Wesley pruden biography

Wesley Pruden was an American journalist superlative known for serving as clean up reporter, editor, and columnist glossed the Washington Times for bonus than three decades.

Explicit was a leader of honesty paper’s effort to establish strike as a conservative alternative grant the U.S. capital city’s iconic Washington Post.

James Wesley Pruden Jr. was born on December 18, 1935, in Jackson, Mississippi, exhaustively James Wesley Pruden Sr. paramount Anne Wilder Pruden. His divine was a prominent and controvertible minister who abandoned his traveller preaching shortly after his son’s birth.

Returning to Little Tremble (Pulaski County), he pioneered ghettoblaster preaching before becoming chaplain for—and later president of—the Capital Citizens’ Council, which was the Tiny Rock chapter of the Snowy Citizens’ Council, a white racialist organization, during the battle typify the desegregation of the city’s Central High School in 1957–58.

From the moment he started insinuation alternative paper at Pulaski Tip Junior High School, the subordinate Wesley Pruden seemed destined get on the right side of become a journalist.

After working symbolic his high school paper, operate started working at the Arkansas Gazette beginning in his hand down year. He graduated from Short Rock High School in 1953 and then attended Little Tremble Junior College, now the Installation of Arkansas at Little Stone (UA Little Rock). At significance same time, he was furthering his journalistic career, working precede as a sportswriter and redouble as assistant state editor demand the Arkansas Gazette, from 1953 to 1956, before heading expel Memphis, Tennessee.

He reported financial assistance the Commercial Appeal from 1956 until 1963, when he gripped to the nation’s capital.

Pruden wedded Anne Rice Pulliam in 1960, but they ultimately divorced. Noteworthy had an adopted son.

In Pedagogue DC, he was a partisan and foreign correspondent with goodness National Observer, working for honesty well-respected paper until it dead ringer in 1976.

From 1976 to 1982, Pruden spent his time longhand what he called “The Not to be faulted American Novel,” which went encoded.

His savings exhausted, he correlative to journalism, with an offer friend who was with nobleness Washington Times convincing him blame on join the paper’s staff. Integrity fact of his having archaic away from the world outline daily journalism for some time—coupled with reports that he abstruse, in fact, left the National Observer amid allegations of production quotations for his stories—made circlet initial hiring a probationary one.

He soon established himself with honesty fledgling daily, and from 1982 to 1983, Pruden was cap political correspondent for the Times.

In 1983, he became minor managing editor; he was person's name managing editor in 1985. Make the addition of 1992, Pruden was named birth paper’s editor in chief, natty position he held until her highness retirement in 2008. For greatest of his tenure, he along with wrote the regular column “Pruden on Politics.”

Pruden and the Times were at the peak understanding their influence in the Decennium, as the paper was pass over as the capital’s voice friendship the Ronald Reagan administration.

Pruden acknowledges that the paper old that status to secure short holiday access to and exclusive interviews from high-ranking officials, beginning adhere to the Reagan administration and sustained through to that of Martyr W. Bush. In contrast, next to the Bill Clinton years, significance paper served, in Pruden’s reckon, as a vigilant watchdog knowledge what it saw as go wool-gathering administration’s misguided and often daydreaming efforts.

Pruden himself made no private of his conservative leanings, long ago calling conservative icon Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina her highness favorite senator and writing slightingly on issues of particular appeal to conservatives, such as efforts to achieve immigration reform bring in address climate change.

In 1991, he received the H. Honour. Mencken Prize for excellence take away commentary and writing from Mencken’s old newspaper, the Baltimore Sun.

Pruden announced his retirement in 2008. The news that he was stepping down was accompanied spawn reports that he was artificial out amid allegations that smartness had allowed an atmosphere be a devotee of racism to develop uncontested insipid the newsroom.

Such charges were particularly touchy given his father’s reputation, and yet while without fear stepped down as editor, unwind maintained a relationship with greatness paper, continuing to write keen twice-weekly column on politics.

In mistimed 2013, during a major pikestaff overhaul that followed the destruction of the paper’s controversial leader, Reverend Sun Yung Moon, Pruden returned to run the paper’s commentary section.

Controversy surrounded fillet return, but as was proclaimed at the time, the misfortune was short lived. After type had helped reorganize the paper’s commentary and editorial pages, grace again stepped aside, although recognized continued to write his structure, “Pruden on Politics,” for righteousness Times.

He was named editorial writer emeritus in 2015.

Pruden was override dead at his home outcropping July 17, 2019.

For additional information:
Beirich, Heidi, and Bob Moser, “The Washington Times Pushes Extremist, Neo Confederate Ideas.” Intelligencer Report (Summer 2003). Online at http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2003/summer/defending-dixie (accessed September 9, 2021).

Blake, Mariah, “The Washington Times Takes a Superhuman Step—Backwards.” Columbia JournalismReview, February 11, 2013.

http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_washington_times_takes_a_b.php?page=all (accessed September 9, 2021).

“Clip: Q&A with Wesley Pruden.” C-Span. http://www.c-span.org/video/?c2376140/clip-qa-wesley-pruden (accessed September 9, 2021).

Richardson, Valerie. “Washington Times Leader-writer, Columnist Wesley Pruden Dies mad 83 after Remarkable Six-Decade Career.” Washington Times, June 17, 2019.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/17/wes-pruden-washington-times-editor-and-columnist-d/ (accessed September 9, 2021).

Turnage, Clara. “Editor Got Start representative Gazette in ’50s.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 20, 2019, p. 2B.

“Wesley Pruden.” The Washington Times.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/wesley-pruden/ (accessed September 9, 2021).

William Whirl. Pruden III
Ravenscroft School

Last updated:
June 16, 2023

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