Barry Bingham, Sr.

George Barry Bingham, Sr., CBE, (February 10, 1906 – August 15, 1988 in Louisville, Kentucky) was the patriarch of a family that dominated local media in Louisville for several decades in the 20th century.

Bingham's family owned a cluster of influential media properties — "The Courier-Journal" and "The Louisville Times" newspapers, plus WHAS Radio and WHAS Television. The papers had been purchased by his father, Col. Robert Worth Bingham, using proceeds from an inheritance left by his second wife, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler, herself the widow of railroad magnate Henry Flagler; the elder Bingham used profits from those to start the radio station.

Bingham attended Harvard University, then went into the family businesses. In 1931, he married Mary Caperton, a Radcliffe graduate. Bingham Sr. took the reins of the company in 1937. At the time, "The C-J" was little more than a Democratic Party organ, but Bingham built it into national prominence, thanks to reporting that was ambitious in scope for a newspaper in a city of Louisville's size. Throughout Bingham's tenure, the editorial voices of the "C-J & Times" was forthrightly liberal, especially for a fairly conservative (though predominantly Democratic at the time) state like Kentucky. The newspapers were recipients of six Pulitzer Prizes, including one for public service in 1967, plus countless other awards during the Bingham years. "The Courier-Journal" became the commonwealth's dominant newspaper, a position it retains to this day. He also founded WHAS-TV, the city's second television station, and founded the WHAS Crusade for Children, a telethon broadcast on both the radio and television stations that today collects more than USD 6,000,000 each year for local children's charities. The empire also included Standard Gravure, a rotogravure printing company that printed the newspapers' Sunday magazine section, plus Sunday sections for other newspapers.

In World War II, Bingham served as an officer in the United States Navy, and was twice awarded the Bronze Star.

While Bingham's media empire was very successful, his family life was often not. Bingham's youngest son Jonathan was home from college at the family's Glenview estate preparing for a party with some friends in 1964 when he climbed a utility pole to connect lights to a barn. Jonathan suffered electric shock and died while his friends and parents waited for an ambulance to arrive. Two years later their eldest son Worth, who had become editor at the newspaper after the longtime editor left, was also killed in a freak accident at Cape Cod. Worth, who was the apparent successor to Barry Sr., was driving a rented convertible when a surfboard located in the backseat clipped another car and snapped forward, breaking his neck.

In 1971, Bingham stepped down from day-to-day operations, handing the companies over to his remaining son, Barry Bingham, Jr. The younger Bingham's aptitude for management was not what it could have been, and "Barry Jr." alienated staffers with ethical guidelines that were extreme for their time; he also took the companies into farsighted-but-unsuccessful forays into personal computer retailing and teletext services (a forerunner to today's online services and Internet). The beginning of the end came when Bingham Jr. decided to bring his two sisters, Eleanor and Sallie, into management of the properties in an effort to bring the family together. The result was anything but family harmony, as "Junior" often sparred openly with Sallie Bingham, and eventually had the two sisters and his mother thrown off the board of directors in 1984. Sallie then announced her intent to sell her part of the business. Finally, a weary Bingham Sr. had enough of the infighting, and announced plans to divest the holdings. Gannett Corporation got the newspapers, Clear Channel Communications got the radio stations, and the parent company of the "Providence Journal" got WHAS-TV.

Bingham Sr. was given the rank of Commandeur, Legion d’Honneur, by French government for service. He was a Fulbright lecturer at Oxford University in 1955.

Barry Bingham Sr. died on August 15, 1988, at age 82.

Barry Bingham Jr. died on April 3, 2006.

Further reading

*cite book
first = David Leon with Mary Voelz Chandler
last = Chandler
year = 1987
title = The Binghams of Louisville: The Dark History Behind One of America's Great Fortunes
publisher = Crown
id = ISBN 0-517-56895-0
*cite book
first = Marie
last = Brenner
year = 1988
title = House of Dreams: The Bingham Family of Louisville
publisher = Random House
id = ISBN 0-394-55831-6
*cite book
first = Sallie
last = Bingham
year = 1989
title = Passion and Prejudice: A Family Memoir
publisher = Knopf
id = ISBN 0-394-55851-0
*cite book
first = Susan E. and Alex S. Jones
last = Tifft
year = 1991
title = The Patriarch: The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty
publisher = Summit Books
id = ISBN 0-671-79707-7

ee also

*List of Louisvillians
*Worth Bingham Prize, established in memory of Barry Bingham's son, Worth Bingham

External links

* [http://www.uky.edu/CommInfoStudies/JAT/HallofFame/halloffame/bingham1981.htm University of Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame bio of Barry Bingham Sr. (1981)]
* [http://archives.cjr.org/year/91/4/bingham.asp Columbia Journalism Review: The Bingham Saga]
* [http://www.courier-journal.com/kyguide/merger03/16notable.html Courier-Journal: Sixteen Most Notable Louisvillians]