Austin Wehrwein

By Chris Conway

Austin C. Wehrwein was in a hotel room, somewhere in Canada.

The year was 1952.  He’d been given an assignment from his newspaper, The Milwaukee Journal, to write about the economic boom in Canada.

The bookish man, with thick-rimmed glasses and degrees in economics and law, was typing. He was working on a story about the Canadian economy – something many Americans had never heard about.

Wehrwein would do this 25 times across Canada. The series of stories that resulted would win him a Pulitzer Prize.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1953 for a series called “Canada’s New Century.”

“The 20^th century belongs to Canada,” wrote Wehrwein in the first article of the series. Wehrwein thought it was important to tell the story of Canada’s development to Americans. Canada held a wealth of natural resources and was growing rapidly.

“[America] must face the fact that while we grow poorer by the hour in natural resources, Canada grows richer,” wrote Wehrwein.

The Canada Wehrwein described was the first exposure many Americans had to the country. It was a burgeoning economy filled with plentiful natural resources.

According to an obituary in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Canadian officials said the series was a “most lucid and observant account” of the Canadian economy.

Wehrwein’s colorful and engaging writing made the stories approachable to American readers.

“The writer’s leg work, plus good writing and know-how brings our neighbor to the north into the house,” the Pulitzer jury said, putting Wehrwein’s series at the top of their list.

The success didn’t come overnight, though. Wehrwein bridged the gap between law, politics, business and opinion over the course of his career, writing for a string of publications.

“He was a bit of a loner,” said Judith Wehrwein, Austin’s wife.  “Journalism and his job were his first, second and third priorities.”

Wehrwein earned a degree in economics in 1937 from the University of Wisconsin and a law degree from Columbia University in 1940.

Although he passed the Wisconsin bar exam, but he went into journalism after spending his adolescence working at newspapers – first as the editor of his high school newspaper, then as a university correspondent for The Milwaukee Journal in college.

“He never really got away from his interest in journalism,” said Judith Wehrwein, adding that he never actually practiced law.

He worked at the Associated Press’ Madison, Wis., bureau and the United Press’ Washington, D.C., bureau prior to World War II. He covered the government and the Supreme Court.

During the war, he worked in public affairs for the military. His work in public affairs took him to Europe and China; he met his future wife, Judith, in London while working as part of the Marshall Plan.

“He was interested in the world,” said Judith.

In 1951, Wehrwein, newly married to Judith, returned to the United States and wrote for the Milwaukee Journal’s business desk. He would quickly win the Pulitzer.

After winning the Pulitzer, he had stints as a writer at Time magazine and The New York Times and as business editor for The Chicago Sun-Times.

In 1966, he started as an editorial writer at The Minneapolis Star.

Being an editorial writer perhaps fit Wehrwein best. Beats were loose, and he could write about whatever topics he found interesting. Often, those topics were the law, economics, higher education and politics.

“He was an exceptional observer of American society and all its expressions,” said Kate Stanley, a former editorial writer at The Star. “He could find interesting stories in an empty cardboard box.”

Whenever Wehrwein wanted to slip out of the office to find his next story, he would sling a spare overcoat over his desk chair and place a spare pair of galoshes by the door, giving the impression that he was simply elsewhere in the office.

But instead he could be gone for hours, sitting in on meetings or wandering around downtown Minneapolis, looking for something he found interesting, said Stanley.

He was curious. He was bright. He wanted to tell a good story, and he wanted to tell the truth.

“He started [his journalism career] telling the truth he felt needed to be told,” said Stanley. “But his career evolved so that he ended up interpreting the truth that he felt everyone should know.”

Wehrwein retired from The Minneapolis Star in 1982, but continued to write for a number of publications into his 80s.

Wehrwein died in 2008. He was 92.

Chris Conway is a journalism and political science major from Wilmington, N.C., in the Class of 2015 at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Daniel Pearl

By Dree Deacon

“I remember him one time playing the piano and he stopped in desperation saying, “I will never learn how to read!”

Ruth Pearl recounted a childhood memory of her son, Daniel Pearl, who would go on to become a renowned journalist and exceptional writer for The Wall Street Journal.

“He meant text,” Ruth Pearl said, “since he was already reading music.”

Daniel Pearl quickly exhibited a passion for music, and soon after, a gift for writing.

“Danny was born easy-going and happy with himself, no show-off baby,” Ruth Pearl said. “We thought he might be smart.”

He demonstrated his aptness for journalism upon his attendance at Stanford University where he co-founded the student newspaper Stanford Commentary, according to the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

Following graduation, Pearl interned for the Indianapolis Star and later joined the Berkshire Eagle, formerly the North Adams Transcript, and the San Francisco Business Times. In 1990, Pearl joined The Wall Street Journal, excelling in both hard-hitting investigative journalism and lighthearted pieces that explored and celebrated cultural differences.

Perhaps Daniel Pearl was determined to educate his readers about the greater world because he, himself, experienced an extensive Jewish heritage.

“He believed he could change the world and that man is not a predator,” Ruth Pearl said.

As his talents in foreign correspondence were realized, Pearl was appointed South Asia bureau chief at the Journal in 2000. From Bombay, he probed the role of the U.S. government and its interactions abroad. For example, Pearl eventually made the discovery that the government had mistakenly bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant, believing it to be a weaponry factory.

One duty of Pearl’s included covering the existing “war on terror,” which led him to intermittently visit Pakistan.

Daniel Pearl was ruthlessly murdered on Feb. 1, 2002, after a group of Pakistani militants under the command of Al Qaeda kidnapped him and impelled him to condemn American foreign policy by means of a propaganda video.

The nation was still recovering from the all-to-recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Though it was certainly tragic, Daniel Pearl’s friends and relatives make sure that his legacy is not defined by his death but by what he left behind.

Ruth Pearl invited me to truly “meet Danny” by suggesting that I read several articles he wrote for the North Adams Transcript of North Adams, Mass., specifically “Going to the top won’t get you to the bottom of bureaucracy” and “Registry Saga, Part 2: Intrepid reporter-driver outlasts chief.”

“I insisted that these articles be included in the book, since he wrote them in the first person about his encounters with bureaucracy,” Ruth Pearl said about the posthumously published At Home in the World, a compilation of Daniel Pearl’s writings. “You will see his humor.”

She was right. Daniel Pearl’s wit and ingenuity give his writing a narrative voice that makes you wonder if he is there with you, at the other end of the table, telling you his story himself, only to come to the realization when the last sentence is read that it is just black and white text on paper.

Daniel Pearl’s knack for seeking out quirky business journalism and investigative stories and reporting them in such a colloquial way drew readers in. His understated, yet abundant, intellect and fair analysis are what kept them there.

According to an opinion article written by Daniel Pearl’s father Dr. Judea Pearl for The Wall Street Journal, “The Daniel Pearl Standard,” Dr. Pearl holds the media to be at least partially culpable for his late son’s tragic death.

“One of the things that saddens me most is that the press and media have had an active, perhaps even major role in fermenting hate and inhumanity,” Judea Pearl said in the article. “The media cannot be totally exonerated from responsibility for Daniel’s murder, as well as for the ‘tsunami of hate’ that has swept the world and continues to rise.”

Paul Steiger, former longtime managing editor at the Journal, friend and colleague of Daniel Pearl and member of the Daniel Pearl Foundation’s Honorary Board, does not blame the media for his violent death.

“He was a scrupulously fair reporter who was brutally murdered by an Al Qaeda chief who wanted to make a propaganda video,” Steiger said. “That is who bears responsibility.”

Steiger does, however, recognize the role that contemporary media plays in spreading cross-cultural hatred.

“Certainly, hate and callousness are on the rise and some elements of media bear some responsibility for that,” Steiger said. “But Danny hated no one.”

The Daniel Pearl Freedom of Press Act was introduced by the United States Department of State on Oct. 1, 2009, as a means of protecting journalists from the antagonistic reach of terrorism.

“There have been many journalists killed, alas, in the dozen years since Danny’s murder,” Steiger said. “There were lists of precautions then and lists now, but unfortunately there are no foolproof precautions.”

Steiger says that he is far from alone in the way he remembers Pearl — admirably.

“What I remember is the joy he took in his life, his infectious smile, and the way everyone who worked with him—in Atlanta, Washington, London, South Asia, wherever—was deeply fond of him.”

Dree Deacon is a junior business journalism major at UNC-Chapel Hill who is actually from Chapel Hill, N.C.