Edward J. Meeman's biography
The year was 1907, and a 17-year-old boy, just out of high school, went looking for a job at the Evansville Press in Indiana. The editor gave Edward J. Meeman a job, and later said the reason was because the young man ran up the steps three at a time.
Eventually, Meeman became managing editor of the paper—and that was just the beginning. In 1921, Meeman was chosen by Robert Scripps to start a new paper in Knoxville, Tenn. Within five years, the Knoxville News had grown so rapidly it bought and merged with the 40-year-old Knoxville Sentinel, becoming the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Five years later, Meeman became editor of another Scripps-Howard newspaper, the Memphis Press-Scimitar.
Meeman was a conservationist and an outdoorsman who strived to preserve natural resources. He crusaded for the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and was instrumental in the struggle to bring the Tennessee Valley Authority power to Memphis in the early 1930s.
In 1949, Meeman established the Edward J. Meeman Foundation to insure his money would work for what he felt was important long after he was gone. Included in his objectives were good journalism and promoting the conservation of natural resources. From this foundation arose the establishment of the Meeman Archives, now housed at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.
Meeman gave up his duties as editor of the Press-Scimitar in 1962, becoming editor emeritus, as well as his Scripps-Howard position as conservation editor. In 1966, Meeman died of a heart attack at the age of 77. But his legacy will live on through his foundation and the archive that MSU hopes will become an invaluable environmental journalism resource to students and journalists around the world.
