William Dickinson

Distinguished Professor
wdicki2@lsu.edu 

Biography

William B. Dickinson became an educator following a long career as writer and editor in Washington, D.C. After graduating from the University of Kansas in 1953 with a B.A. in English, he spent two years as a special agent in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. He joined United Press (International) in 1955 and worked in the Kansas City, Santa Fe, N.M., and Washington, D.C., bureaus. In the 1960s, he was staff writer and later editor of Editorial Research Reports, a service providing nonpartisan background research and features to newspaper editorial pages. In 1971 he was named editor and vice president of Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Two years later, he was hired as the first editorial director/general manager of The Washington Post Writers Group and held the position for the next 18 years. Eight members of the Group received Pulitzer Prizes. In 1991, he began lecturing at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. He received a Knight International Press Fellowship to teach and advise newspapers in Romania and Slovakia in the fall of 1998. He assumed the LSU Manship chair in the fall of 1999 and taught news writing and ethics courses until 2003, when he retired and was named Distinguished Professor. He also is a media studies consultant to the Biocentric Institute at Airlie, Va., and writes essays on population-related issues for this foundation.  

Selected Publications

The Biocentric Imperative: How Population, Environment & Migration Shape Our Future, Essays by William B. Dickinson and Others. Airlie, VA and Petoskey, MI: The Biocentric Institute and The Social Contract Press, 1999.