Wesley Pruden - Newspaper Career

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 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., where 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 1976.

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. His twice-weekly column on politics and national affairs, which has appeared in The Times since 1983, continues.

In 1991, he won the H.L. Mencken Prize.