Newsom, Earl

Earl Newsom may have learned his appreciation for the power of words by listening to his Methodist minister father. Named Edwin Earl Newsom, he was born in Wellman, Iowa, on December 13, 1897, to a family of teachers, ministers, and musicians. So Earl leaned the art of teaching as he acquired an appreciation for language. His long career began as a teacher, not as a newspaper man. He had become, by his death on April 11, 1973, one of several practitioners who shaped the course of American industry.

Newsom had a keen sense of business. He liked selling. With his brothers, he established Newsom Brothers Piano Company. This enterprise sold pianos [Page 574]and was profitable enough to fund the college education of several of the Newsom youths.

Newsom earned his baccalaureate degree from Oberlin College and used it to launch his teaching career. He honed his love for the power of language at Oberlin and set out to share that affection and knowledge of its intricacies with students. After a short teaching career, he elected to seek a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. He took a teaching position in New York City to help support his family and fund his studies.

Along with his study of English, he developed a fascination with the topic of public opinion, which was receiving substantial academic attention. This attention also addressed the national phenomena of activism and nonprofit organizations. World War I had demonstrated the impact of public campaigns through the Creel Committee. The Red Cross and the Liberty Bond campaigns showed how appeals to the general public could foster philanthropy and community involvement to solve national problems by encouraging citizen participation.

Newsom was an enthusiastic student of public opinion. He had read Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922) and Edward Bernays's Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923). These legendary books examined how public opinion forms and influences the destiny of a people. Bernays applied those principles to the practice of public relations.

He had also read Gustav LeBon's The Crowd—A Study of the Public Mind, which offered an unflattering look at the mindless willingness of the masses to follow a bold leader. Other books on this subject heightened his insight into the way people acquire information, are influenced through persuasive messages, and develop motives that lead them to make certain choices and express different preferences.

Love for the power and grace of language coupled with an interest in public opinion underpinned his practice of public relations. Newsom's break, as it were, came in 1925, when through one of his students he was offered a job in the promotion department of the Literary Digest. The fields of public relations and advertising were booming along with the economy. Promotion and publicity were lucrative lines of work as the nation lathered itself into a financial frenzy in the years leading to the burst economic bubble, the Great Depression.

What might today be called publics, markets, audiences, or stakeholders came to be known to Newsom as the “crowd.” People joined in common idea and purpose were the foundation of any society. That was true of government, the nonprofit sector, and, of course, business. Public opinion, the opinion of the public, was sovereign. Nothing could challenge it. Thus, influencing it led to power, influence, and success.

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