John Howard "Jack" Nelson (October 11, 1929 – October 21, 2009) was an American journalist. He was praised for his coverage of the Watergate scandal, in particular, and he was described by New York Times editor Gene Roberts[a] as "one of the most effective reporters in the civil rights era."[2]
He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960.
Youth
Nelson was born in Talladega, Alabama. His father ran a fruit store during the Great Depression. Nelson moved with his family to Georgia and eventually to Biloxi, Mississippi, where he graduated from Notre Dame High School in 1947.
Early career
After graduating from high school Nelson began his journalism career with the Biloxi Daily Herald.[2] There he earned the nickname 'Scoop' for his aggressive reporting.[2] He then worked for the U.S. Army writing press releases before taking a job with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1952. He won the Pulitzer for local reporting under deadline in 1960, citing "the excellent reporting in his series of articles on mental institutions in Georgia."[2][3][4]
Nelson joined the Los Angeles Times in 1965. He played an important role in uncovering the truth about the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre, where South Carolina Highway Patrol officers shot and killed African-American students protesting racial segregation in South Carolina.[5] Nelson obtained the victims' medical records, which showed the police had shot some of the black students in the back of the head.[6]
In the early 1970s, Nelson led the LA Times's award-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal, and then served as the paper's Washington Bureau Chief for 21 years, from 1975 to 1996.[2] During that period, he was a frequent guest on television and radio news programs.[7]
^Gene Roberts was NYT Managing Editor from 1994 to 1997. In the 1960s he and Nelson had been coauthors of The Censors and the Schools (Little, Brown, 1963).[1]
