John R. Harrison

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John Raymond Harrison (born June 8, 1933 in Des Moines , Iowa ) is an award-winning American journalist who worked for several newspapers in the US state of Florida .

Life

Personal life and education

He came as the son of Raymond Harrison Sr. and his wife Dorothy, nee Stout, to the world. In 1951 he completed his training at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and then studied until 1955 at Harvard University . He was then enrolled at Harvard Business School for another year .

From 1955 until their divorce in 1981, Harrison was married to Lois Cowles; from the marriage the four children Gardner Mark, Kent Alfred, John Patrick and Lois Eleanor emerged. Mary Gee MacQueen married in the divorce year.

Career

He gained his first journalistic experience at the News Tribune in Fort Pierce . There he initially worked as a member of the editorial team and was later promoted to editor- in - chief.

In 1962, he joined as an editor for The Gainesville Sun after Gainesville , than the newspaper from the Cowles Magazines and Broadcasting Inc. was acquired. He soon began to be interested in the demands and actions of the so-called "League of Women Voters in Gainesville". This was at the head of a citizens' initiative that tried to persuade the municipal administration in the town, which at the time had 36,000 inhabitants, to pass a reform of building law. The drafting of a corresponding law had been delayed for several years. They called for the establishment of public funds to provide financial security in order to make the poorest residential areas of the city livable again. According to Harrison, the residents of the Gainesville slums lived in misery, surrounded by dusty streets and without water in their homes. The landowners, he called them bigwigs , had benefited from this situation and always vehemently prevented changes. Harrison wrote a series of eight critical editorials on the subject in 1964, which received national attention. While the award committee for the renowned Pulitzer Prize quickly came to the decision to award him the award in 1965, his suggestions and opinions in Gainesville initially met with little and then only very slowly. He himself said in retrospect: “Everything went against me. I was a Yankee , I was a newcomer, I went to Harvard - you ca n't have a lot more points against you in a small southern town in the 1960s. ”Still, the campaign was ultimately successful: thousands of new housing units were built during the slums were demolished. Harrison later said that after reviewing the award-winning articles, his father-in-law told him that while they were passionately written, they were not very well written.

To 1 June 1966 Harrison took over the function of the editor when in Lakeland appearing Lakeland Ledger . He stayed there for at least the next ten years. In 1973, he barely missed a second Pulitzer Prize, but was praised by name by the jury for extremely meritorious work at Ledger . In the further course of his career, Harrison was, among other things, brief editor-in-chief of the International Herald Tribune , chairman of the New York Times Affiliated Newspaper Group, vice-chairman of the New York Times Company and until 1993 chairman of the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group.

Awards

  • 1965: Pulitzer Prize - Editorial Writing "for his successful editorial campaign for better housing in his city"
  • 1970: Bronze medallion of the Society of Professional Journalists
  • 1972: National Headliner Award
  • 1973: Bronze medallion of the Society of Professional Journalists
  • 1974: National Journalism Award - Editorial Writing (Walker Stone Award)
  • 1976: National Journalism Award - Editorial Writing (Walker Stone Award)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinz-Dietrich Fischer: The Pulitzer Prize Archive, Volume 16: Complete Biographical Encyclopedia of Pulitzer Prize Winners, 1917-2000 . KG Saur Verlag , Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-30186-3 , page 99
  2. ↑ Elizabeth A. Brennan, Elizabeth C. Clarage: Who's who of Pulitzer Prize winners . The Oryx Press, Phoenix 1999, ISBN 978-1-57356-111-2 , page 181
  3. ^ Adam Goldenberg, Evan H. Jacobs, Sam Teller: "Five From '55 Grab a Total of Six Pulitzer Prizes" in The Harvard Crimson, June 6, 2005. Retrieved from thecrimson.com on October 29, 2011
  4. ↑ "Lakeland Ledger Publisher To Leave For New York" in St. Petersburg Times of May 14, 1966 (Vol. 82, No. 294), page 15
personal data
SURNAME Harrison, John R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harrison, John Raymond (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Des Moines , Iowa