John Seigenthaler
John Lawrence Seigenthaler (pronounced [' sigɛn ˌ θɔlɚ ], born July 27, 1927 in Nashville, Tennessee) is an American journalist and writer.
Biography
Seigenthaler was born in 1927 in Nashville. He attended the local Peabody College. In 1949 he was employed by the newspaper The Tennessean. From 1962 he was editor in chief there, from 1973 editor, 1982-1991 Chairman, and after retiring Honorary Chairman of this newspaper. From 1982 to 1991 worked for the Seigenthaler he co-founded daily newspaper USA Today as Editorial Director. He also served as a board member and temporary chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Seigenthaler is married to Dolores Watson since 1955. Their son John was born in 1955 and is newscaster for NBC. Seigenthalers older brother Thomas Seigenthaler is the founder of Seigenthaler Foundation.
Professional career
Seigenthaler joined as a journalist for the first time out in 1953, when he tracked down a 22- years previously missing son of an entrepreneur from Tennessee. In July 1956 his journalistic investigations contributed to machinations of trade union officials in the dismissal of Judge Ralston Schoolfield. 1960 Seigenthaler was short of the government under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy employees. On April 21, 1961, he was present at the interview with Martin Luther King. During the Freedom Rides in 1961, he led on behalf of the government negotiations with Alabama Governor John Malcolm Patterson.
In 1962 he finally resigned as chief editor again at the newspaper The Tennessean. Under a new management of the paper, the newspaper quickly got a good reputation. Nevertheless, he was accused by one of the 1956 they have identified trade union officials, Jimmy Hoffa in the process, to have reported one-sided in his paper, which is due to the friendship between Seigenthaler and Kennedy. This indicated Seigenthaler back always. He worked in 1968 in the campaign team for the presidency of Robert F. Kennedy. After Kennedy's assassination on 6 June 1968 he held with the vigil at the coffin.
As editor of the newspaper he dismissed in May 1976, the editorial board member Jacque Srouji, who had worked as an FBI informant. The FBI had collected some information also about Seigenthaler. He tried for a year to get access to those files. These included, inter alia, notes that Seigenthaler had had relations with young girls. Seigenthaler published the complete material that had collected the FBI about him. For this journalistic courage, he received the 1976 Sidney Hillman Prize. The allegations were refuted by him.
1986 established the Middle Tennessee State University in honor Seigenthalers the John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies. He founded at Vanderbilt University in 1991, the First Amendment Center. In 2002, the University renamed the building in which the First Amendment Center is to be in John Seigenthaler Center.