David Lawrence (publisher)

David Lawrence (December 25, 1888 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – February 11, 1973 in Sarasota, Florida) was a conservative newspaperman. He attended Princeton University (Class of 1910).[1] While there he was a student of Woodrow Wilson. In 1916, he became the Washington correspondent of the New York Evening Post.

After his reelection as U.S. President, President Woodrow Wilson fired Irish-American White House secretary (chief of staff) Joseph Patrick Tumulty in 1916 to placate anti-Catholic sentiment, particularly from his wife and his advisor Colonel Edward M. House, after which David Lawrence successfully interceded on his behalf to remain.

During the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, David Lawrence criticised "The New Deal" in his 1934 book Beyond the New Deal,[2] in which his observation of economic activity led him to distinguish between free enterprise and corporatism, writing that "Theoretically, corporations are creations of the state."

David Lawrence sharply criticised the use of the atomic bomb against Japan, comparing it to the gas chambers of Nazi concentration camps, and maintaining that the United States had become guilty and needed to apologize to the world.[3]

In 1926, Lawrence founded United States Daily, a weekly newspaper devoted to covering government, and seven years later shut it down to start United States News for an audience of community leaders, business people and politicians.[4] In 1948, United States News merged with Lawrence's two-year-old weekly magazine, World Report to form the news magazine U.S. News & World Report. At the time of Lawrence's 1973 death, the magazine had a circulation of two million.

On April 22, 1970, David Lawrence was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon.[5]

Personal life and death

Lawrence married Ellanor (Campbell Hayes) Lawrence on July 17, 1918, and they had three children, David Jr., Mark, Nancy, Etienne was a daughter from a previous marriage. Ellanor died June 13, 1969. To honor her memory, in 1971 David Lawrence gave Fairfax County, Virginia, the land that became Ellanor Lawrence Park in Chantilly.

He died of an apparent heart attack at his Sarasota, Florida, home.[6]

References

  1. ↑ David Lawrence Papers, Princeton University Library.
  2. ↑ David Lawrence (1934), Beyond the New Deal, New York: McGraw, Hill.
  3. ↑ 'America's Reaction to the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki' by Diana Steele
  4. ↑ David Lawrence: A Profile
  5. ↑ Nixon, Richard (April 22, 1970). "Remarks on Presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Eight Journalists". Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. Archived from the original on 2011-12-25. Retrieved 2011-12-25.
  6. ↑ "David Lawrence, Columnist, Magazine Founder Dies". Eugene Register-Guard. February 12, 1973. Retrieved 2012-12-04.

External links


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