15 Facts About Haynes Johnson

Haynes Bonner Johnson was an American journalist, author, and television analyst.

Haynes Johnson reported on most of the major news stories of the latter half of the 20th century and was widely regarded as one of the top American political commentators.

Haynes Johnson earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1952 and his master's in American history from the University of Wisconsin in 1956.

Haynes Johnson then served in the US Army as a first lieutenant in artillery during the Korean War.

Haynes Johnson had begun his newspaper career earlier in Manhattan as a copy boy for The New York Sun, where his father worked.

In 1956 he began reporting for the Wilmington News-Journal, and the following year, Haynes Johnson joined the Washington Evening Star where he worked for 12 years, variously as a reporter, copy editor, night city editor and national reporter.

Haynes Johnson covered conflicts in the Dominican Republic and India, as well as the Vietnam War.

Haynes Johnson joined The Washington Post in 1969, serving first as a National correspondent, as a special assignment correspondent at home and abroad, then as the paper's Assistant Managing Editor and finally, as a national affairs columnist.

Haynes Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1966, for his coverage of the civil rights crisis in Selma, Alabama.

The award marked the first time in Pulitzer Prize history that a father and son both received awards for reporting; his father, Malcolm Haynes Johnson, won in 1949 for the New York Sun series, "Crime on the Waterfront," which was the basis for the Academy Award-winning film, On the Waterfront.

Haynes Johnson was the author or editor of sixteen books, five of them best-sellers, including his most recent work, co-authored with Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz, The Battle for America: 2008.

Haynes Johnson was a regular commentator on the PBS television shows Washington Week in Review and The News Hour.

Haynes Johnson held academic appointments at Duke University, Princeton University, University of California at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and George Washington University and served as the Knight chair of public affairs journalism at the University of Maryland from 1998 until 2013.

Haynes Johnson married Julia Ann Erwin in 1954; they had five children, and later divorced.

Haynes Johnson was scheduled to be inducted into the Society of Professional Journalists Washington DC chapter's hall of fame in June, 2013.