Robert Post (journalist)

Robert Perkins Post (September 8, 1910 – February 26, 1943) worked as a reporter for the New York Times during World War II. He was part of a group of eight reporters, known as the Legion of the Doomed or the Writing 69th, selected to fly bomber missions with United States Eighth Air Force over Germany. Post died over Oldenburg, Germany.

Post was the son of a well-to-do New York lawyer; his family summered in a mansion called Strandhome on Long Island's Great South Bay. Post attended prep schools until he made it to Harvard and graduated there in 1932 with plans to become a journalist. During summer vacations from school Post spent time working at various publications including the Putnam Patriot and the New York World.

Upon graduation from Harvard Post took a position with the Boston American, and in 1933 he applied for a job with Arthur Krock, the head of the New York Times Washington bureau, as a junior correspondent. Krock, after telling Post to do it the hard way and work his way up, offered him a position as an office boy running messages for the phone operator. He took it. Post, however, briefly left Washington for New York City, where he worked on Fiorello H. La Guardia's mayoral re-election campaign and, simultaneously, his brother Langdon Ward Post's bid for borough president. After his brother lost, Post returned to Washington.

Post was in the Times Washington bureau from 1934 to 1938, working as a White House correspondent in 1936 and 1937. In 1935 he married Margaret "Margot" Lapsley in Brooklyn, Connecticut. After honeymooning in the West Indies, Post and his new wife settled in Washington while he worked at the Times. While in Washington, Post built a friendship with then President Franklin Roosevelt.

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