Gene Sherman (reporter)
| Gene Sherman | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Eugene Franklin Sherman 1915 |
| Died | 1969 |
| Occupation | Newspaper reporter and columnist |
| Employer | Los Angeles Times |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize for Public Service |
Gene Sherman (1915–1969) was a journalist who won the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the Los Angeles Times. Sherman started his 30 years on staff as a cub reporter covering nearly all the regular news beats from police and sheriff to municipal and Superior Courts. He then worked as a rewrite man, a frontline general assignment reporter, leading feature story writer, war correspondent, in-depth investigative reporter and a foreign correspondent. He became a daily general interest writer of his page-2 column Cityside for seven years and a roving national and international assignment reporter. In 1964 he opened the London bureau as part of the Los Angeles Times bid to widen its editorial base into a national newspaper, rivaling the influence and impact of The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Eugene Franklin Sherman was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to Eugene Watts Sherman, a statistician at a stock broker company, and Juliette Louvre, daughter of a lace manufacturer in Calais, France. When Gene was 4 years old, the Shermans moved to Los Angeles. While at Loyola High School, aged 15 years, he worked as assistant editor and reporter for the Boulevard Record and Compton News Tribune community newspapers. Sherman graduated from L.A. High School, followed by a year at the University of Southern California. In 1936 he took advantage of new cub reporter openings at the Los Angeles Times to join the pre-eminent West Coast newspaper.
During the Ben Hecht "Front Page" era of big-scoop headlines, Sherman wrote articles ranging from the zoot suit gangs of Los Angeles to the annual New Year Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, as well as high-profile crimes and courtroom trials picked up by newspapers across country. He covered the rise and fall of Southern California hoodlum Mickey Cohen, a one-time protégé of Al Capone in Chicago. Cohen took center stage of West Coast crime syndicate operations and with a fearless, strong-arm flamboyance held sway over the flashy Los Angeles-Hollywood celebrity crime scene in the 1940s and 50s.
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