John Ludlow Gould (February 5, 1914 – May 24, 1993) was an American

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

and critic, who wrote commentary about television.

Early life and education

Gould was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

into a socially prominent family and attended the Loomis School.

Career

He started as a copy boy at the '' New York Herald Tribune'' in 1932. In 1937 he moved to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', writing for the drama department and in the 1940s writing also about radio. In 1944 he became the newspaper's radio critic, and in 1948 the chief television reporter and critic. At one point he had eight people working under him. In the early 1960s he was a

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

executive for a short time but returned to the ''Times''. Gould's columns and reviews (along with those of rival John Crosby of the ''Herald Tribune'') were widely read by decision makers in the fledgling medium of television, and Gould had many professional and personal relationships with prominent industry figures such as

Edward R. Murrow Edward Roscoe Murrow (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow; April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965) was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe f ...

and

Fred Friendly Fred W. Friendly (born Ferdinand Friendly Wachenheimer, October 30, 1915 – March 3, 1998) was a president of CBS News and the creator, along with Edward R. Murrow, of the documentary television program '' See It Now''. He originated the concep ...

. He did not hold back harsh criticism, even when ''The New York Times'' itself produced its own public affairs program in 1963; he was aware of the potential power of television as a force for social good. His colleagues dubbed him "the conscience of the industry", to his own embarrassment. Gould lived on

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Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

and later in

Old Greenwich, Connecticut Old Greenwich is an affluent coastal village in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 6,611. The town of Greenwich is one political and taxing body, but consists of several distinct section ...

, where, according to his obituary in ''The New York Times'', his office contained "a shortwave radio, two telephones, a small black book of unlisted telephone numbers, and a typewriter". He retired in 1972 and moved to California. He died in

Concord Concord may refer to: Meaning "agreement" * Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony) * Harmony, in music * Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...

. He married Carmen Letitia Lewis in 1938; they had three sons.

Honors

Gould won many awards, including the George Polk memorial award and a Page One award (both 1953), and a special Peabody Award (1957, citing his "fairness, objectivity and authority").

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gould, Jack 1914 births 1993 deaths American television critics Critics employed by The New York Times American male journalists 20th-century American journalists 20th-century American non-fiction writers People from Old Greenwich, Connecticut 20th-century American male writers Loomis Chaffee School alumni