Jack Anderson

Jack Anderson grew up in California, but spent most of his childhood living in Utah. He got his start in journalism at the tender age of 12 when he was hired to edit the Boy Scout section of the Desert News, but soon moved from that to a job covering fires and traffic accidents for The Murray News. When he was a freshman at the University of Utah he began working for the Salt Lake Tribune, where he came under fire for embarrassing Mormon elders. He then proceeded to drop out from college and spend two years as a Mormon missionary before being drafted into the army in 1945.

However, going to war did not stop Anderson from continuing to pursue journalism, he wrote for two newspapers while in Asia serving for the military, the Desert News and the army newspaper Stars and Stripes. In 1947 he was hired by Drew Pearson to work as columnist where he stayed until he took over the paper in 1969 when Pearson passed away.

Anderson's claim to fame was his exposing of waste and corruption in the government during the time of the Nixon administration. For this coverage, he earned a Pulitzer Prize as well as a place on president Richard Nixon's enemies list. Anderson went on to head a staff of full-time and freelance writers which produced about 365 columns a year that were published in more than 1,000 newspapers before passing away in 2005.