than the ethnic mix of the city", according to one later reporter, the Tribune generally did not match the comprehensiveness of The New York Times coverage. Its national, international and business coverage, however, was generally viewed as among the best in the industry, as was its overall style. At one time or another, the paper's writers included Dorothy Thompson, Red Smith, Roger Kahn, Richard Watts Jr., Homer Bigart, Walter Kerr, Walter Lippmann, St. Clair McKelway, Judith Crist, Dick Schaap, Tom Wolfe, John Steinbeck, and Jimmy Breslin. Editorially, the newspaper was the voice for eastern Republicans, later referred to as Rockefeller Republicans, and espoused a pro-business, internationalist viewpoint.

The paper, first owned by the Reid family, struggled financially for most of its life and rarely generated enough profit for growth or capital improvements; the Reids subsidized the Herald Tribune through the paper's early years. However, it enjoyed prosperity during World War II and by the end of the conflict had pulled close to the Times in ad revenue. A series of disastrous business decisions, combined with aggressive competition from the Times and poor leadership from the Reid family, left the Herald Tribune far behind its rival.

In 1958, the Reids sold the Herald Tribune to John Hay Whitney, a multimillionaire Wall Street investor who was serving as ambassador to the United Kingdom at the time. Under his leadership, the Tribune experimented with new layouts and new approaches to reporting the news and made important contributions to the body of New Journalism that developed in the 1960s. The paper steadily revived under Whitney, but a 114-day newspaper strike stopped the Herald Tribunes gains and ushered in four years of strife with labor unions, particularly the local chapter of the International Typographical Union. Faced with mounting losses, Whitney attempted to merge the Herald Tribune with the New York World-Telegram and the New York Journal-American in the spring of 1966; the proposed merger led to another lengthy strike, and on August 15, 1966, Whitney announced the closure of the Herald Tribune. Combined with investments in the World Journal Tribune, Whitney spent $39.5 million (equivalent to $0 in dollars) in his attempts to keep the newspaper alive.

After the New York Herald Tribune closed, the Times and The Washington Post, joined by Whitney, entered an agreement to operate the International Herald Tribune, the paper's former Paris publication. By 1967, the paper was owned jointly by Whitney Communications, The Washington Post and The New York Times. The International Herald Tribune, also known as the "IHT", ceased publication in 2013.

New York Herald
The New York Herald was founded on May 6, 1835, by James Gordon Bennett, a Scottish immigrant who came to the United States aged 24. Bennett, a firm Democrat, had established a name in the newspaper business in the 1820s with dispatches sent from Washington, D.C., to the New York Enquirer, most sharply critical of President John Quincy Adams and Secretary of State Henry Clay; one historian called Bennett "the first real Washington reporter". Bennett was also a pioneer in crime reporting; while writing about a murder trial in 1830, the attorney general of Massachusetts attempted to restrict the coverage of the newspapers: Bennett criticized the move as an "old, worm-eaten, Gothic dogma of the Court...to consider the publicity given to every event by the Press, as destructive to the interests of law and justice". The fight over access eventually overshadowed the trial itself.

Bennett founded the New York Globe in 1832 to promote the re-election of Andrew Jackson to the White House, but the paper quickly folded after the election. After a few years of journalistic piecework, he founded the Herald in 1835 as a penny newspaper, similar in some respects to Benjamin Day's Sun but with a strong emphasis on crime and financial coverage; the Herald "carried the most authentic and thorough list of market prices published anywhere; for these alone it commanded attention in financial circles". Bennett, who wrote much of the newspaper himself, "perfected the fresh, pointed prose practiced in the French press at its best". The publisher's coverage of the 1836 murder of Helen Jewett—which, for the first time in the American press, included excerpts from the murder victim's correspondence—made Bennett "the best known, if most notorious…journalist in the country".

Bennett put his profits back into his newspaper, establishing a Washington bureau and recruiting correspondents in Europe to provide the "first systematic foreign coverage" in an American newspaper. By 1839, the Heralds circulation exceeded that of The London Times. When the Mexican–American War broke out in 1846, the Herald assigned a reporter to the conflict—the only newspaper in New York to do so—and used the telegraph, then a new technology, to not only beat competitors with news but provide Washington policymakers with the first reports from the conflict. During the American Civil War, Bennett kept at least 24 correspondents in the field, opened a Southern desk and had reporters comb the hospitals to develop lists of casualties and deliver messages from the wounded to their families.

New-York Tribune
The New-York Tribune was founded by Horace Greeley in 1841. Greeley, a native of New Hampshire, had begun publishing a weekly paper called The New-Yorker (unrelated to the magazine of the same name) in 1834, which won attention for its political reporting and editorials. Joining the Whig Party, Greeley published The Jeffersonian, which helped elect William H. Seward Governor of New York State in 1838, and then the Log Cabin, which advocated for the election of William Henry Harrison in the 1840 presidential election, attained a circulation of 80,000 and turned a small profit.

With Whigs in power, Greeley saw the opportunity to launch a daily penny newspaper for their constituency. The New-York Tribune launched on April 10, 1841. Unlike the Herald or the Sun, it generally shied about from graphic crime coverage; Greeley saw his newspaper as having a moral mission to uplift society, and frequently focused his energies on the newspaper's editorials—"weapons…in a ceaseless war to improve society"—and political coverage. While a lifelong opponent of slavery and, for time, a proponent of socialism, Greeley's attitudes were never exactly fixed: "The result was a potpourri of philosophical inconsistencies and contradictions that undermined Greeley's effectiveness as both logician and polemicist." However, his moralism appealed to rural America; with six months of beginning the Tribune, Greeley combined The New-Yorker and The Log Cabin into a new publication, the Weekly Tribune. The weekly version circulated nationwide, serving as a digest of news melded with agriculture tips. Offering prizes like strawberry plants and gold pens to salesmen, the Weekly Tribune reached a circulation of 50,000 within 10 years, outpacing the Herald's weekly edition.

The Tribune's ranks included Henry Raymond, who later founded The New York Times, and Charles Dana, who would later edit and partly own The Sun for nearly three decades. Dana served as second-in-command to Greeley, but Greeley abruptly fired him in 1862, after years of personality conflicts between the two men. Raymond, who felt he was "overused and underpaid" as a reporter on the Tribune staff, later served in the New York State Assembly and, with the backing of bankers in Albany, founded the Times in 1851, which quickly became a rival for the Whig readership that Greeley cultivated.

After the Civil War, Bennett turned over daily operations of the Herald to his son James Gordon Bennett Jr., and lived in seclusion until his death in 1872. That year, Greeley, who had been an early supporter of the Republican Party, had called for reconciliation of North and South following the war and criticized Radical Reconstruction. Gradually becoming disenchanted with Ulysses S. Grant, Greeley became the surprise nominee of the Liberal Republican faction of the party (and the Democrats) in the 1872 presidential election. The editor had left daily operations of the Tribune to his protege, Whitelaw Reid; he attempted to resume his job after the election, but was badly hurt by a piece (intended humorously) that said Greeley's defeat would chase political office seekers from the Tribune and allow the staff to "manage our own newspaper without being called aside every hour to help lazy people whom we don't know and…benefit people who don't deserve assistance". The piece was widely (and incorrectly) attributed to Greeley as a sign of bitterness at the outcome; Reid refused to print Greeley's furious disclaimer of the story, and by the end of the month, Greeley had died.

Decline under second generation
Both newspapers went into gradual decline under their new proprietors. James Gordon Bennett Jr.—"a swaggering, precociously dissolute lout who rarely stifled an impulse"—had a mercurial reign. He launched the New York Telegram, an evening paper, in the late 1860s and kept the Herald the most comprehensive source of news among the city's newspapers. Bennett also bankrolled Henry Morton Stanley's trek through Africa to find David Livingstone, and scooped the competition on the Battle of Little Big Horn. However, Bennett ruled his paper with a heavy hand, telling his executives at one point that he was the "only reader of this paper": "I am the only one to be pleased. If I want it turned upside down, it must be turned upside down. I want one feature article a day. If I say the feature is black beetles, black beetles it's going to be." In 1874, the Herald ran the infamous New York Zoo hoax, where the front page of the newspaper was devoted entirely to a fabricated story of animals getting loose at the Central Park Zoo. Whitelaw Reid, who won control of the Tribune in part due to the likely assistance of financier Jay Gould, turned the newspaper into an orthodox Republican organ, wearing "its stubborn editorial and typographical conservatism…as a badge of honor". Reid's hostility to labor led him to bankroll Ottmar Mergenthaler's development of the linotype machine in 1886, which quickly spread throughout the industry. However, his day-to-day involvement in the operations of the Tribune declined after 1888, when he was appointed Minister to France and largely focused on his political career; Reid even missed a large-scale 50th anniversary party for the Tribune in 1891. Despite this, the paper remained profitable due to an educated and wealthy readership that attracted advertisers.

The Herald was the largest circulation newspaper in New York City until 1884. Joseph Pulitzer, who came from St. Louis and purchased the New York World in 1882, aggressively marketed a mix of crime stories and social reform editorials to a predominantly immigrant audience, and saw his circulation quickly surpass those of more established publishers. Bennett, who had moved permanently to Paris in 1877 after publicly urinating in the fireplace or piano of his fiancée's parents (the exact location differed in witnesses' memories) spent the Heralds still sizable profits on his own lifestyle, and the Herald's circulation stagnated. Bennett respected Pulitzer, and even ran an editorial praising the publisher of The World after health problems forced him to relinquish the editorship of the paper in 1890. However, he despised William Randolph Hearst, who purchased the New York Journal in 1895 and attempted to ape Pulitzer's methods in a more sensationalistic manner. The challenge of The World and the Journal spurred Bennett to revitalize the paper; the Herald competed keenly with both papers during coverage of the Spanish–American War, providing "the soundest, fairest coverage…(of) any American newspaper", sending circulation over 500,000.

The Tribune largely relied on wire copy for its coverage of the conflict. Reid, who helped negotiate the treaty that ended the war had by 1901 become completely disengaged from the Tribune's daily operations. The paper was no longer profitable, and the Reids largely viewed the paper as a "private charity case". By 1908, the Tribune was losing $2,000 a week. In an article about New York City's daily newspapers that year, The Atlantic Monthly found the newspaper's "financial pages … execrable, its news columns readable but utterly commonplace, and its rubber-stamping of Republican policies (making) it the last sheet in town operated as a servant of party machinery".

The Herald also saw its reputation for comprehensiveness challenged by the Times, purchased by Chattanooga Times publisher Adolph Ochs in 1896, a few weeks before the paper would have likely closed its doors. Ochs, turning the once-Republican Times into an independent Democratic newspaper, refocused the newspaper's coverage on commerce, quickly developing a reputation as the "businessman's bible". When the Times began turning a profit in 1899, Ochs began reinvesting the profits make into the newspaper toward news coverage, quickly giving the Times the reputation as the most complete newspaper in the city. Bennett, who viewed the Herald as a means of supporting his lifestyle, did not make serious moves to expand the newspaper's newsgathering operations, and allowed the paper's circulation to fall well below 100,000 by 1912.

Revival of the Tribune, fall of the Herald
The Herald suffered a fatal blow in 1907. Bennett, his hatred for the Journal owner unabated, attacked Hearst's campaigns for Congress in 1902, and his run for governor of New York in 1906. The Heralds coverage of Hearst's gubernatorial campaign was particularly vicious, as Bennett ordered his reporters to publish every negative item about Hearst's past that they could. Hearst, seeking revenge, sent a reporter to investigate the Herald's personal columns, which ran in the front of the paper and, in veiled language, advertised the service of prostitutes; reporters referred to it as "The Whores' Daily Guide and Handy Compendium." The resulting investigation, published in the Journal, led to Bennett's conviction on charges of sending obscene matter through the mails. The publisher was ordered to pay a $25,000 fine—Bennett paid it in $1,000 bills—and the Herald "suffered a blow in prestige and circulation from which it never really recovered".

Whitelaw Reid died in 1912 and was succeeded as publisher by his son, Ogden Mills Reid. The younger Reid, an "affable but lackluster person," began working at the Tribune in 1908 as a reporter and won the loyalty of the staff with his good nature and eagerness to learn. Quickly moved through the ranks—he became managing editor in 1912—Reid oversaw the Tribune's thorough coverage of the sinking of the Titanic, ushering a revival of the newspaper's fortunes. While the paper continued to lose money, and was saved from bankruptcy only by the generosity of Elisabeth Mills Reid, Ogden's mother., the younger Reid encouraged light touches at the previously somber Tribune, creating an environment where "the windows were opened and the suffocating solemnity of the place was aired out". Under Reid's tenure the Tribune lobbied for legal protection for journalists culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court case Burdick v. United States. In 1917, the Tribune redesigned its layout and became the first American newspaper to use the Bodoni font for headlines. The font gave a "decided elegance" to the Tribune and was soon adopted by magazines and other newspapers, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and the Miami Herald. The Tribune developed a reputation for typographical excellence it would maintain for more than four decades. Reid, who inherited a newspaper whose circulation may have fallen to 25,000 daily—no higher than the circulation in 1872—saw the Tribune's readership jump to about 130,000 by 1924.

Reid's wife, Helen Rogers Reid, took charge of the newspaper's advertising department in 1919. Helen Reid, "who believed in the newspaper the way a religious person believes in God", reorganized the faltering department, aggressively pursuing advertisers and selling them on the "wealth, position and power" of the Tribune's readership. In her first two years on the job, the Tribune's annual advertising revenues jumped from $1.7 million to $4.3 million, "with circulation responsible for no more than 10 percent of the increase". Reid's efforts helped cut the newspaper's dependence on subsidies from the family fortune and pushed it toward a paying track. Reid also encouraged the development of women's features at the newspaper, the hiring of female writers, and helped establish a "home institute" that tested recipes and household products.

The Herald's decline continued in the new decade. With the outbreak of World War I, Bennett devoted most of his attention to the Paris Herald, doing his first newspaper reporting at the age of 73 and keeping the publication alive despite wartime censorship. The New York paper, however, was in freefall, and posted a loss in 1917. The next year, Bennett died, having taken some $30 million out of the lifetime profits of the Herald. Two years later, the Herald newspapers were sold to Frank Munsey for $3 million.

Munsey had won the enmity of many journalists with his buying, selling and consolidation of newspapers, and the Herald became part of Munsey's moves. The publisher merged the morning Sun (which he had purchased in 1916) into the Herald and attempted to revive the newspaper through his financial resources, hoping to establish the Herald as the pre-eminent Republican newspaper within the city. To achieve that end, he approached Elisabeth Mills Reid in early 1924 with a proposal to purchase the Tribune—the only other Republican newspaper in New York—and merge it with the Herald. The elder Reid refused to sell, saying only that she would buy the Herald. The two sides negotiated through the winter and spring. Munsey approached Ogden Reid with a proposal to swap the profitable evening Sun with the Tribune, which Reid refused. The Reids countered with an offer of $5 million for the Herald and the Paris Herald, which Munsey agreed to on March 17, 1924.

The move surprised the journalism community, which had expected Munsey to purchase the Tribune. The Herald management informed its staff of the sale in a brief note posted on a bulletin board; reading it, one reporter remarked "Jonah just swallowed the whale".

The merged paper, which published its first edition on March 19, was named the New York Herald New York Tribune until May 31, 1926, when the more familiar New York Herald Tribune was substituted. Apart from the Heralds radio magazine, weather listings and other features, "the merged paper was, with very few changes, the Tribune intact". Only 25 Herald reporters were hired after the merger; 600 people lost their jobs. Within a year, the new paper's circulation reached 275,000.

1924–1940: Social journalism and mainstream Republicanism
The newly merged paper was not immediately profitable, but Helen Reid's reorganization of the business side of the paper, combined with an increasing reputation as a "newspaperman's newspaper", led the Herald Tribune to post a profit of nearly $1.5 million in 1929, as circulation climbed over the 300,000 mark. The onset of the Great Depression, however, wiped out the profits. In 1931, the Herald Tribune lost $650,000 (equivalent to approximately $0 in dollars), and the Reid family was once again forced to subsidize the newspaper. By 1933, the Herald Tribune turned a profit of $300,000, and would stay in the black for the next 20 years, without ever making enough money for significant growth or reinvestment.

Through the 1930s Ogden Reid often stayed late at Bleeck's, a popular hangout for Herald Tribune reporters.; by 1945, Tribune historian Richard Kluger wrote, Reid was struggling with alcoholism. The staff considered the Herald Tribune's owner "kindly and likable, if deficient in intelligence and enterprise". Helen Reid increasingly took on the major leadership responsibilities at the newspaper—a fact Time noted in a 1934 cover story. Reid, angered, called her husband "the most independent-minded man I have ever met", to which Time replied that "it is Mrs. Reid who often helps that independent mind make itself up".

Editorially, the newspaper thrived, winning its first Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1930 for Leland Stowe's coverage of the Second Reparations Conference on German reparations for World War I, where the Young Plan was developed. Stanley Walker, who became the newspaper's city editor in 1928, pushed his staff (which briefly included Joseph Mitchell) to write in a clear, lively style, and pushed the Herald Tribune's local coverage "to a new kind of social journalism that aimed at capturing the temper and feel of the city, its moods and fancies, changes or premonitions of change in its manners, customs, taste, and thought—daily helpings of what amounted to urban anthropology". The Herald Tribune's editorials remained conservative—"a spokesman for and guardian of mainstream Republicanism"—but the newspaper also hired columnist Walter Lippmann, seen at the time as a liberal, after The World closed its doors in 1931. Unlike other pro-Republican papers, such as Hearst's New York Journal-American or the Chicago Tribune-owned New York Daily News, which held an isolationist and pro-German stance, the Herald Tribune was more supportive of the British and the French as the specter of World War II developed, a similar stance was approached by the Sun and the World-Telegram, the latter of them also having an ardently liberal past as a Pulitzer newspaper.

Financially, the paper continued to stay out of the red, but long-term trouble was on the horizon. After Elisabeth Mills Reid died in 1931—after having given the paper $15 million over her lifetime—it was discovered that the elder Reid had treated the subsidies as loans, not capital investments. The notes on the paper were willed to Ogden Reid and his sister, Lady Jean Templeton Reid Ward. The notes amounted to a mortgage on the Herald Tribune, which prevented the newspaper from acquiring bank loans or securing public financing. Financial advisors at the newspaper advised the Reids to convert the notes into equity, which the family resisted. This decision would play a major role in the Reids' sale of the Herald Tribune in 1958.

Seeking to cut costs during the Recession of 1937, the newspaper's management decided to consolidate its foreign coverage under Laurence Hills, who had been appointed editor of the Paris Herald by Frank Munsey in 1920 and kept the paper profitable. But Hills had fascist sympathies—the Paris Herald was alone among American newspapers in having "ad columns sprout(ing) with swastikas and fasces—and was more interested in cutting costs than producing journalism. "It is no longer the desire even to attempt to run parallel with The New York Times in special dispatches from Europe," Hills wrote in a memo to the Herald Tribunes foreign bureaus in late 1937.  "Crisp cables of human interest or humorous type cables are greatly appreciated. Big beats in Europe these days are not very likely." The policy effectively led the Herald Tribune to surrender the edge in foreign reporting to its rival.

The Herald Tribune strongly supported Wendell Willkie for the Republican nomination in the 1940 presidential election; Willkie's managers made sure the newspaper's endorsement was placed in each delegate's seat at the 1940 Republican National Convention. The Herald Tribune continued to provide a strong voice for Willkie (who was having an affair with literary editor Irita Van Doren) through the election. Dorothy Thompson, then a columnist at the paper, openly supported Franklin Roosevelt's re-election and was eventually forced to resign.

World War II
Historians of The New York Times—including Gay Talese, Susan Tifft and Alex S. Jones—have argued that the Times, faced with newsprint rationing during World War II, decided to increase its news coverage at the expense of its advertising, while the Herald Tribune chose to run more ads, trading short-term profit for long-term difficulties. In The Kingdom and the Power, Talese's 1969 book about the Times, Talese wrote "the additional space that The Times was able to devote to war coverage instead of advertising was, in the long run, a very profitable decision: The Times lured many readers away from the Tribune, and these readers stayed with The Times after the war into the Nineteen-fifties and Sixties". Although The New York Times had the most comprehensive coverage of any American newspaper—the newspaper put 55 correspondents in the field, including drama critic Brooks Atkinson—its news budget fell from $3.8 million in 1940 to $3.7 million in 1944; the paper did not significantly expand its number of newsroom employees between 1937 and 1945 and its ad space, far from declining, actually increased during the conflict and was consistently ahead of the Herald Tribunes. Between 1941 and 1945, advertising space in the Times increased from 42.58 percent of the paper to 49.68 percent, while the Tribune saw its ad space increase from 37.58 percent to 49.32 percent. In 1943 and 1944, more than half the Times' went to advertising, a percentage the Herald Tribune did not meet until after the war. However, because the Tribune was generally a smaller paper than the Times and saw its ad space jump more, "the proportionate increase in the Tribune seemed greater than it was in absolute terms. The evidence that this disproportionate increase in the Tribune's advertising content left its readers feeling deprived of war news coverage and sent them in droves to the Times is, at best, highly ambiguous."

The Herald Tribune always had at least a dozen correspondents in the field, the most famous of whom was Homer Bigart. Allowing wire services to write "big picture" stories, Bigart—who covered the Anzio Campaign, the Battle of Iwo Jima and the Battle of Okinawa—focused instead on writing about tactical operations conducted by small units and individual soldiers, in order to "bring a dimension of reality and understanding to readers back home". Frequently risking his life to get the stories, Bigart was highly valued by his peers and the military, and won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize.

By the end of the conflict, the Herald Tribune had enjoyed some of its best financial years in its history. While the newspaper had just 63 percent of its rival's daily circulation (and 70 percent of the Sunday circulation of The Times), its high-income readership gave the paper nearly 85 percent of The New York Times' overall ad revenue, and had made $2 million a year between 1942 and 1945. In 1946, the Herald Tribune's Sunday circulation hit an all-time peak of 708,754.

Pressure from the Times
The Herald Tribune began a decline shortly after World War II that had several causes. The Reid family was long accustomed to resolve shortfalls at the newspaper with subsidies from their fortune, rather than improved business practices, seeing the paper "as a hereditary possession to be sustained as a public duty rather than developed as a profit-making opportunity". With its generally marginal profitability, the Herald Tribune had few opportunities to reinvest in its operations as the Times did, and the Reids' mortgage on the newspaper made it difficult to raise outside cash for needed capital improvements.

After another profitable year in 1946, Bill Robinson, the Herald Tribune's business manager, decided to reinvest the profits to make needed upgrades to the newspaper's pressroom. The investment squeezed the paper's resources, and Robinson decided to make up the difference at the end of the year by raising the Tribune's price from three cents to a nickel, expecting the Times, which also needed to upgrade its facilities, to do the same. However, the Times, concerned by the Tribune's performance during the war, refused to go along. "We didn't want to give them any quarter," Times circulation manager Nathan Goldstein said. "Our numbers were on the rise, and we didn't want to do anything to jeopardize them. 'No free rides for the competition' was the way we looked at it." The move proved disastrous: In 1947, the Tribune's daily circulation fell nine percent, from 348,626 to 319,867. Its Sunday circulation fell four percent, from 708,754 to 680,691. Although the overall percentage of advertising for the paper was higher than it was in 1947, the Times was still higher: 58 percent of the average space in The New York Times in 1947 was devoted to advertising, versus a little over 50 percent of the Tribune. The Times would not raise its price until 1950.

Ogden Reid died early in 1947, making Helen Reid leader of the Tribune in name as well as in fact. Reid chose her son, Whitelaw Reid, known as "Whitie", as editor. The younger Reid had written for the newspaper and done creditable work covering the London Blitz, but had not been trained for the duties of his position and was unable to provide forceful leadership for the newspaper. The Tribune also failed to keep pace with the Times in its facilities: While both papers had about the same level of profits between 1947 and 1950, the Times was heavily reinvesting money in its plant and hiring new employees. The Tribune, meanwhile, with Helen Reid's approval, cut $1 million from its budgets and fired 25 employees on the news side, reducing its foreign and crime coverage. Robinson was dismissive of the circulation lead of the Times, saying in a 1948 memo that 75,000 of its rival's readers were "transients" who only read the wanted ads.

The Times also began to push the Tribune hard in suburbs, where the Tribune had previously enjoyed a commanding lead. At the urging of Goldstein, Times editors added features to appeal to commuters, expanded (and in some cases subsidized) home delivery, and paid retail display allowances—"kickbacks, in common parlance"—to the American News Company, the controller of many commuter newsstands, to achieve prominent display. Tribune executives were not blind to the challenge, but the economy drive at the paper undercut efforts to adequately compete. The newspaper fell into the red in 1951. The Herald Tribune's losses reached $700,000 in 1953, and Robinson resigned late that year.

Leadership changes
The paper distinguished itself in its coverage of the Korean War; Bigart and Marguerite Higgins, who engaged in a fierce rivalry, shared a Pulitzer Prize with Chicago Daily News correspondent Keyes Beech and three other reporters in 1951. The Tribune's cultural criticism was also prominent: John Crosby's radio and television column was syndicated in 29 newspapers by 1949, and Walter Kerr began a successful three-decade career as a Broadway reviewer at the Tribune in 1951. However, the paper's losses were continuing to mount. Whitelaw Reid was gradually replaced by his brother, Ogden R. Reid, nicknamed "Brown", to take charge of the paper. As president and publisher of the paper, Brown Reid tried to interject an energy his brother lacked and reach out to new audiences. In that spirit, the Tribune ran a promotion called "Tangle Towns", where readers were invited to unscramble the names of jumbled up town and city names in exchange for prizes. Reid also gave more prominent play to crime and entertainment stories. Much of the staff, including Whitelaw Reid, felt there was too much focus on circulation at the expense of the paper's editorial standards, but the promotions initially worked, boosting its weekday circulation to over 400,000.

Reid's ideas, however, "were prosaic in the extreme". His promotions included printing the sports section on green newsprint and a pocket-sized magazine for television listings that initially stopped the Sunday paper's circulation skid, but proved an empty product. The Tribune turned a profit in 1956, but the Times was rapidly outpacing it in news content, circulation, and ad revenue. The promotions largely failed to hold on to the Tribune's new audiences; the Sunday edition began to slide again and the paper fell into the red in 1957. Through the decade, the Tribune was the only newspaper in the city to see its share of ad lineage drop, and longtime veterans of the paper, including Bigart, began departing. The Reids, who had by now turned their mortgage into stock, began seeking buyers to infuse the Tribune with cash, turning to John Hay "Jock" Whitney, whose family had a long association with the Reids. Whitney, recently named ambassador to Great Britain, had chaired Dwight Eisenhower's fundraising campaigns in 1952 and 1956 and was looking for something else to engage him beyond his largely ceremonial role in Great Britain. Whitney, who "did not want the Tribune to die", gave the newspaper $1.2 million over the objections of his investment advisors, who had doubts about the newspaper's viability. The loan came with the option to take controlling interest of the newspaper if he made a second loan of $1.3 million. Brown Reid expected the $1.2 million to cover a deficit that would last through the end of 1958, but by that year the newspaper's loss was projected at $3 million, and Whitney and his advisors decided to exercise their option. The Reids, claiming to have put $20 million into the newspaper since the 1924 merger initially attempted to keep editorial control of the paper, but Whitney made it clear he would not invest additional money in the Tribune if the Reids remained at the helm. The family yielded, and Helen, Whitie and Brown Reid announced Whitney's takeover of the newspaper on August 28, 1958. The Reids retained a substantial stake in the Tribune until its demise, but Whitney and his advisors controlled the paper.

"Who says a good newspaper has to be dull?"
Whitney initially left management of the newspaper to Walter Thayer, a longtime advisor. Thayer did not believe the Tribune was a financial investment—"it was a matter of 'let's set it up so that (Whitney) can do it if this is what he wants"—but moved to build a "hen house" of media properties to protect Whitney's investment and provide money for the Tribune. Over the next two years, Whitney's firm acquired Parade, five television stations and four radio stations. The properties, merged into a new company called Whitney Communications Corporation, proved profitable, but executives chafed at subsidizing the Tribune.

Thayer also looked for new leadership for the newspaper. In 1961—the same year Whitney returned to New York—the Tribune hired John Denson, a Newsweek editor and native of Louisiana who was "a critical mass of intensity and irascibility relieved by interludes of amiability." Denson had helped raise Newsweek's circulation by 50 percent during his tenure, in part through innovative layouts and graphics, and he brought the same approach to the Tribune. Denson "swept away the old front-page architecture, essentially vertical in structure" and laid out stories horizontally, with unorthodox and sometimes cryptic headlines; large photos and information boxes. The "Densonized" front page sparked a mixed reaction from media professionals and within the newspaper—Tribune copy editor John Price called it "silly but expert silliness" and Time called the new front page "all overblown pictures (and) klaxon headlines"—but the newspaper's circulation jumped in 1961 and those within the Tribune said "the alternative seemed to be the death of the newspaper." The Tribune also launched an ad campaign targeting the Times with the slogan "Who says a good newspaper has to be dull?"

The Tribune's revival came as the Times was bringing on new leadership and facing financial trouble of its own. While the Times picked up 220,000 readers during the 1950s, its profits declined to $348,000 by 1960 due to the costs of an international edition and investments into the newspaper. A western edition of the newspaper, launched in 1961 by new publisher Orvil Dryfoos in an attempt to build the paper's national audience, also proved to be a drain and the Times profits fell to $59,802 by the end of 1961. While the Times outdistanced its rival in circulation and ad lineage, the Tribune continued to draw a sizeable amount of advertising, due to its wealthy readership. The Times management watched the Tribune's changes with "uneasy contempt for their debasement of classic Tribune craftmanship but also with grudging admiration for their catchiness and shrewdness." Times managing editor Turner Catledge began visiting the city room of his newspaper to read the early edition of the Tribune and sometimes responded with changes, though he ultimately decided Denson's approach would be unsuccessful. But the financial challenges both papers faced led Dryfoos, Thayer, and previous Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger to discuss a possible merger of the Times and the Tribune, a project codenamed "Canada" at the Times.

Denson's approaches to the front page often required expensive work stoppages to redo the front page, which increased expenses and drew concern from Whitney and Thayer. Denson also had a heavy-handed approach to the newsroom that led some to question his stability, and led him to clash with Thayer. Denson left the Tribune in October 1962 after Thayer attempted to move the nightly lockup of the newspaper to managing editor James Bellows. But Denson's approach would continue at the paper. Daily circulation at the Tribune reached an all-time high of 412,000 in November, 1962.

Labor unrest, New Journalism
The New York newspaper industry came to an abrupt halt on December 8, 1962, when the local of the International Typographical Union, led by Bert Powers, walked off the job, leading to the 114-day 1962–63 New York City newspaper strike. The ITU, known as "Big Six", represented 3,800 printers, as well as workers at 600 printshops and 28 publications in the city but, like other newspaper unions, had taken a backseat to the Newspaper Guild (which had the largest membership among the unions) in contract negotiations. This arrangement began to fray in the 1950s, as the craft unions felt the Guild was too inclined to accept publishers' offers without concern for those who did the manual work of printing. Powers wanted to call a strike to challenge the Guild's leadership and thrust ITU to the fore.

New technology was also a concern for management and labor. Teletypesetting (TTS), introduced in the 1950s, was used by The Wall Street Journal and promised to be far more efficient than the linotype machines still used by theTribune and most other New York newspapers. TTS required less skill than the complex linotype machines, and publishers wanted to automate to save money. ITU was not necessarily opposed to TTS—it trained its members on the new equipment—but wanted to control the rate at which automation occurred; assurances that TTS operators would be paid at the same rates as linotype workers; that at least a portion of the savings from publishers would go toward union pension plans (to allow funding to continue as the workforce and union membership declined) and guarantees that no printer would lose their job as a result of the new technology. Publishers were willing to protect jobs and reduce the workforce through attrition, but balked at what they viewed as "tribute payments" to the unions. After nearly a five-month strike, the unions and the publishers reached an agreement in March, 1963—in which the unions won a weekly worker wage and benefit increase of $12.63 and largely forestalled automation—and the city's newspapers resumed publication on April 1, 1963.

The strike added new costs to all newspapers, and increased the Tribune's losses to $4.2 million while slashing its circulation to 282,000. Dryfoos died of a heart ailment shortly after the strike and was replaced as Times publisher by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who ended merger talks with the Tribune because "it just didn't make any long-term sense to me." The paper also lost long-established talent, including Marguerite Higgins, Earl Mazo and Washington bureau chief Robert Donovan. Whitney, however, remained committed to the Tribune, and promoted James Bellows to editor of the newspaper. Bellows kept Denson's format but "eliminated features that lacked substance or sparkle" while promoting new talent, including movie critic Judith Crist and Washington columnists Robert Novak and Rowland Evans.

From 1963 until its demise, the Tribune published a weekly magazine supplement titled Book Week; Susan Sontag published two early essays there. The Tribune also began experimenting with an approach to news that later was referred to as the New Journalism. National editor Dick Wald wrote in one memo "there is no mold for a newspaper story," and Bellows encouraged his reporters to work "in whatever style made them comfortable." Tom Wolfe, who joined the paper after working at The Washington Post, wrote lengthy features about city life; asking an editor how long his pieces should be, he received the reply "until it gets boring." Bellows soon moved Wolfe to the Tribune's new Sunday magazine, New York, edited by Clay Felker. Bellows also prominently featured Jimmy Breslin in the columns of the Tribune, as well as writer Gail Sheehy.

Editorially, the newspaper remained in the liberal Republican camp, both strongly anti-communist, pro-business, and supportive of civil rights. In April 1963, the Tribune published the "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written by Martin Luther King Jr.. The Tribune became a target of Barry Goldwater partisans in the 1964 presidential campaign. The leadership of the Tribune, while agreeing with Goldwater's approach to national defense, believed he pushed it to an extreme, and strongly opposed Goldwater's voting record on civil rights. After some internal debate, the Tribune endorsed Democrat Lyndon Johnson for the presidency that fall. The newspaper's editorial support also played a role in the election of New York City Mayor John Lindsay, a liberal Republican, in 1965.

Attempted JOA and the death of the Tribune
Whitney supported the changes at the Tribune but they did not help the newspaper's bottom line. A survey of readers of the newspaper in late 1963 found that readers "appreciated the Tribune's innovations, (but) the Times still plainly ranked as the prestige paper in the New York field, based mostly on its completeness." Whitney himself was popular with the staff—Breslin called him "the only millionaire I ever rooted for"—and once burst out of his office wondering why the Tribune failed to sell more copies when "there's compelling reading on every page." But a second strike in 1965—which led the Tribune to leave the publishers' association in a desperate attempt to survive—pushed the Tribune's losses to $5 million and led Thayer to conclude the newspaper could no longer survive on its own.

In 1966, Whitney and Thayer attempted to organize what would have been New York's first joint operating agreement (JOA) with the Hearst-owned New York Journal American and the Scripps-owned New York World-Telegram and Sun. Under the proposed agreement, the Herald Tribune would have continued publication as the morning partner and the Journal-American and World-Telegram would merge as the World Journal, an afternoon paper. All three would publish a Sunday edition called the World Journal Tribune. The newspapers would have maintained their own editorial voices (all three of which tended to be conservative). On paper, the JOA, which would have taken effect April 25, 1966, would have led to profits of $4 million to $5 million annually, but would have also led to the loss of 1,764 out of 4,598 employees at the papers. The Newspaper Guild, concerned about the possible job losses, said the new newspaper would have to negotiate a new contract with the union; the publishers refused. The day the JOA was supposed to go into effect, the Guild struck the newly merged newspaper (the Times continued to publish).

The strike, which dragged into August, sealed the Tribune's fate. Half the editorial staff left the newspaper for new jobs during the strike. That summer, Bellows wrote to Matt Meyer, the head of the new company, that it would be "almost impossible—with the present staff—to publish a Herald Tribune I would be proud to be the editor of, or be able to compete with successfully in the morning field." On August 13, with the strike still going on, the management decided to end publication of the Tribune, which Whitney announced in the ninth-floor auditorium of the Tribune building on August 15. "I know we gave something good to our city while we published and I know it will be a loss to journalism in this country as we cease publication," Whitney said. "I am glad that we never tried to cheapen it in any way, that we have served as a conscience and a valuable opposition. I am sorry that it had to end."

The Tribune's demise hastened a settlement of the strike. Discontinued as a morning paper, the Tribune name was added to the afternoon publication and on September 12, 1966, the new World Journal Tribune published its first issue. "It was not a bad paper, but it was a misbegotten thing" according to Tribune historian Richard Kluger, and featured many Tribune writers, including Wolfe, Breslin, Kerr and columnist Dick Schaap, and incorporated New York as its Sunday magazine. The first weeks' editions were dominated by the input of the Hearst and Scripps papers, but after a time, the "Widget" (as the merged publication was nicknamed) took on the appearance and style of the late-era Tribune. The World Journal Tribune reached a circulation near 700,000—fourth-largest for American evening newspapers at the time—but had high overhead costs and relatively little advertising. Whitney eventually withdrew support for the newspaper, but Scripps and Hearst continued to back it until the paper folded on May 5, 1967.

Following the collapse of the World Journal Tribune, The New York Times and The Washington Post became joint owners with Whitney of the Herald Tribune's European edition, the International Herald Tribune, which is still published under full ownership by the Times, which bought out the Post holdings in 2003 and changed the paper's name to the International New York Times in 2013. In 1968, New York editor Clay Felker organized a group of investors who bought the name and rights to New York, and successfully revived the weekly as an independent magazine.

Book and Author Luncheon
From 1938 to 1966, the Herald Tribune participated in the American Booksellers Association's popular Book and Author Luncheons. The luncheons were held eight times per year at the Waldorf Astoria and were hosted by the Herald Tribune's literary editor, Irita Bradford Van Doren. Van Doren also selected its guests, typically three per event, who included Jane Jacobs, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert Moses, Rachel Carson, and John Kenneth Galbraith, among others. Radio broadcasts of the luncheon aired on WNYC from 1948 to 1968 (two years after the Herald Tribune's demise).

New York Herald Tribune Syndicate
The New York Herald Tribune Syndicate distributed comic strips and newspaper columns. The syndicate dates back to at least 1914, when it was part of the New York Tribune. The Syndicate's most notable strips were Clare Briggs' Mr. and Mrs., Harry Haenigsen's Our Bill, and Penny, Mell Lazarus' Miss Peach, and Johnny Hart's B.C. Syndicated columns included Weare Holbrook's "Soundings" and John Crosby's radio and television column.

In 1963, Herald Tribune publisher John Hay Whitney (who also owned the Chicago-based Field Enterprises) acquired the Chicago-based Publishers Syndicate, merging Publishers' existing syndication operations with the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate, Field's Chicago Sun-Times Syndicate, and the syndicate of the Chicago Daily News (a newspaper that had been acquired by Field Enterprises in 1959).

In 1966, when the New York Herald Tribune folded, Publishers Syndicate inherited the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate strips, including B.C., Miss Peach, and Penny.

European edition
The merger that created the Herald Tribune in 1924 also included bringing along the European edition of the New York Herald, commonly known as the Paris Herald, an edition that was produced in Paris and had an established reputation.

For a while after 1924, the front-page masthead retained the title The New York Herald, with the subtitle European Edition Of The New York Herald Tribune. This was in part to avoid confusion with the European edition of the Chicago Tribune, which was a competitor publication; this was resolved in 1934 when the owners of the Herald Tribune bought the European edition of the Chicago paper. The merger became effective December 1, 1934. Subsequently the masthead carried the full New York Herald Tribune title, with the subtitle European Edition. In any case, throughout its lifetime, the European edition was often referred to as the Paris Herald Tribune, or just the Paris Herald.

In the pre-World War II years the European edition was known for its feature stories. The edition looked positively on the emergence of European fascism, cheering on the Italian invasion of Ethiopia as well as the German remilitarization of the Rhineland and annexation of Austria and calling for a fascist party to exist in the United States.

This carried on until April 1939, when the New York paper required the Paris one to hew to its editorial line. The European edition was the last newspaper to publish in Paris before the city fell in June 1940.

Following the liberation of Paris four years later, it resumed publication on December 22, 1944. In the years after the war, it was initially profitable, then not, then did better again when it began publishing the first columns by humorist Art Buchwald, who subsequently became a popular syndicated columnist. Later, the European edition took on more serious reporting while also employing what has been described as "breezy promotion tactics". Herald Tribune owner John Hay Whitney began taking an active interest in the European edition in 1961. The International Edition of The New York Times was a competitor of sorts, and by 1964 had a circulation of some 32,000 although it attracted little advertising. As a commercial proposition it was inferior to the European edition of the Herald Tribune, which had a circulation of around 50,000 and more advertising in it. In general, the European edition of the Herald Tribune was considered the stronger publication.

The European edition was not involved in the complex multi-paper merger discussions of 1966, and did not shut down when it was announced on August 15, 1966, that the New York Herald Tribune would not continue. Instead, earlier that month on August 4, it had been announced that The Washington Post was buying a 45 percent interest in the European edition, and that once the deal was closed it would begin publishing as The International Edition of the New York Herald Tribune–The Washington Post. The change became official in early December 1966. As Buchwald wrote about the ungainly title in his column, "if you ask for it under that name at the airport you'll miss your plane."

During the following year, the publisher of The New York Times gave up on its own international edition. Instead, the Times invested jointly and equally with Whitney Communications and The Washington Post to create a new paper, the International Herald Tribune. The first issue of the International Herald Tribune was published on May 22, 1967; in appearance it was very similar to the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune.

Awards and cultural references
In the 1920s, the New York Herald Tribune established one of the first book review sections that reviewed children's books, and in 1937, the newspaper established the Children's Spring Book Festival Award for the best children's book of the previous year, awarded for three target age groups: 4–8, 8–12, and 12–16. This was the second nationwide children's book award, after the Newbery Medal.

At an event in Washington, on November 23, 1946, Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson honored 82 war correspondents. 18 of them had been employees of the New York Herald Tribune. They were Howard Barnes, Homer Bigart, Herbert Clark, Joseph F. Driscoll, Joseph Evans, Lewis Gannett, Marguerite Higgins, Russell Hill, John D. O'Reilly, Geoffrey Parsons, John C. Smith, John Steinbeck, Dorothy Thompson, Sonia Tomora, Thomas Twitty, William W. White, and Gill Robb Wilson.

In Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film Breathless, the lead female character Patricia (Jean Seberg) is an American student journalist who sells the European edition on the streets of Paris. She periodically calls out "New York Herald Tribune!" while engaged in conversation with her love interest, the wandering criminal Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo).

The "Dingbat"
For more than a century, the logo of the New York Herald-Tribune, and its later successor, the International Herald Tribune, featured a hand-drawn "dingbat" between the words Herald and Tribune, which first originated as part of the front page logotype of the Tribune on April 10, 1866. The "dingbat" was replaced with an all-text header beginning with the issue of May 21, 2008, to give a "more contemporary and concise presentation that is consistent with our digital platforms." The drawing included a clock in the center, set to 6:12 p.m., and two figures on either side of it, a toga-clad thinker facing leftward and a young child holding an American flag marching rightward. An eagle spreading its wings was perched atop the clock. The dingbat served as an allegorical device to depict antiquity on the left and the progressive American spirit on the right. The significance of the clock's time remains a mystery.

title: New York Herald Tribune


text:
C&A

C&A is a multinational chain of retail clothing stores that originated in the Netherlands. It now has European head offices in Vilvoorde, Belgium, and Düsseldorf, Germany. The company operates approximately 1,300 stores in Europe and approximately 300 stores in Brazil, as well as websites for online shopping. It also licenses the C&A name for stores in Mexico and China, which are under different ownership. C&A's brands include Angelo Litrico, Avanti, Clockhouse, Here+There, Palomino, Rodeo (ski and snowboard clothes), Westbury, Yessica, Yessica Pure, and Your Sixth Sense.

The company name is derived from the initials of its founders, Clemens (1818–1902) and August (1819–1892) Brenninkmeijer. The Brenninkmeijer family owns C&A through a Swiss firm named COFRA Holding AG. The company's success has led the Brenninkmeijer family to be ranked among the wealthiest in the Netherlands, but most members of the family actually live in Geneva and Zug, Switzerland.

History
The Brenninkmeyer family had traded in linen and textiles since the 17th century from Mettingen, Germany. In 1841, a Dutch textile firm was founded in Sneek by brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer, later taking its company name from the initials of the founders. The family was very secretive, in part to avoid customs scrutiny, and upon reaching age 14, male members of the family were given the choice of working for C&A or joining the Catholic priesthood. In 1906, Clemens' son, Bernard Joseph, started operating in Amsterdam. By 1910, there were ten C&A stores in the Netherlands.

In 1974, C&A was one of the sponsors of the 1974 FIFA World Cup. In 1978, C&A sponsored cycling through Eddy Merckx's team, taking over from Fiat France.

In 2000, due to competition from Tesco and Asda, as well as from expanding high street names such as H&M, Zara and Topshop, C&A announced its withdrawal from the British market, where it had been operating since 1922, had 109 stores, and had used the name C&A Modes. The last UK retail stores closed in 2001. Primark bought six C&A stores.

In June 2009, C&A withdrew from the Argentinian market.

In the summer of 2010, Beyoncé released a clothing line, House of Deréon, in cooperation with C&A.

In May and June 2017, the company closed four stores in the Netherlands due to poor sales.

In February 2020, Grupo Axo agreed to buy C&A Mexico, but cancelled the contract in March 2021. In June 2023 C&A Mexico was sold to Grupo Alfra, owner of the Mexican Cuidado con el Perro stores.

On 20 August 2020, C&A sold C&A China to Zhongke Tongrong Private Equity to operate the stores via franchising.

In 2021 and 2022, the company closed 70 stores and stated the goal of having half of its sales come from online channels by 2026.

In March 2022, the company shut its Canda brand, which produced formalwear, due to the decline in sales as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In June 2022, C&A began selling clothing via Amazon.

In July 2022, it was discovered that C&A's Serbian division was the victim of customs fraud on the import of goods from China. The unpaid duties led to the Serbian division filing bankruptcy and closing its 14 stores.

Controversies
In December 2021, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights filed a criminal complaint in a Dutch court against C&A and other brands, including Lidl and Hugo Boss, alleging that they benefited from and were complicit in the use of forced labour by Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

In popular culture
The Specials referenced C&A in "Man at C&A" on the 1980 album More Specials. The phrase "Man at C&A" was later used to typify someone who was unfashionable.

In an episode of the sitcom Only Fools and Horses, Del Boy tells his brother Rodney that when they become millionaires, their clothes will "come from Man at C&A".

The Belle and Sebastian song "Expectations" features a character who is given the choice between working at Debenhams and C&A "cause that's what they expect".

Stores
C&A has stores in the following countries. Figures are for June 2023 except China (May 2023) and Brazil (December 2023).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: C&A


text:
Coercivity

Coercivity, also called the magnetic coercivity, coercive field or coercive force, is a measure of the ability of a ferromagnetic material to withstand an external magnetic field without becoming demagnetized. Coercivity is usually measured in oersted or ampere/meter units and is denoted $H_{C}$.

An analogous property in electrical engineering and materials science, electric coercivity, is the ability of a ferroelectric material to withstand an external electric field without becoming depolarized.

Ferromagnetic materials with high coercivity are called magnetically hard, and are used to make permanent magnets. Materials with low coercivity are said to be magnetically soft. The latter are used in transformer and inductor cores, recording heads, microwave devices, and magnetic shielding.

Definitions

Coercivity in a ferromagnetic material is the intensity of the applied magnetic field (H field) required to demagnetize that material, after the magnetization of the sample has been driven to saturation by a strong field. This demagnetizing field is applied opposite to the original saturating field. There are however different definitions of coercivity, depending on what counts as 'demagnetized', thus the bare term "coercivity" may be ambiguous:

 * The normal coercivity, $H_{Cn}$, is the H field required to reduce the magnetic flux (average B field inside the material) to zero.
 * The intrinsic coercivity, $H_{Ci}$, is the H field required to reduce the magnetization (average M field inside the material) to zero.
 * The remanence coercivity, $H_{Cr}$, is the H field required to reduce the remanence to zero, meaning that when the H field is finally returned to zero, then both B and M also fall to zero (the material reaches the origin in the hysteresis curve).

The distinction between the normal and intrinsic coercivity is negligible in soft magnetic materials, however it can be significant in hard magnetic materials. The strongest rare-earth magnets lose almost none of the magnetization at HCn.

Experimental determination
Typically the coercivity of a magnetic material is determined by measurement of the magnetic hysteresis loop, also called the magnetization curve, as illustrated in the figure above. The apparatus used to acquire the data is typically a vibrating-sample or alternating-gradient magnetometer. The applied field where the data line crosses zero is the coercivity. If an antiferromagnet is present in the sample, the coercivities measured in increasing and decreasing fields may be unequal as a result of the exchange bias effect.

The coercivity of a material depends on the time scale over which a magnetization curve is measured. The magnetization of a material measured at an applied reversed field which is nominally smaller than the coercivity may, over a long time scale, slowly relax to zero. Relaxation occurs when reversal of magnetization by domain wall motion is thermally activated and is dominated by magnetic viscosity. The increasing value of coercivity at high frequencies is a serious obstacle to the increase of data rates in high-bandwidth magnetic recording, compounded by the fact that increased storage density typically requires a higher coercivity in the media.

Theory
At the coercive field, the vector component of the magnetization of a ferromagnet measured along the applied field direction is zero. There are two primary modes of magnetization reversal: single-domain rotation and domain wall motion. When the magnetization of a material reverses by rotation, the magnetization component along the applied field is zero because the vector points in a direction orthogonal to the applied field. When the magnetization reverses by domain wall motion, the net magnetization is small in every vector direction because the moments of all the individual domains sum to zero. Magnetization curves dominated by rotation and magnetocrystalline anisotropy are found in relatively perfect magnetic materials used in fundamental research. Domain wall motion is a more important reversal mechanism in real engineering materials since defects like grain boundaries and impurities serve as nucleation sites for reversed-magnetization domains. The role of domain walls in determining coercivity is complicated since defects may pin domain walls in addition to nucleating them. The dynamics of domain walls in ferromagnets is similar to that of grain boundaries and plasticity in metallurgy since both domain walls and grain boundaries are planar defects.

Significance
As with any hysteretic process, the area inside the magnetization curve during one cycle represents the work that is performed on the material by the external field in reversing the magnetization, and is dissipated as heat. Common dissipative processes in magnetic materials include magnetostriction and domain wall motion. The coercivity is a measure of the degree of magnetic hysteresis and therefore characterizes the lossiness of soft magnetic materials for their common applications.

The saturation remanence and coercivity are figures of merit for hard magnets, although maximum energy product is also commonly quoted. The 1980s saw the development of rare-earth magnets with high energy products but undesirably low Curie temperatures. Since the 1990s new exchange spring hard magnets with high coercivities have been developed.

title: Coercivity


text:
Talk:Jamaica

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2018 and 22 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Leann0923.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:15, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 September 2018 and 31 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): MirandaMitchell.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:01, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

The coat of Arms
The Coat of Arms of Jamaica depicted here on this site is wrong. The Jamaican Crocodile is never green in colour. Please contact the office of chancery, Jamaica to obtain the correct Coat of Arms. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.90.218.138 (talk) 07:18, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

 * I have altered the old coat of arms to reflect this. I hardly see the need for "consensus" to correct an inaccurate representation especially when the correction is well-sourced. JKRichard (talk) 16:19, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Religion
Revivalism is also one of Jamaica's popular religion. It is not stated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.244.230.114 (talk) 03:04, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

 * What religion are you referring to? Some sources would be helpful for its popularity in Jamaica. - BilCat (talk) 05:17, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

The Church of God and the Pentecostal church are both a part of the Revival tradition. They're covered in the Religion section.Mikesiva (talk) 11:13, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Cocoa
please change ((cocoa)) to ((Cocoa bean|cocoa))
 * Yes check.svg Done aboideautalk 17:41, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Jamaica
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Jamaica's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "2016census": From Nova Scotia:  From Black Canadians: Census Profile, 2016 Census Statistics Canada. Accessed on 6 November 2017.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 12:52, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Doubtful statement
The statement : ''Students are taught Spanish in school from the primary level upwards; about 40–45% of educated people in Jamaica knows some form of Spanish", seems incorrect to me. I' ve found this :, that suggest there isn't a wide knowledge of spanish in the country Alexcalamaro (talk) 13:58, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 January 2020
"Students are taught Spanish in school from the primary level upwards; about 40–45% of educated people in Jamaica knows some form of Spanish"

Add this line to the "languages" sections because Spanish is a language that is spoken here, along with Portuguese. We don't only speak English and Patois. Brianabrwon (talk) 02:58, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Both the claim of being taught in school and claim of knowledge of Spanish need reliable sources, and the number of "educated people" and level of education needs to be provided. Also useful would be the percentages/numbers that actually speak Spanish or Portuguese would be useful, along with sources, and, if available, the number who speak them as first languages, if any. - BilCat (talk) 03:48, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

LGBT rights?
This doesn't deserve its own section alongside legitimately important information like language and ethnic origins. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SlightlyInsane (talk • contribs) 13:09, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

 * It was originally part of the Crime section, which still had the See Also link to the LGBT rights in Jamaica article. Since the section focuses on criminal acts, I've recombined them. - BilCat (talk) 19:55, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 09:38, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Andrew Holness cropped.jpg

Male homosexuality legality
In the "Crime" section, the statement is made that "male homosexuality is illegal". This is not factually correct. The Offences Against the Person Act, 1864 refers mainly to buggery. Section 76 of the 1864 Act described the offence as unnatural and outlined the offence and penalty as follows “whosoever shall be convicted of the abominable crime of buggery, committed either with mankind or with any animal, shall be liable to be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for a term not exceeding ten years.” Buggery is not the same as homosexuality, and it's not correct to conflate the two terms.

Semi-protected edit request on 11 September 2020
Senate of Jamaica and House of Representatives of Jamaica are linked in the infobox. The very last sentence of the introduction mentions the Senate and House, but they aren't linked. Please copy the links from the infobox to the introduction. 2601:5C6:8081:35C0:B524:D56B:7B2:4849 (talk) 22:23, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * ❌, both links are redirects to Parliament of Jamaica. Infobox links removed. ◢  Ganbaruby!   (Say hi!) 22:32, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Colonial history
More work needs to be done on the colonial history in this section. I've been working on this.Mikesiva (talk) 14:12, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 January 2021
Change - "Oil spills can disrupt the marine life because the chemicals that are being spilled that should not be there" to " Oil spills can disrupt the marine life with chemicals that are not normally found in the ocean." Change "Unfortunately oil spills is not the only form of pollution that occurs in Jamaica" to "Unfortunately, oil spills are not the only form of pollution that occurs in Jamaica" Innerspacecowboy (talk) 15:07, 10 January 2021 (UTC) Innerspacecowboy (talk) 15:07, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done . Thank you. Your changes are obviously superior to the existing (broken English) content. I would say that entire section needs a good copyedit though.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:51, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

 * "Unfortunately" is considered unencyclopedic wording, so I've removed that. We don't even call the death of people "unfortunate" in Wikipedia's voice. BilCat (talk) 07:40, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 April 2021
The source (number 11) does not mention that Spanish sent African slaves to Jamaica. Thus, the sentence should be removed or corrected with a reliable source. Thank you! 2001:7E8:C834:BC00:782B:201C:F524:C699 (talk) 17:43, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: the first sentence in the source covers this: "The island - discovered by Christopher COLUMBUS in 1494 - was settled by the Spanish early in the 16th century. The native Taino, who had inhabited Jamaica for centuries, were gradually exterminated and replaced by African slaves." Thank you for your input!  P.I. Ellsworth   ed.  put'r there 20:54, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 May 2021
Jamaicans of African descent represent 76.3% of the population, followed by 15.1% Afro-European, 3.4% East Indian and Afro-East Indian, 3.2% Caucasian, 1.2% Chinese and 0.8% other. 2A02:C7D:F24A:3F00:79B6:56E9:53E5:1415 (talk) 19:41, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 19:55, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Sports | Sanya Richards-Ross? What about Donovan Bailey?
The mentioning of Jamaican-American Sanya Richards-Ross should also include Former 2-time Olympic Gold medalist & World Champion Jamaican-Canadian Donovan Bailey.

Semi-protected edit request on 3 September 2021
Remove the "royal anthem" section, which this source identified as nationalanthems.info as a self-published source. 49.150.116.127 (talk) 09:02, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:53, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Suggestion for section on science and technology
Hi, just a suggestion, many country articles have sections for 'science and technology', this could be a section on this article as well.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 09:34, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Science and technology in Jamaica
There is a stub article on the subject: Science_and_technology_in_Jamaica

We could insert/integrate the stub into this article and delete the original stub. Or we could leave the stub article independent, keep expanding it and insert a small section/paragraph in this article with links to the stub ?

Opinions on this would be appreciated.

Thanks Koppite1 (talk) 11:35, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Enslaved vs. slave
It has become increasingly common to change the language around slavery. For example, see This from the US National Parks Service or this from the Underground Railroad History Center. Rather than start an edit war, I would like to develop a consensus here about this edit.--User:Namiba 15:14, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Films section
In the Films section, it is mentioned that "Jamaica is also often used as a filming location, such as the James Bond film Dr. No (1962)", etc. I'd like to suggest Steven Seagal's 1990s "Marked for Death" to be included in this section since the movie was not only partially filmed in Jamaica, but it includes Jamaican actor Basil Wallace, and Jimmy Cliff who not only appears in the movie as himself but also collaborated with the soundtrack, creating songs specifically for this film, alongside other notorious Jamaican musicians who were also part of the soundtrack for this film such as Peter Tosh and Shabba Ranks.

References:

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marked_for_Death

2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marked_for_Death_(soundtrack) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2401:7000:DB59:D600:4835:8DE9:9782:4996 (talk) 05:04, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Questionable claim
This edit was made recently by User:Pajfarmor. It introduced a claim that Ian Fleming only used Jamaican locations that he himself had been to in James Bond novels. The user did not explain why they made this change, nor provide a reliable source. They have a long, long history of making changes to articles that may appear superficially reasonable but are often questionable and sometimes simply nonsensical. So, I am posting here to suggest that someone might like to assess this claim. If it is verifiable, please add a source. If it is not, then please remove it. 51.6.138.24 (talk) 22:03, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I see that the claim has been removed. Thanks for looking into it. 51.6.138.24 (talk) 09:59, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 November 2021
It says Dr No is the only Bond film set in Jamaica. This is no longer true- much of No Time to Die is set there. 2A01:4C8:483:A03D:1:2:1A56:E186 (talk) 21:52, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. BilCat (talk) 22:11, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of "Template:Largest cities of Jamaica"
Template:Largest cities of Jamaica has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. --Triggerhippie4 (talk) 10:47, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 December 2021
"Tourist attractions include Dunn's River Falls in St. Ann, YS Falls in St. Elizabeth, the Blue Lagoon in Portland, believed to be the crater of an extinct volcano[citation needed]" I found a citation from the government website that backs up this claim: https://portlandmc.gov.jm/attractions/blue-lagoon FiveXdollars (talk) 23:36, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. BilCat (talk) 00:47, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Crime section
I'm thinking of removing the entire crime section from this article and instead, leaving at the bottom of the page in the see also section, a link to  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Jamaica

Looking at other articles regarding nations with similar crime issues, e.g. Columbia, Albania, Pakistan etc--they all have NO crime section in their main body article. Instead, a link refers readers to main crime article. In fact, just looking at various countries in the Caribbean/Latin America region, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Venezuela, Honduras and Brazil all have higher crime rates than Jamaica yet do not have a specific crime section in the body of their main articles. For the sake of consistency, I think we should do the same here for Jamaica. If there are no objections, i will remove the crime section and instead leave a link referring to main crime article Koppite1 (talk) 11:26, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Renamed from what ?
Re: "England ... conquered it, renaming it Jamaica". Renamed FROM WHAT? Bhami (talk) 00:18, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

 * Thanks for spotting that. I checked the history, and it used to say, " Named Santiago", but was removed by User:Zurkhardo in this diff. I'll restore it. BilCat (talk) 00:40, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
 * My apologies for the error, thank you @BilCat and @Bhami Zurkhardo (talk) 20:22, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

 * No worries, it happens sometimes. We all make mistakes, errors, or oversights. BilCat (talk) 22:54, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

History of Name
There needs to be more accuracy on how the name was developed. It was not originally developed by the British but an adaptation of the taino/Arawak name, Xaymaca. 72.27.173.116 (talk) 20:10, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

 * Where does it say it was developed by the British? BilCat (talk) 20:23, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Island's prehistory in lead
The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise summary of the body. In the body, the prehistory was skipped, so I added a little. BilCat then changed this...

Little is known of the people who inhabited the island thousands of years ago. The indigenous Taíno people arrived c AD 800 and still inhabited the island in 1494 when Christopher Columbus arrived and put the island under Spanish rule.

back to this...

Originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno peoples, the island came under Spanish rule following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494.

which contradicts the body. BilCat gives no reference to policy or guidelines to justify this change, so maybe they can offer some explanation here. What do people think? Jonathan Tweet (talk) 17:46, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 December 2022
Change all instances of Elizabeth II to Charles III. Following the death of Her Majesty the Queen on 8/9/2022, King Charles III became the king of the United Kingdom and all other Commonwealth realms, including Jamaica, thus he should be listed as head of state. 2001:818:E88E:3100:1980:6091:544B:D450 (talk) 22:35, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅, found one picture only. Let me know if there are more. ◢  Ganbaruby!   (talk) 09:19, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Lester Holt
Father was African American, mother was 15% Indian, so it’s disingenuous to call him Indo-Jamaican. 2601:640:C402:5510:2CCB:E12B:1FBC:1570 (talk) 23:44, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Miss Universe winner Yendi Phillips
Miss Jamaica World and Miss Universe winner Yendi Phillips is Lebanese and Black/African ancestors, not Indo-Jamaican. 2601:640:C402:5510:2CCB:E12B:1FBC:1570 (talk) 23:46, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Wrong HDI
Jamaica's HDI is 0.709, not 0.734. 82.130.191.25 (talk) 09:47, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:08, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Jamaica Product Exports (2019).svg

Semi-protected edit request on 4 April 2023
Jamaican English is not the official language of Jamaica. False documents providing that it is will be removed. The official language of the government and people of Jamaica is English, standard English. Jamaican patois is the secondary language, part of its cultural identity. Wikipedia is under audit by INTERPOL and the United Nations. Carindian11 (talk) 15:44, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. — Sirdog (talk) 15:53, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * "Wikipedia is under audit by INTERPOL and the United Nations." Really? Then you shouldn't be revealing that publicly. BilCat (talk) 19:07, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Outdated
As Jamaica develops, the information in this article becomes more and more obsolete. I know that this is not exactly a high priority article, however the information is antiquated to the point where it is impractical to look at the article for reliable information on the country. Can we please have a few edits with the pictures and stats? For example, the pictures are all taken in the early 2000s, and in some cases before that. The statistics charts are all outdated as well. The pictures reflect the innacurate information in the article it self. For example, the picture of the army shows soldiers training with guns that are not even used by Jamaica any more (they now use M16s). I have tried to add pictures in this article and articles about this country where I can, but they have been deleted for some reason. Since there seems to be a problem with my edits, I am reaching out to others for help on improving this article. Dario DeCasseres (talk) 12:42, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

New file for the royal anthem?
The current audio file plays "God Save the Queen" and not "God Save the King", as shown in the file's description page. OMGShay 92 (talk) 10:54, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Word definition
What does murderous mean in this statement? Jamaica (/dʒəˈmeɪkə/ ⓘ; Jamaican Patois: Jumieka, [dʒʌˈmʲeːka]) is a murderous island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. 38.134.12.58 (talk) 19:00, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 November 2023
Change "Jamaica (/dʒəˈmeɪkə/ ⓘ; Jamaican Patois: Jumieka, [dʒʌˈmʲeːka]) is a murderous island country situated in the Caribbean Sea" to "Jamaica (/dʒəˈmeɪkə/ ⓘ; Jamaican Patois: Jumieka, [dʒʌˈmʲeːka]) is a island country situated in the Caribbean Sea" I believe someone vandalized this page and added the phrase murderous to it. Greatmoreo (talk) 20:21, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting wait.svg Already done Hyphenation Expert (talk) 20:36, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 December 2023
130.43.180.52 (talk) 21:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC) 143th GDP??? Should be 143rd.
 * ✅ Liu1126 (talk) 11:42, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Eric G. is also a very athletic Jamaican he's going to be in the HOF of football or basketball — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.19.40.165 (talk) 18:23, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 January 2024
Need to add a description to the map in the Template:Infobox country as below:  | map_caption           = Jamaica shown in dark green      or  | map_caption            = Location of Jamaica      Qaraqalpaqpan (talk) 01:09, 30 January 2024 (UTC) — Urro[ talk ] [ edits ] 12:58, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: Please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template.
 * Review MOS:CAPOBVIOUS. Also look at other country pages to see if they match the lack of a caption, such as United States, Laos, etc. One page that does something similar is Bulgaria, but this is because the caption contains more sustenance, as it highlights the area relative to the European Union.

Boy 2603:9001:807:3C64:309E:EEC3:D72A:B9B (talk) 22:23, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Jamaica


text:
Germinal (novel)

Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Often considered Zola's masterpiece and one of the most significant novels in the French tradition, the novel – an uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s – has been published and translated in over one hundred countries. It has also inspired five film adaptations and two television productions.

Germinal was written between April 1884 and January 1885. It was first serialized between November 1884 and February 1885 in the periodical Gil Blas, then in March 1885 published as a book.

The title refers to the name of a month of the French Republican Calendar, a spring month. Germen is a Latin word which means "seed"; the novel describes the hope for a better future that seeds amongst the miners. As the final lines of the novel read: "Des hommes poussaient, une armée noire, vengeresse, qui germait lentement dans les sillons, grandissant pour les récoltes du siècle futur, et dont la germination allait faire bientôt éclater la terre. Men were springing forth, a black avenging army, germinating slowly in the furrows, growing towards the harvests of the next century, and their germination would soon overturn the earth."

Plot summary

The novel's central character is Étienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), and originally to have been the central character in Zola's "murder on the trains" thriller La Bête humaine (1890) before the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Germinal persuaded him otherwise. The young migrant worker arrives at the forbidding coal mining town of Montsou in the bleak area of the far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior, Étienne befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit.

Étienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as Étienne is presumed to have inherited his Macquart ancestors' traits of hotheaded impulsiveness and an addictive personality capable of exploding into rage under the influence of drink or strong passions. Zola keeps his theorizing in the background and Étienne's motivations are much more natural as a result. He embraces socialist principles, reading large amounts of working class movement literature and fraternizing with Souvarine, a Russian anarchist and political émigré who has also come to Montsou to seek a living in the pits, and Rasseneur, a pub owner. Étienne's simplistic understanding of socialist politics and their rousing effect on him are very reminiscent of the rebel Silvère in the first novel in the cycle, La Fortune des Rougon (1871).

While this is going on, Étienne also falls for Maheu's daughter Catherine, also employed pushing carts in the mines, and he is drawn into the relationship between her and her brutish lover Chaval, a prototype for the character of Buteau in Zola's later novel La Terre (1887). The complex tangle of the miners' lives is played out against a backdrop of severe poverty and oppression, as their working and living conditions continue to worsen throughout the novel; eventually, pushed to breaking point, the miners decide to strike and Étienne, now a respected member of the community and recognized as a political idealist, becomes the leader of the movement. While the anarchist Souvarine preaches violent action, the miners and their families hold back, their poverty becoming ever more disastrous, until they are sparked into a ferocious riot, the violence of which is described in explicit terms by Zola, as well as providing some of the novelist's best and most evocative crowd scenes. The rioters are eventually confronted by police and the army that repress the revolt in a violent and unforgettable episode. Disillusioned, the miners go back to work, blaming Étienne for the failure of the strike; then, Souvarine sabotages the entrance shaft of one of the Montsou pits, trapping Étienne, Catherine and Chaval at the bottom. The ensuing drama and the long wait for rescue are among some of Zola's best scenes, and the novel draws to a dramatic close. After Chaval is killed by Étienne, Catherine and Étienne are finally able to be lovers before Catherine dies in his arms. Étienne is eventually rescued and fired but he goes on to live in Paris with Pluchart, an organizer for the International.

Historical context

The title, Germinal, is drawn from the springtime seventh month of the French Revolutionary Calendar and is meant to evoke imagery of germination, new growth and fertility. Accordingly, Zola ends the novel on a note of hope and one that has provided inspiration to socialist and reformist causes of all kinds throughout the years since its first publication:

"Beneath the blazing of the sun, in that morning of new growth, the countryside rang with song, as its belly swelled with a black and avenging army of men, germinating slowly in its furrows, growing upwards in readiness for harvests to come, until one day soon their ripening would burst open the earth itself."

By the time of Zola's death, the novel had come to be recognized as his undisputed masterpiece. At his funeral crowds of workers gathered, cheering the cortège with shouts of "Germinal! Germinal!". Since then the book has come to symbolize working class causes and to this day retains a special place in French mining-town folklore.

Zola was always very proud of Germinal and was always keen to defend its accuracy against accusations of hyperbole and exaggeration (from the conservatives) or of slander against the working classes (from the socialists). His research had been typically thorough, especially the parts involving lengthy observational visits to northern French mining towns in 1884, such as witnessing the after-effects of a crippling miners' strike first-hand at Anzin or actually going down a working coal pit at Denain. The mine scenes are especially vivid and haunting as a result. Tom Wolfe described one incident from Zola's research: "In 1884 Zola went down into the mines at Anzin to do the documentation for what was to become the novel Germinal. Posing as a secretary for a member of the French Chamber of Deputies, he descended into the pits wearing his city clothes, his frock coat, high stiff collar, and high stiff hat (this appeals to me for reasons I won’t delay you with), and carrying a notebook and pen. One day Zola and the miners who were serving as his guides were 150 feet below the ground when Zola noticed an enormous workhorse, a Percheron, pulling a sled piled with coal through a tunnel. Zola asked, “How do you get that animal in and out of the mine every day?” At first the miners thought he was joking. Then they realized he was serious, and one of them said, “Mr. Zola, don’t you understand? That horse comes down here once, when he’s a colt, barely more than a foal, and still able to fit into the buckets that bring us down here. That horse grows up down here. He grows blind down here after a year or two, from the lack of light. He hauls coal down here until he can’t haul it anymore, and then he dies down here, and his bones are buried down here.” When Zola transfers this revelation from the pages of his documentation notebook to the pages of Germinal, it makes the hair on your arms stand on end. You realize, without the need of amplification, that the horse is the miners themselves, who descend below the face of the earth as children and dig coal down in the pit until they can dig no more and then are buried, often literally, down there."

A sensation upon original publication, it is now by far the best-selling of Zola's novels, both in France and internationally. A number of modern translations are currently in print and widely available.

Adaptations
The novel has been filmed a number of times, including:
 * The Strike (1904), directed by Ferdinand Zecca.
 * Au Pays Noir, (1905), directed by Ferdinand Zecca and Lucien Nonguet.
 * Germinal (1913), directed by Albert Capellani, starring Henry Krauss
 * Germinal (1963), directed by Yves Allégret, starring Jean Sorel,, Claude Brasseur and Bernard Blier.
 * Germinal (1970), a BBC five-part serial with Mark Jones and Rosemary Leach
 * Germinal (1993), a large-scale production directed by Claude Berri and starring Gérard Depardieu and Miou-Miou, at that time the most expensive feature film ever made in France. Much of Berri's film was shot on location in the Lens and Valenciennes regions of northern France, and the extensive unemployment and poverty the cast and crew still witnessed there led to the formation of a society, "Germinal l'association", headed by Depardieu, to alleviate the suffering caused by crippling unemployment in the départements comprising the region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais.
 * Germinal (2021), a six-episode series for France 2 directed by David Hourrègue, starring Luis Peres, Alix Poisson, and Guillaume de Tonquédec.

Tributes

 * Les Enfants de Germinal. (The children of Germinal). - text by Cavanna, images by Robert Doisneau. Hoëbeke Editions. Paris. 1993
 * KFC Germinal Ekeren, a Belgian football club took its name after the novel.
 * Disco Elysium, (2019) is a Role Playing Video Game featuring a dispute and unsolved murder between the stevedoring Labor movement and the private company who works with them. The creators ZA/UM have cited Germinal as a source of major inspiration. This game won the 2019 BAFTA game awards for best narrative, soundtrack, and debut game from a company.

title: Germinal (novel)