James Gordon Bennett Jr., a Master of Time Zones PARIS - Perhaps someday - don't hold your breath - there will be a Rue Murdoch, a Boulevard Turner or an Avenue Zuckerberg. But for now the only street in Paris named after an American media mogul is the Avenue Gordon Bennett. The thoroughfare, near the Roland Garros tennis stadium, honors James Gordon Bennett Jr., who founded the International Herald Tribune - or, as it was then known, the European edition of The New York Herald - here in 1887. Bennett was not the first publisher to come up with the idea of printing an English-language newspaper in Continental Europe. But he was the first with the resources, the pedigree, the technological savoir-faire and the sheer chutzpah to create a publication that would last. For starters, there was a market - a niche, but an attractive and influential one. The late 19th century, in a parallel to the current era, was a time of globalization, and Paris still had few rivals for "world's greatest city" status. For the sons and daughters of wealthy American families and other cosmopolitan elites, it was an adopted home, or at least a stopover on their way to the spas and seaside resorts of Europe. In the spirit of the Internet entrepreneurs of the 21st century - though in a decidedly different style - Bennett spotted a business opportunity, one that coincided with his own cosmopolitan interests and lifestyle. "At a time when America was just beginning to feel its power in the world, he was a publisher who looked across the oceans much more than most of the publishers of his time," said Mitchell Stephens, a New York University journalism professor and the author of "A History of News." Bennett was the son of one of the towering figures of American journalism, James Gordon Bennett Sr., who founded The New York Herald in 1835 and turned it into the dominant paper in the city for a number of decades. Though Bennett Jr. was raised in France, extending the Herald brand to Paris was not an obvious career path. He was expected to take over the family newspaper - which he did, in 1866, several years before his father died. But one of the occupational hazards of being the scion of a powerful publishing family in the Gilded Age was a playboy's lifestyle. Bennett Jr.'s excesses and indiscretions caught up with him during a New Year's Day party at the home of his fiancée's family in 1877, when he was 35. In full view of his hosts, he urinated into a fireplace (some biographers say it was a grand piano or a plant). In any case, the marriage was off. Bennett Jr. went into a self-imposed exile in Paris. A decade later the new paper, which became known casually as The Paris Herald, appeared. While it might have been tempting to write off the paper as a vanity project, The Paris Herald found an audience. It also filled a useful function for the Bennett business, serving as a sort of early warning station for news, and as a beacon of new technology. "It became useful to have Paris as a central gathering spot for news from all over Europe, Africa and the Near East, from which it could then be transmitted to New York," wrote Charles L. Robertson in a history of the International Herald Tribune that was published in 1987, on its 100th anniversary. Some of Bennett Jr.'s other moves made this possible. In 1883, he co-founded a company that laid a submarine telegraph cable linking the United States to Europe, in competition with Jay Gould's Western Union. By breaking the monopoly on rapid trans-Atlantic communications, he drove down rates, making journalistic uses feasible. So, while it took more than two weeks for word of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to reach Europe in 1865, a few decades later, news on the other side of the Atlantic could be read in Paris the next morning. Mr. Robertson details other examples of Bennett Jr.'s embrace of newfangled technologies. He introduced the Linotype to France in 1898. In 1904, he began delivery by automobile, using a Mercedes to speed newspapers to the resort town of Trouville, on the English Channel. He set up the paper's own photo-engraving shop, an unusual luxury at the time. Bennett Jr.'s creation has lasted 125 years, which seems like eons in the digital age. Will anyone use, or remember, Twitter, Facebook or even Google 125 years from now? Maybe, but it is easy to imagine that something else will have supplanted them. For newspapers, of course, the challenge is more immediate. Some, like the International Herald Tribune and its parent, The New York Times, have begun charging users of their Web sites, in an effort to build a business model for the future. But the death of print at the hands of new technology has been predicted before. Indeed, Bennett Sr. was among the doomsayers. He once warned that an earlier innovation in global communications, the telegraph, would kill newspapers, or at least set off a Darwinian struggle for survival. In another parallel to the current talk in newsrooms, he said that only publications that analyzed the news would survive, given that the telegraph would be a more efficient way of transmitting the headlines. "Mere newspapers - the circulators of intelligence merely - must submit to destiny and go out of existence," he said. The intellectual, philosophic and original journalist will have a greater, a more excited and a more thoughtful audience than ever. Bennett Jr.'s motivation in founding the Paris edition might not have been intellectual or philosophic, and his idea not entirely original, but the paper did reach a thoughtful, influential audience. It also served as a sort of 19th-century social medium, printing a daily list of all Americans who had registered in the paper's Paris reading room, for example. While Bennett Jr. was a man of his time - at least, a representative of the ultrawealthy of the Gilded Age - he was forward-thinking in ways that extended beyond technology. By bringing The Herald to Europe during a previous era of globalization, he may have foreshadowed, however distantly, the current era of borderless communications. "He saw that English was going to be the global language, that there could be a single language for business, science and education," said Bertrand Pecquerie, chief executive of the Global Editors Network. That was not entirely obvious 125 years ago. Historical parallels go only so far. Bennett Jr. was very different from the most influential media figures of the current era of globalization - for example, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. Bennett Jr. inherited his wealth and his business; Mr. Zuckerberg largely created his. And it is hard to imagine Bennett Jr., the archetypal grandee of the Gilded Age, in a hoodie. What about Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp.? Like Bennett Jr., Mr. Murdoch has lavished money on newspapers, reveling in the influence that ownership can bring. But he has built a global media empire that dwarfs the Bennetts' creations. Mr. Pecquerie said the best modern parallel might be Ted Turner, the CNN founder, because of his global vision of news - and colorful personal life. Media scholars say Bennett Jr. was probably a lesser journalist than his father, one of the pioneers of the sensationalist style of newspapering. But he had a flair for promotion that brought attention to his publications, and that sometimes aligned neatly with some of his favorite personal pursuits. He sponsored yacht, automobile and balloon races, all of which became closely associated with his name and that of his newspapers. The fact that many of these entertainments were beyond the reach of the average person may only have added to the enduring allure of The Herald as a luxury icon. In addition to the first truly international English-language newspaper, Bennett Jr. left another legacy - the expression "Gordon Bennett!" Its etymology is not entirely clear, but by most accounts it was inspired by Bennett Jr. and his sometimes outrageous behavior, not by his more buttoned-up father. "Gordon Bennett!" is a minced oath, like "son of a gun," "gosh" or "golly," generally voiced as an expression of surprise or disbelief - as one might feel, for example, when walking down a Paris street and seeing the name of an American newspaper publisher on a sign.