Vermont C. Royster - Career

Career

Royster was a 1935 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; during his time at UNC he was a member of the Philanthropic Society and served as the editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel. Soon after graduating, he moved to New York City and secured a job as a reporter for the New York City News Bureau, and a year later began his 61-year career with The Wall Street Journal.

His career at Journal was one of steady advancement: reporter, 1936; Washington correspondent, 1936–40 and 1945–46; editorial writer and columnist, 1946–48; associate editor, 1948–51; senior associate editor, 1951–58; editor, 1958–71; contributing editor, columnist, 1971–96; editor emeritus, 1993-96.

In 1940 Royster joined the United States Navy Reserve. During the Second World War he served as the captain of a US Navy destroyer, the USS Jack Miller, in the Pacific theater of the war. He rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the Navy. The Jack Miller saw a considerable amount of combat against the Japanese Navy, and survived being caught in two typhoons. In late August 1945, Royster was among the first group of American officers to see the ruins of the Japanese city of Nagasaki, which had been destroyed by the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan. After the war ended Royster resumed his career at The Wall Street Journal.

In 1953 Royster was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing. He served as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1965-66. He retired as editor of The Wall Street Journal in 1971 and began writing his popular weekly column Thinking Things Over, which he continued until the handicaps of old age forced him to discontinue it in 1986. He was awarded a second Pulitzer Prize, in 1984, for Commentary.

After his retirement from the Journal, he became the Kenan Professor of Journalism and Public Affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.