Wesley Pruden facts for kids

James Wesley Pruden Jr., known as Wesley Pruden (December 18, 1935 – July 17, 2019) was an American journalist and author. He was the editor-in-chief of The Washington Times from 1992 until his retirement in 2008.

Early life

Pruden was born in 1935 in Little Rock, Arkansas, his family having lived in the state for several generations. His father, James Wesley Pruden, Sr. (1908-1979), was a Southern Baptist minister, the pastor of the Grace Baptist Church, and a radio evangelist. ..... The senior Pruden was also the president of the Little Rock chapter of the White Citizens' Council, a segregationist group that battled integration throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Newspaper career

Pruden's first job in the newspaper business was in 1951 when, as a tenth grade student at Little Rock Central High School, he worked nights as a copyboy at the since defunct Arkansas Gazette, where he later became a sportswriter and an assistant state editor. After high school, he attended a two-year college, Little Rock Junior College, now incorporated into the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

In 1956, he began working at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1963, he joined the National Observer, a national weekly published by Dow Jones & Co., for which he covered national politics and the civil rights movement. In 1965, he was assigned to cover the Vietnam War. For the next decade, he was a foreign correspondent, based in Saigon, Hong Kong, Beirut, and London. The National Observer ceased publication in 1977.

Between 1976 and 1982, Pruden worked on a novel, a satire for which he could not find a publisher. In 1982, he joined the Washington Times, four months after the paper began, as chief political correspondent. He became assistant managing editor in 1983, managing editor in 1985, and editor-in-chief in 1992. He retired in January 2008, and became editor-in-chief-emeritus. He continued to write a twice-weekly column on politics and national affairs for The Times.

Pruden is known for his coverage of President Ronald Reagan about whom he wrote:

"When Ronald Reagan speaks, the people never hear the politician saying, 'blah blah blah.' They hear a man who talks like they do, saying things that sound like common sense. Such is the essence of the 'Reagan mystique,' the aura of power that has carried the nation along with the man who is arguably the most effective president since Franklin D. Roosevelt."

In 1991, he won the H.L. Mencken Prize for excellence in writing and commentary.

Under Pruden's editorship, every Saturday The Washington Times ran a full page of stories on the American Civil War, the only daily newspaper in the United States to do so. Pruden called it "probably our single most popular feature", and noted that "There are more books published on the Civil War than on any other American topic." Pruden said that "the Civil War page has just as many stories about glorifying the Union as it does the Confederacy." Soon after Pruden retired as editor-in-chief, the Times announced that the Civil War page would be expanded to include coverage of all America's wars and would be renamed "America at War."