Laurence Todd

Laurence "Larry" Todd (1882-1957) was an American journalist who worked as a news agency correspondent in Washington, DC. A committed radical, Todd worked as personal secretary to Socialist Congressman Meyer London from 1915 to 1916. Todd is best remembered as a correspondent for the Soviet news agency TASS for nearly three decades, a relationship about which he was interrogated in a hearing of the United States Senate in April 1956.

Laurence Todd, known as "Larry" to his friends, was born in Nottawa, St. Joseph County, Michigan on December 15, 1882. His father was a civil engineer and farmer.

Todd attended primary school in the village of Colon before moving to Ann Arbor, where he attended and graduated high school.

Todd went into journalism at an early age, working as a reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette of Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1904 and 1905. In the fall of 1905, Todd enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he studied literature. He would remain at the university for 2-1/2 years but left in 1908 without graduating.

In 1909, Todd set out for California, where he took a job as a news reporter with the San Francisco Bulletin. Todd would remain there less than a year before moving to a similar position at the San Francisco Daily News, where he would remain until 1912. Todd was made the Sacramento-based correspondent for Scripps newspapers throughout the state of California in 1912, before being sent to Washington, D.C. as a correspondent for the United Press Bureau, covering the U.S. Senate. He left this position in 1913 to join the International News Service, a post which he would hold until 1915.

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