Richard Lee Strout (March 14, 1898 – August 19, 1990) was an American journalist and commentator. He was national

correspondent A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is usually a journalist or commentator for a magazine, or an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, locati ...

for the ''

Christian Science Monitor Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι� ...

'' from 1923 and he wrote the "TRB from Washington" column for ''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...

'' from 1943 to 1983; he collected the best of his columns in ''TRB: Views and Perspectives on the Presidency'' (New York: Macmillan, 1979), a book notable for showing that Strout was one of the first observers of the American presidency to express worry about what later scholars and journalists came to call the

imperial presidency Imperial presidency is a term applied to the modern presidency of the United States. It became popular in the 1960s and served as the title of a 1973 book by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who wrote ''The Imperial Presidency'' to address ...

Life

Richard Lee Strout was born in

Cohoes, New York Cohoes ( ) is an incorporated city located in the northeast corner of Albany County in the U.S. state of New York. It is called the "Spindle City" because of the importance of textile manufacturing to its growth in the 19th century. The city's f ...

, on March 14, 1898, and was raised in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. He graduated from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1919. Afterwards, he moved to England to work in journalism in 1919 before returning to the United States in 1921, and held various newspaper positions for several years before beginning an association with

The Christian Science Monitor ''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...

that was to last until his retirement in 1984. He received a master's degree in economics from Harvard in 1923. He won the George Polk Memorial Award for national reporting in 1958 and a special Pulitzer Prize for Journalism in 1978. The Special Award cited "distinguished commentary from Washington over many years as staff correspondent for ''The Christian Science Monitor'' and contributor to ''The New Republic''.""Special Awards and Citations"
The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2013-12-07. In 1973, Strout received the Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet o ...

. Strout was a Washington resident at age 92, when he died there on August 19, 1990, eleven days after hospitalization following a fall.

References

;Other sources
''New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors''''Biographical Dictionary of American Newspaper Columnists'' - (Google Books)

External links

at the

Truman Library The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library and resting place of Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States (1945–1953), his wife Bess and daughter Margaret, and is located on U.S. Highwa ...

* American male journalists 20th-century American journalists Pulitzer Prize winners for journalism Harvard University alumni Writers from New York (state) 1898 births 1990 deaths The Christian Science Monitor people {{US-journalist-19thC-stub