William B. Dickinson Papers, 1904-1982

William B. Dickinson was born May 18, 1908 in Kansas City, Missouri to William and Alice Dickinson. He attended the Independence, Missouri Public Schools and the Kansas City, Missouri Junior College. He graduated from the U. of Kansas in the Spring of 1929, and he started working for the Kansas City Star that afternoon.

After two years working for the Star, Dickinson got a job with the United Press, (which became United Press International in 1973). While with UP he was stationed in Kansas City, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, and New York. He married his first wife, Aileen Robinson, in 1930, and she died suddenly in 1940. From 1939 to 1940 he was on a “sabbatical” as a Neiman Fellow at Harvard. During World War II, he was stationed in London, the Philippines, and the Southwest Pacific. He was assigned to General McArthur, so he covered the landings at the Admiralty Islands and at Leyte on the Philippines. He finally covered the surrender of the Japanese government on the battleship Missouri. In 1943, he met an Australian reporter named Suzanne Fraser, and she became his second wife in 1944 until they divorced in 1948. After the war he worked on UP’s main news desk in New York until he became the UP foreign news editor. He married his third wife, Joan Younger, in 1949. The three marriages produced two children by Aileen and two by Joan. Another child was Joan’s by a previous marriage.

In 1948 Walter Lister of the Philadelphia Bulletin persuaded Dickinson to come to work for the Bulletin as his news editor. Dickinson worked on the news desk as Washington bureau chief, Associate City Editor, Assistant Managing Editor, and, finally, as Managing Editor. In 1969 Dickinson was able to serve as a foreign correspondent on a trip to the USSR, and during 1972 he was able to do the same thing while covering President Nixon in China. He retired in 1973 after five years as Executive Editor, but he continued writing and reporting until his death in 1978. During his retirement, he also served on the U. S. Privacy Protection Study Commission and the American Society of Newspaper Editors (Director). By 1982 the Philadelphia Bulletin had closed.

During his tenure with the Bulletin, Dickinson was instrumental in helping the paper earn two Pulitzer prizes. He also earned many awards and honors for stories ranging from his United Press coverage of the Philippines to his Bulletin articles on Philadelphia municipal affairs.