The Reporter Who Would Be King: A Biography of Richard Harding Davis.

• Author: Nelson, Anne

Arthur Lubow New York: Scribners, 1992 438 pp.

In 1911, Richard Harding Davis, the most celebrated American journalist of his day, wrote an article entitled, "The Passing of the War Correspondent," which looked back on his career. In it he mused: "The day [the journalist's] cable from Cuba to New York was in an hour relayed to Madrid, the war correspondent received his death sentence, and six years later the japanese buried him." The immediate causes of Davis's complaints were the impact of international telegraph communications during the Spanish-American War and the Japanese practice of barring American reporters from the front during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. Davis's report of the war correspondent's death was, however, greatly exaggerated: War has endured throughout history and will always prove irresistible for would-be chroniclers. Had Davis been able to leapfrog ahead in time to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he would have found more war correspondents in action than ever before in history. Whether he would have recognized them is a different matter.

Davis's real fear was that technology would eliminate the role of the war reporter as the translator of the experience. The telegraph, after all, could bring near-instantaneous headlines from the front, while the traditional correspondent was still trying to decipher the meaning of the event. And unlike the enterprising reporter's modest tools, the notebook and pencil, the telegraph required capital to build and security to maintain -- both of which suggested government influence and control.

Davis's fears regarding censorship were also excessive. It is hard to argue that the US. military imposed more official censorship during the Gulf War than in previous similar conflicts; indeed, it is possible that there was less interference. The real concern is cultural: Once the public has consumed the headlines provided by the correspondents who exploit the most rapid news technology, are they likely to seek out more detailed and thoughtful accounts elsewhere? Or will people develop an addiction to the quick fix?

Every successive generation of technology that is harnessed for news gathering -- the telegraph and telephone, and radio, television and satellite broadcasting -- coincides with a quantifiably shorter attention span on the part of the audience and creates a greater hunger for news flashes that excite the nervous system without testing the brain. This phenomenon alone is enough to justify Davis's disquiet.

It is a little ironic that Davis should inspire such analysis, since he was not particularly thoughtful or analytical during his career. His experience however, laid the boundaries of the future of war reporting. In The Reporter Who Would Be King, Arthur Lubow provides a richly detailed portrait of Richard Harding Davis as the man who defined the role of the war correspondent for his generation: the gentleman scribbler in the high noon of the empire. A handsome, physically imposing man, Davis was drawn to the theater and brought a strong sense of costume and spectacle both to self-promotion and to the stories he covered. His work was drenched in Victorian sentiment and dime-novel prose. His sense of drama brought him an enormous audience of admirers which contributed to his wealth and fame. His style, however, also brought him criticism from intellectuals and other journalists, who viewed him as mawkish and overrated.

But it was Davis's vivid accounts that brought the wars of his time to Americans. And it was a crucial moment for the task. The Spanish-American War was...