Eugene C. Pulliam

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.