An Overview of Mark Sullivan, Journalist

Date Published: July 4, 2021
​Date Modified: January 8, 2024

Who Was Mark Sullivan, Journalist Par Excellence?

• The Last of the Reporters
•  This Author’s Thoughts and Perceptions

The Last of the Reporters

Reading Mark Sullivan’s Our Times was one of the most pleasant and informative American history lessons I have ever had. In his writing I learned about: our fight with yellow fever in Cuba and hookworm in the South; that President Taft was more than “the fattest President” we have had, and his tight friendship with Teddy Roosevelt;

The following is an excerpt from an article by George Creel on Mark Sullivan. Mr. Creel was an investigative journalist, a politician and government official. He served as the head of the United States Committee on Public Information created by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. George Creel called Mark Sullivan “The Last of the Reporters.”

Here is what Mr. Creel wrote of Mark Sullivan.

“By reporter I mean one who is willing to give time and energy to the pursuit of facts, and who presents these facts without bias and without color, leaving it to the reader to draw his own conclusions and to form his own opinions.

“Always an important function, it was never more so than today, when a thousand and one intricate problems of reconstruction, press for intelligent decision.

​"Yet at the very time when good, honest reporting is virtually a necessity, the reporter elects to list himself among the missing. In his place we have Opinionists, men who have small interest in facts, choosing to deal entirely in Conclusions, Charges, Persuasions, and Cocksure Certitudes.

“So it is that only Mark Sullivan remains. First, last, and all the time, he is a reporter. Facts are his hobby. They draw him as anise seed does the hound. … The quality of persistence, the obsession of the pursuit, the iron exclusion of everything but the scent that is before him—these are essentials.

​"The man who is trying to serve a cause or to save a friend has no business in the reporting game, for facts have a way of being brutal. Their development, regardless of the consequence in terms of personal hurt, is an important and necessary public service. …

Mark Sullivan had access to power.

“Another thing that stamps Sullivan as a reporter, setting him apart still farther from the writers, is unobtrusiveness. One can read his articles year in and year out without gaining the slightest idea as to the Sullivan personality. In the majority of writing today the high spot of color is the writer himself. He is more concerned in having you think about him than he is in having you think about his article. He meets you at the first paragraph, bows you in, follows you persistently from sentence to sentence, and at the end you have the feeling of having had a personally conducted tour.

“Sullivan never obtrudes himself. When you enter the front of his article he slips out the back. He lets nothing interfere with consideration of the facts that he has gathered for your information.”

This Author’s Thoughts and Perceptions

The last paragraph above is how I felt while reading Our Times a six-volume set of books covering America from 1900 to 1925 published in 1926, 1927, 1930, 1932, 1933, and 1935.

It is a magnificent work, written with flair for enjoyment, yet so full of inside information, competent journalism and facts which are presented honestly and intelligently but also in great fun (select the image to read the review).
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Was he the last reporter? I think not, but George Creel painted a wonderful picture of a man who earned my trust through six volumes of American history; evidently, written by one of our best that few journalists know today.

​It should be in our high school reading rooms.

Cheers,

​- Pete

Select this image to read a review of "Our Times."

Select Image to read a review of Mark Sullivan's autobiography: "The Education of an American."

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