Journalists in America: James Reston

Known for Insight, Fair Mindedness, Balance and Humaneness

Dec 15, 2008

James Barret Scotty Reston became one of America's foremost political writers of the 20th century. A prize-winning journalist, he was also known for his famous quotes.

James Barret Scotty Reston was one of the most important political journalists from the 1950's to the 1980's. He won many of the most important awards and was given honors for writing that was widely read, especially by leading politicians and diplomats.

Scotty Reston Early Life

James Barrett Scotty Reston was born in Clydebank, Scotland on November 3, 1909, the second child of James and Johana Reston. The family immigrated to the United States in 1920, living in Dayton, Ohio. His parents were strict Presbyterians and Reston at one time seriously thought about becoming a preacher. Later he considered becoming a professional golfer.

Reston graduated from the University of Illinois in 1932 and became a sports writer for the Springfield (Ohio) Daily News. Other jobs he held included working for Ohio State University's publicity office and then as press secretary for the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. He married Sarah Jane Fulton in 1935 and they had three sons.

Reston Writes for the National Press

Reston took a position with the Associated Press (AP) in New York during 1934, writing sports features and a column, "A New Yorker at Large." In 1937, he was sent to London to cover international sporting events and the British foreign office.

In 1939, he left the AP to work for the London bureau of the New York Times and returned to the U.S. to cover the State Department in Washington DC. He returned to London in 1942 to help organize the U.S. Office of Information after publishing the book, Prelude to Victory, in which he stressed that the war effort should be a national campaign.

Reston'as First Important Scoop

In 1944, Reston returned to Washington as the Times' diplomatic correspondent. It was during this time that he had a major scoop. While covering the Dumbarton Oaks conference which organized the United Nations, he obtained a full set of top-secret Allied position papers from the Chinese delegation. The story earned him the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

Reston as Washington Bureau Chief

As Washington bureau chief for the New York Times in 1953, he gathered a team of enterprising young interns and young writers who became leading national journalists. Meanwhile he was still writing about 5000 words each week. In 1957, he won a second Pulitzer Prize for a series on America's lack of national purpose. Time magazine featured him in a cover story in 1960, describing Reston as a "crack reporter, a good writer, a thoughtful columnist and an able administrator of the biggest bureau in Washington."

Reston's Political Column

Reston's stature as one of Washington's most influencial journalists began a thrice-weekly political column in March 1960. In a collection of his essays, Sketches in the Sand (1967), he observed that the columns were motivated by a wide range of objectives, from ideological interpretation to investigation. Life magazine described Reson's columns as "a highly intelligent summary of what policy makers and thinking and worrying about. Reston does not so much argue for or against their policies as clarify them with a readable prose style and stamp them with his own healthy point of view."

Reston's Role as a National Figure

Reston's Famous Quotes

James (Scotty) Reston was honored and won many journalism awards during his lifetime and in his role at the New York Times. These included the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Roosevelt Four Freedom medal, the Commander, Order of the British Empire. When he died on December 8, 1995, he left a legacy for aspiring journalists. He was a conservative man with traditional values but never lost his optimism about the country's future.

Stack, John F, Scotty: James B. Reston and the Rise and Fall of American Journalism. U. of Nebraska Bison Books, 2006.

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