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James, Howard (1935 - 2018)

Genre: Non-Fiction

A Maine resident since 1976, Howard James was born in Iowa City, IA. He attended schools in Moline, IL, and Elkhart, IN, and was freshman and sophomore class president at Michigan State University, working during college full-time for TV and radio stations in Lansing and Grand Rapids, and graduating in 1958 with degrees in communication (radio-tv) and journalism. In 1971, Michigan State recognized his work with an honorary doctorate.

James established the first full-time radio-tv news bureau at the Michigan state capitol. Soon he switched to newspapers, moving to the Marquette Mining Journal in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

In 1960 he became a reporter for the Chicago Tribune and in 1964 was named Midwest bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor.

While he was working for the Christian Science Monitor, James was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting (1968) for his series of articles, "Crisis in the Courts," about incompetence and corruption in the American judiciary system, which was published the same year in book form under the same title.

The following year he produced a second award-winning major Monitor series, reporting a nationwide study of programs for delinquent youth, published in 1970 as Children in Trouble: A National Scandal.

His third book, The Little Victims: How America Treats its Children, was published in 1975.

James moved to Maine in 1976 after marrying Judy Munro, publisher of the Berlin (NH) Reporter. He lives in Norway and until June 2005 owned the Rumford Falls Times and the Norway Advertiser-Democrat. He sold those papers to the Lewiston Sun Journal to devote more time to writing books.