Sir John Richard Robinson

Sir John Richard Robinson (2 November 1828–30 November 1903) was an English journalist.

Born on 2 November 1828 at Witham, Essex, he was the second son of eight children of Richard Robinson, congregational minister, by his wife Sarah, daughter of John Dennant, also a congregational minister, of Halesworth, Suffolk. At eleven he entered the school for the sons of congregational ministers at Lewisham. Withdrawn from school on 26 June 1843, he was apprenticed to a firm of booksellers at Shepton Mallet. His first effort towards journalism was a descriptive account (in the Daily News 14 February 1846) of a meeting of Wiltshire labourers to protest against the Corn Laws. After reporting for the Bedford Mercury, he obtained a post on the Wiltshire Independent at Devizes, and sent regular reports of the local markets to the Daily News.

In 1848 Robinson went to London. Having become a unitarian, he was made sub-editor of a Unitarian journal, The Inquirer, and did most of the work for John Lalor, the editor. His next post was on the Weekly News and Chronicle, under John Sheehan, and in 1855 he became editor of the Express, an evening paper under the same management as the Daily News. At the same time he was a prolific contributor elsewhere. He followed the revolutionary movements of Europe, and was in contact with Giuseppe Mazzini after writing an appreciation. He also knew Lajos Kossuth, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and other leaders.

In 1868, when the price of the Daily News was reduced to one penny, Robinson was appointed manager, and turned the paper around. He saw that the public demanded news not only quickly but in an attractive form. At the opening of the Franco-Prussian War he instructed his correspondents to telegraph descriptive details and not merely bare facts, and after the war was in progress he brought in Archibald Forbes, who became a valuable contributor. At the prompting of another correspondent, John Edwin Hilary Skinner, he started the "French Peasants Relief Fund", which reached a total of £20,000.

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