Jack Anderson (columnist) - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Anderson was born in Long Beach, California, to Orlando and Agnes Mortensen Anderson, devout Mormons of Swedish andDanish descent. He grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and served two years as a Mormon missionary in the church's Southern States Mission. Anderson's aptitude for journalism appeared at the early age of 12 when he began writing the Boy Scouts Column for The Deseret News. His writing career began at his local newspaper, The Murray Eagle. Anderson also edited his high school newspaper, The Granitian. He joined The Salt Lake Tribune in 1940, where his muckraking exploits included infiltrating polygamous Mormon fundamentalist sects. He served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II in China, where he reportedly fought the Japanese alongside Chinese guerrillas and worked on the Shanghai edition of Stars and Stripes.

After a stint as a war correspondent during 1945, he was hired by Drew Pearson for the staff of his column, the "Merry-Go-Round," which Anderson took over after Pearson's death in 1969. In its heyday, Anderson's column was the most influential and widely read in the U.S.; published in nearly a thousand newspapers, he reached an audience of 40 million.

He co-founded Citizens Against Government Waste with J. Peter Grace in 1984.