Bruce Ingersoll (1941 – December 1, 2001) was an American journalist who wrote for the '' Chicago Sun-Times'' and '' The Wall Street Journal''.

Life and career

Bruce was born and grew up in

St. Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center o ...

. His father died when he was 11; at that point he and his sisters, Laura and Brenda, lived in the foster home of the Patricia and Robert Penshorn family and occasionally with his uncle Herbert L. Lewis, the editor of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press. He graduated from the

Saint Paul Academy St. Paul Academy and Summit School is a college preparatory independent day school in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, for students in grades K–12. The school was established through a merger in 1969 of St. Paul Academy, a school for bo ...

, and earned a bachelor's degree in History from

Carleton College Carleton College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. Founded in 1866, it had 2,105 undergraduate students and 269 faculty members in fall 2016. The 200-acre main campus is between Northfield and the 800-acre Cowling ...

. Ingersoll started his journalism career as a copy boy at the City News Bureau of Chicago, in 1963. He went on to the Minneapolis Tribune, and then to be a journalist at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he spent 14 years, including 6 at the paper's Washington Bureau, in DC. He was the paper's first "environmental reporter". He then was hired by ''The Wall Street Journal'', where he spent the rest of his career. Among his noteworthy efforts were the coverage of allegations that led to charges against a former Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Espy, and an article about the continued Federal subsidy of mohair for 35 years after the military stopped using it in uniforms in 1960, a scandal in which he targeted fellow journalist Sam Donaldson for receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars while "absentee" on his inherited ranch. His article, ''As Congress Considers Slashing Crop Subsidies, Affluent Urban Farmers Come Under Scrutiny'', was read into the Congressional Record. In 2001, Ingersoll died of myelodysplastic syndrome after being irradiated while covering the Three Mile Island incident for the Chicago Sun Times.

Awards

During his career, Ingersoll was nominated for the

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

, twice. He also was awarded: * Environmental Reporting Edward J. Meeman Award Grand Prize (1978) * The Hillman Prize for a series on the working wounded (1978) * 2 Washington Correspondence Awards from the National Press Club (1981) * Worth Bingham Prize for ''Defense Dilemmas'' (1982) *

Raymond Clapper Award The Raymond Clapper Memorial Award, later called the Washington Reporting Raymond Clapper Award, was an American journalism award presented from 1944 to 2011. Named in honor of Raymond Clapper (1892–1944), the award was given "to a journalist ...

(1983) * National Association of Agricultural Journalists naaj.net ** 1st Prize, an article on lax government oversight of poultry processing (1991) ** 1st Prize for Feature Writing (1992) ** 1st Place, News Category, for his coverage of allegations leading to the indictment of Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy (1998) * In 2003 the North American Agricultural Journalists launched th
Bruce Ingersoll Mentorship Award
a yearly cash prize awarded for excellence in agricultural journalism

References

4
Carlton Alumni Network
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ingersoll, Bruce American male journalists 20th-century American journalists American environmentalists 1941 births 2001 deaths Deaths from myelodysplastic syndrome