Eugene Collins Pulliam (May 3, 1889 – June 23, 1975) was an American newspaper publisher and businessman who was the founder and president of Central Newspapers Inc., a media holding company. During his sixty-three years as a newspaper publisher, Pulliam acquired forty-six newspapers across the United States. Major holdings of Central Newspapers, which he founded in 1934, included the Indianapolis Star, the Indianapolis News, the Arizona Republic, and the Phoenix Gazette, as well as newspapers in smaller cities in Indiana, Arizona, and other states. Pulliam's early career included work as a reporter for the Kansas City Star and as editor and publisher of the Atchison (Kansas) Daily Champion. Prior to 1960 Pulliam also operated radio stations WAOV and WIRE in Indiana and KTAR in Arizona. The Kansas native, a graduate from DePauw University in 1910, founded the DePauw Daily, an independent student newspaper, and in 1909 was one of ten DePauw students who cofounded Sigma Delta Chi, a journalism fraternity that was later renamed the Society of Professional Journalists. In August 2000, the Gannett Company acquired Central Newspapers for US$2.6 billion, with the Eugene C. Pulliam Trust as the principal beneficiary of the sale.

Well known as a political conservative, Pulliam was a delegate to the Republican national convention in 1952 that named General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Republican Party's presidential nominee. Pulliam was also an outspoken advocate of freedom of the press. Pulliam wrote and published "Window on the Right," a syndicated domestic-affairs column during the 1960s; wrote The Unchanging Responsibility of the American Newspaper in a Changing Society (1970); The People and the Press: Partners for Freedom (1965), coauthored with Frederic S. Marquardt; and South America, Land of the Future, Jewel of the Past (1951), coauthored with his wife, Nina Mason Pulliam. Pulliam was the father of newspaper publisher Eugene Smith Pulliam; Martha Corinne (Pulliam) Quayle, the mother of Dan Quayle, the 44th Vice President of the United States; and Helen Suzanne (Pulliam) Murphy. He was a trustee of DePauw University, a three-term member the Associated Press's board of directors, and a member of New York Central Railroad's board of directors, as well as a founder of the Phoenix Zoo.

Early life and education

Pulliam was born on May 3, 1889, in a sod dugout house at Ulysses in Grant County, Kansas, to Martha Ellen (Collins) and Reverend Irvin Brown Pulliam, who was a Methodist missionary sent to establish church congregations in the frontier towns of western Kansas. The Pulliam family moved frequently and Eugene grew up in a variety of prairie towns. He got his first taste of the newspaper business as a six-year-old boy selling newspapers in Chanute, Kansas.

Pulliam entered DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1906. While a student at DePauw, Pulliam was a campus correspondent for the Indianapolis Star, a member of the Psi Phi chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and founder of the DePauw Daily, an independent student newspaper. He was also a cofounder, in 1909, with nine other students at DePauw of Sigma Delta Chi, a journalism fraternity that was later renamed the Society of Professional Journalists. Pulliam graduated from DePauw in 1910. Later in life he served for thirty-two years as a member of DePauw's board of trustees and also chaired a committee that had a monument erected outside of DePauw's East College to commemorate the founding of Sigma Delta Chi. Their son, Eugene S. Pulliam, was born on September 7, 1914, and joined the family business in 1935 as director of WIRE, an Indianapolis radio station his father owned at that time. Myrta (Smith) Pulliam died in 1917.

Eugene C. Pulliam married Martha Ott (1891–1991) of Franklin, Indiana, in 1919; they divorced in 1941. Eugene and Martha Pulliam were the parents of two daughters, Martha Corinne Pulliam, who later married James Cline Quayle, and Helen Suzanne Pulliam, who later married William Murphy.

Following his divorce from Martha (Ott) Pulliam in 1941 Eugene C. Pulliam married Nina G. Mason (1906–1997). During their thirty-four-year marriage, which ended upon his death in 1975, Nina (Mason) Pulliam served as secretary-treasurer and a board member of Central Newspapers, Inc., the holding company that Eugene Pulliam founded in 1934. Eugene and Nina Pulliam also traveled extensively, including a twenty-two-nation tour in 1947. During their extended trips they filed reports of their experiences, which were published in the Pulliam newspapers. They also coauthored South America, Land of the Future, Jewel of the Past (1951). Nina (Mason) Pulliam died on March 26, 1997.

Career

Early career

After graduating from DePauw University in 1910,

Pulliam's son, Eugene S. Pulliam, took over as publisher of the Indianapolis Star and the Indianapolis News, the Central Newspapers company's two major newspapers in Indianapolis. In 1975, the Indianapolis Star won a Pulitzer Prize for its series on police corruption, As a condition of his will, Pulliam had ordered that the trust could not sell the corporation unless it was "seriously threatened" by a "substantially complete loss" of value.

  • Received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1968.
  • The Eugene C. Pulliam Fellowship for Editorial Writing, a program of the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation, was introduced in 1977 with funding from his widow, Nina Pulliam, to provide an annual cash award (US$75,000 in 2019) to editorial writers and columnists working at a news publication in the United States.
  • Inducted into DePauw University's Media Hall of Fame in 1995, along with his son.

Selected published works

  • South America, Land of the Future, Jewel of the Past (1951).