Joseph B. McCullagh, known as "Mack" to his contemporaries, was one of the truly great newspaper editors to dominate the Midwest during the last decades of the 1800s. As a reporter he was known for his energetic news gathering and acute writing as well as for "inventing" and perfecting the modern journalistic interview. As an editor, he was one of the founders of the New Journalism, whose influence was felt not only in the Midwest but nationally. Despite McCullagh's achievements, much of his life remains an enigma.

Joseph Burbridge McCullagh was born in 1842 in Dublin, Ireland, to John and Sarah Burbridge McCullagh. Little is known of his early years, although the Encyclopedia of St. Louis History reports he was one of sixteen children born to the couple.

Perhaps because of the depressed state of the Irish economy in the 1840s, the eleven-year-old McCullagh decided to leave his homeland...