Newspaper readers today are familiar with debates about ‘fake news’, the use of ‘embedded’ war correspondents and the desire for immediacy that drives our own 24-hour news culture. Although these debates may have acquired particular urgency in recent years, they are not new. Their history begins in the nineteenth century with the dramatic expansion of the newspaper and periodical press and with the emergence of a new breed of journalist—the special correspondent . As W. F. Butler explained in reviewing the republished reports of the special correspondents for the Daily News covering the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78:
When the newspaper came down to the million, or the million got educated up to the newspaper, a demand arose for a new class of writer – the special correspondent. A railway accident, a mining catastrophe, a royal visit, or a trial of strength between famous horses or boats’ crews, all called for the services of the special correspondent – the ready writer, who came and saw and telegraphed, ere yet the dead had been buried, the royal guest had made his last bow, or the horses and crews had fed and rested.1
Surveys of Victorian journalism have long identified the second half of the nineteenth century as crucial in marking the development of the press in its modern form, as more complex divisions of labour appeared in the processes of newspaper production so that tasks and occupations became differentiated, and boundaries between advertising, news, and editorial content became clearer. Newspapers came to assume a more active role in seeking out the source of news, even at a distance. The introduction of the steam printing press, spread of the railways, growth of literacy, abolition of the so-called ‘taxes on knowledge’, and development of telegraph facilities and news agencies all played a part in the rapid growth of the nineteenth-century press. It was in this context that the special correspondent emerged—called into being by developments in journalism that were themselves both cultivating and responding to the interests of an expanding reading public eager to know more about the world at home and abroad.
The term ‘special correspondent’, like its cognates ‘special commissioner’, ‘occasional correspondent’ and ‘own correspondent’, was used imprecisely throughout the nineteenth century, making definition of the role and identification of those journalists who undertook it problematic.2 A keyword search for ‘special correspondent’ in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, The Waterloo Directory of English, Irish and Scottish Newspapers and Periodicals, 1800–1900 and the online database SCOOP reveals some 150 journalists who worked in this capacity in Britain before 1900.3 But some of these ‘specials’ only served as such on a one-off basis—like Walter Bagehot (1826–1877), who happened to be in Paris on holiday during Napoleon’s coup d’état in 1851 and contributed a series of letters about this event to the Inquirer . Others seem to have been identified as special correspondents on the grounds of a particular expertise—a specialism—like Sydney Herbert Pardon (1855–1925) who served as cricket special correspondent for the Times or William Perkins (1853–1927) who served as special correspondent on shipping and engineering matters for the Shipping Gazette .4 However, it is the special correspondent as ‘journalist who writes for a newspaper on special events’ (OED S.2) or as ‘Jack of all trades’ who is the subject of this study. The generic male name is appropriate, for although women served as foreign correspondents—Harriet Martineau and Emily Crawford, for example, both wrote in this capacity for the Daily News from the 1850s and 1860s respectively—it was not until the final decades of the century that they served as special correspondents.
Describing ‘Four and Twenty Hours in a Newspaper Office’ in 1863, Harold King distinguished the foreign correspondent—based in one place and charged with keeping the public at home abreast of political affairs transpiring elsewhere—from the roving reporter—‘our special’—who, ‘[o]n very extraordinary occasions, … is despatched to aid “Our Own”’:
Similarly, a writer in the Leisure Hour in 1868 distinguished ‘Our Own Correspondent’—‘residing constantly in some foreign capital, [and] glean[ing] from the officials of Government such information as they choose to impart, and as much more as he can’—from the peripatetic ‘special’ who,Like the staff of plenipotentiaries in the diplomatic world, this corps de reserve is seldom drawn upon. A royal visit of any moment, the trial trip of a war-ship constructed on a new principle, any grand and exciting event about to take place at home or abroad, would warrant the despatch of a ‘special’, and like Lord Clyde or Sir Charles Napier, they are ready to set out at an hour’s notice.5
When he has used up one place … gets orders to be off to another. Thus, he may be in Russia one day, shivering almost at zero, and after a brief interval sweltering under the hot sun of Spain or Italy; and a month later he may be bound for India, or on the voyage to China.6
James Grant echoed this distinction in his 1870 survey of The Newspaper Press:
Having drawn this distinction, Grant says that the by-line used to designate this journalist—as ‘Our Own’ or ‘Our Special’—is merely a matter of editorial preference. Two decades later in his 1890 account of The Newspaper World, however, Alfred Baker distinguished between these two by-lines, explaining that the duties of the special ‘are to deal with the especial event in hand, and he in no way supersedes or interferes with “our own correspondent,” should the paper have a resident representative at or near the spot’.8‘The Special Correspondent’ is an entirely different personage from the Correspondents regularly established in all the leading towns of Europe, or in America, India, or Australia. The latter are fixtures in the various capitals or important towns from which their communications are dated. These places are their spheres of duty all the year round. The Special Correspondent, on the contrary, so far from occupying a stationary position, is a gentleman whose vocation it is to go from place to place according to circumstances, and to record whatever matters of importance transpire in the different localities to which a sense of duty calls him.7
In spite of this lack of clear definition of his role, the special correspondent played a significant part in the popularisation of news journalism from the 1850s onwards, not the least evidence of which may be deduced from the recurrent criticism directed towards him by conservative commentators who deplored what they saw as a commercially-driven press deploying sensational reportage to sell newspapers. The specials were a bête noire of the Saturday Review (or ‘Saturday Reviler’ as it was nicknamed for its slashing reviews and abrasive tone), which criticised William Howard Russell’s coverage of the Crimean campaign in the Times , for example, for
‘Doing the graphic’ was indeed a hallmark of the special correspondent’s work. Although some of the specials were more prone to advertise their own idiosyncratic personae than others, all shared a common concern to picture the news for readers and this...mak[ing] his letters piquant by describing a general in his night-cap with a heavy cold, and the Commander-in-chief in a trench with a cloak up to his eyes. … [A]nd so the commander is drawn in this interesting attitude – caricatured and laughed at from one end of the kingdom to another. But no harm was meant – it was only a Special Correspondent in his vocation. He was getting up an interesting letter – showing off his style and his facility in composition. He was doing the graphic – that was all.9