James Reston
James Barrett Reston (November 3, 1909 – December 6, 1995), nicknamed "Scotty", was an American journalist whose career spanned the mid-1930s to the early 1990s. He was associated for many years with The New York Times.
This article is about James Barrett Reston. For his son, also a journalist and author, see James Reston Jr.
James Reston
December 6, 1995 (aged 86)
University of Illinois (B.A., 1932)[1]
Columnist, editor
Sarah Jane "Sally" Fulton
3, including James Jr.
Early life[edit]
Reston was born in Clydebank, Scotland, into a poor, devout Scottish Presbyterian family that emigrated to the United States in 1920. He sailed with his mother and sister to New York as steerage passengers on board the SS Mobile, and they were inspected at Ellis Island on September 28, 1920.[2]
The family settled in the Dayton, Ohio, area, and Reston graduated from Oakwood High School. In 1927, he was a medalist in the first Ohio High School Golf Championship. He was Ohio Public Links champion in 1931, and in 1932 was a member of the University of Illinois' Big Ten championship team.[3]
Career[edit]
After working briefly for the Springfield, Ohio, Daily News, he joined the Associated Press in 1934. He moved to the London bureau of The New York Times in 1939, but returned to New York in 1940. In 1942, he took a leave of absence to establish a U.S. Office of War Information in London. Rejoining the Times in 1945, Reston was assigned to Washington, D.C., as national correspondent. In 1948, he was appointed diplomatic correspondent. (During the August 27, 1948, radio broadcast over which he presided, his title is Pulitzer Prize–winning bureau chief.[4]) In 1953, he became bureau chief and columnist.
In subsequent years, Reston served as associate editor of the Times from 1964 to 1968, executive editor from 1968 to 1969, and vice president from 1969 to 1974. He wrote a nationally syndicated column from 1974 until 1987, when he became a senior columnist. During the Nixon administration, he was on the master list of Nixon political opponents. Reston retired from the Times in 1989.
Reston was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1980.[5]
Reston interviewed many of the world's leaders and wrote extensively about the leading events and issues of his time. He interviewed President John F. Kennedy immediately after the 1961 Vienna summit with Nikita Khrushchev on the heels of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Stephen Kinzer's 2013 book The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War portrayed Reston as a key contact of former CIA chief Allen Dulles who had collaborated with the CIA in Operation Mockingbird, in which the agency sought to influence global reporting and journalism.
Personal life and death[edit]
Reston married his wife, Sally (born Sarah Jane Fulton), on December 24, 1935, after meeting her at the University of Illinois. He also was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity's Phi Chapter at Illinois.[6] They had three sons; James, a journalist, non-fiction writer and playwright; Thomas, formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for public affairs and the deputy spokesman for the State Department;[7] and Richard, the retired publisher of the Vineyard Gazette, a newspaper on Martha's Vineyard purchased by the elder Reston in 1968.[1]
While at Illinois, he was roommates with John C. Evans, who was also a Sigma Pi brother.[8]
He died at age 86 in Washington, D.C.
Reston's books include:
Awards[edit]
Reston won the Pulitzer Prize twice. The first was in 1945, for his coverage of the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, particularly an exclusive series that detailed how the delegates planned to set up the United Nations. Decades later, he revealed that his source was a former New York Times copy boy who was a member of the Chinese delegation.[9][10] He received the second award in 1957 for his national correspondence, especially "his five-part analysis of the effect of President Eisenhower's illness on the functioning of the executive branch of the federal government".[11]
In 1955, he was given the Raymond Clapper Memorial Award by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.[12]
In 1986, he was one of twelve recipients of the Medal of Liberty. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1986 and the Four Freedoms Award in 1991.[1]
He was also awarded the chevalier of the Légion d'honneur from France, the Order of St. Olav from Norway, Order of Merit from Chile, the Order of Leopold from Belgium, and honorary degrees from 28 universities.[13]