John Strohmeyer

John Strohmeyer (June 26, 1924 – March 3, 2010) won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing “for his editorial campaign to reduce racial tensions in Bethlehem.”[1]

Strohmeyer was born in Boston, Massachusetts. After working as a night reporter for the now-defunct Bethlehem Globe-Times of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania while attending Moravian College, he spent three years in the United States Navy during World War II, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. A graduate of Muhlenberg College (1947) and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (1948), Strohmeyer was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1952–1953 academic year while employed by The Providence Journal. In 1956, he returned to Bethlehem, where he served as editor of the Globe-Times until 1984.[1] He won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship[2] in 1984 to research and write about the decline of the American steel industry, a project that evolved into Crisis in Bethlehem: Big Steel's Struggle to Survive (Adler & Adler, 1986; University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994).

In 1992, Robert Atwood recruited Strohmeyer to teach journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage in a position endowed by Atwood. While there, Strohmeyer wrote Extreme Conditions: Big Oil and the Transformation of Alaska.[1] Strohmeyer also wrote Atwood's biography, which was never published due to a dispute which arose after Atwood's death between Strohmeyer and Atwood's daughter Elaine.[3]

John Strohmeyer died of heart failure on March 3, 2010 in Crystal River, Florida.[1]