Эдвин Лоуренс Годкин: Американ журналисі және газет редакторының өмірі мен қызметі

American journalist and newspaper editor (1831–1902)

Edwin Lawrence Godkin (2 October 183121 May 1902) was an American journalist and newspaper editor. He founded The Nation and was the editor in chief of the New York Evening Post from 1883 to 1899.

Godkin was born in Moyne (a hamlet in Knockananna), County Wicklow, Ireland. His father, James Godkin, was a Congregationalist minister and a journalist. He studied law at Queen's College, Belfast, where he was the first president of the Literary and Scientific Society.

After leaving Belfast in 1851 and studying law in London, he was the Crimean War correspondent for the London Daily News in Turkey and Russia and was present at the Siege of Sevastopol. In 1856, he emigrated to the United States and wrote letters to the News, giving his impressions of a tour on horseback he made of the southern states of the American Union. He studied law under David Dudley Field in New York City, and he was admitted to the bar in 1859. Because of his impaired health, he travelled in Europe in 1860 to 1862. He wrote for the News and The New York Times in 1862 to 1865. However, in the 1880s, Godkin became a supporter of Irish Home Rule and endorsed the position of Charles Stewart Parnell. That resulted in Godkin becoming engaged in a controversy with Goldwin Smith, who opposed Home Rule. broke with the Republican Party in the presidential campaign of 1884, when Godkin's opposition to nominee James G. Blaine did much to create the so called Mugwump party, and his organ became thoroughly independent, as was seen when it attacked the Venezuelan policy of President Grover Cleveland, who had, in so many ways, approximated the ideal of the Post and Nation. He consistently advocated currency reform, the gold standard, a tariff for revenue only, and civil service reform, rendering the greatest aid to the last cause. His attacks on Tammany Hall were so frequent and so virulent that in 1894, he was sued for libel because of biographical sketches of certain leaders in that organization; the cases never went to trial.

He retired from his editorial duties on the 30 December 1899, and he sketched his career in the Evening Post of that date. Although he recovered from a severe apoplectic stroke early in 1900, his health was shattered, and he died in Greenway, Devon, England, on the 21 May 1902. He was buried at Saint Michael's Church in Haselbech, Daventry District, Northamptonshire, England, near the home of the friend with whom he had been staying.