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Created page with "{{Infobox person |name=Jack Dalton Wardlaw (Louisiana investigative journalist) | nationality=American | birth_date=March 28, 1937 | birth_place=McComb, Pik..."
{{Infobox person
|name=Jack Dalton Wardlaw
(Louisiana investigative journalist)
| nationality=[[United States|American]]
| birth_date=March 28, 1937
| birth_place=McComb, Pike County<br>[[Mississippi]], USA
| death_date =January 4, 2012 (aged 74)
| death_place =[[Baton Rouge]], [[Louisiana]]
| spouse =(1) Ruby Wardlaw<br><ref name=book/>
(2) Mary Billing Wardlaw
| children=Terry D. Wardlaw<br>
Ruth Polk Bumgardner<br>
Edward B. Polk<br>
Jackie Wardlaw Priest
| alma_mater=Medill School of Journalism at<br>
[[Northwestern University]]}}
'''Jack Dalton Wardlaw''' (March 28, 1937 – January 4, 2012), was an [[United States|American]] [[journalist]] who was a political writer and head of the capital bureau in [[Baton Rouge]], [[Louisiana]], for ''The New Orleans Times-Picayune.''
==Career==
Wardlaw was born in McComb in Pike County in southwestern [[Mississippi]]. He graduated with bachelor's and master's degrees<ref name=book/> from the Medill School of Journalism at [[Northwestern University]] in Evanston, [[Illinois]]. He was briefly the municipal government reporter at ''The Meridian Star'' in Meridian in eastern Mississippi and a police reporter for the City News Bureau in [[Chicago]]. In March 1961, he joined the staff in [[New Orleans]] of the since defunct afternoon daily, ''The States-Item," for which he was over time a copy editor, assistant city editor, and political and judicial reporter. Wardlaw reported on the construction of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and the sensational trial of Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman who was [[Acquittal|acquitted]] in what Orleans Parish District Attorney Jim Garrison had alleged to have been a [[conspiracy]] behind the assassination of [[John F. Kennedy]]. Wardlaw and fellow journalist Rosemary James, a native of [[South Carolina]], co-authored ''Plot or Politics,'' a 1967 book which takes issue with the Garrison investigation.<ref name=bio/><ref name="The Tuscaloosa News; September 24, 1967">{{cite web|author=Larry O'Hara|date=September 24, 1967 |title=The Tuscaloosa News |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19670923&id=YQ4fAAAAIBAJ&sjid=I5sEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7300,4169949&hl=en |publisher=The Tuscaloosa News|page=30 |access-date=August 17, 2015}}</ref> Wardlaw won an [[Associated Press]] award for his story on the death of David W. Ferrie, one of the multiple mysterious figures of the Garrison investigation.<ref name=book>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lGnINlzlpsIC&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=Jack+D.+Wardlaw&source=bl&ots=a34FHztWCW&sig=vcG-4ub2EfPG3GNnITWTfJyO-JI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aCGeUsGIKuqg2QXY9IHYAQ&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Jack%20D.%20Wardlaw&f=false|author=Rosemary James and Jack Wardlaw|title=Plot or Politics: The Garrison Case & Its Cast, p. 84 and copyright page|publisher=Pelican Publishing Company, 1967|accessdate=December 3, 2013}}</ref>
Wardlaw was named ''States-Item'' capital bureau chief in 1979. In 1980, he assumed the same position for ''The Times-Picayune,'' a position which he held for the next twenty-two years.<ref name=bio>{{cite web|url=http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/01/longtime_times-picayune_politi.html|title=Ed Anderson, "Former Times-Picayune political reporter, capital bureau chief Jack Wardlaw dies," January 6, 2012|publisher=''The New Orleans Times-Picayune''|accessdate=December 3, 2013}}</ref>
Wardlaw investigated all four terms of [[Governor]] [[Edwin Edwards]]. In the third nonconsecutive term in 1984 Edwards and his brother, Marion Edwards, were indicted on federal charges dealing with the licensure of hospitals and nursing homes. The Edwards brothers were acquitted in a second trial after a hung jury develped in the first case.<ref name=whlynch/> Though Edwards had often cited "that lyin' Jack Wardlaw" for Wardlaw's coverage and critical columns, upon Wardlaw's death, Edwards said, "He was a gentleman. As a journalist, he was very effective and very fair. He called things like he saw them."<ref name=bio/> Wardlaw also covered the 1973 Louisiana Constitutional Convention and the other governors of the era, [[Republican Party|Republican]]s [[David C. Treen]], [[Buddy Roemer]], and [[Mike Foster|Murphy James "Mike" Foster, Jr.]]<ref name=bio/>
Wardlaw's colleagues included well-known state journalists Iris Kelso and William Hawthorn Lynch, who in 1988 was appointed by Governor Roemer as the first ever state inspector general.<ref name=whlynch>''New Orleans Times-Picayune,'' February 16, 2004.</ref>
==Death and legacy==
Wardlaw died at his home in Baton Rouge at the age of seventy-four; he was survived by his second wife and four children. He had been retired for nearly a decade.
Walter James "Jim" Amoss (born 1947), the editor of ''The Times-Picayune'' in 2012, described Wardlaw as having "set the standard for political reporting in Louisiana. In our smoke-filled rooms, he had perfect journalistic vision. [Our] readers were the beneficiaries of his cogent analysis and clear writing. So were the many newspeople he mentored."<ref name=bio/>
In 2002, Wardlaw received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the New Orleans Press Club. He was a former president of the Capital Correspondents Association, which stages the annual Gridiron Show in Baton Rouge, of which he was a cast member. Wardlaw was heavily involved in activities at the University [[Presbyterian]] Church in Baton Rouge, of which he was the "clerk of session."<ref name=bio/> In 2004, he was inducted into the [[Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame]] in Winnfield,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cityofwinnfield.com/visitor-info/Old-LA-Depot-LA-Political-Museum|title=Hall of Fame inductees|publisher=cityofwinnfield.com|accessdate=November 25, 2013}}</ref> a year before Bill Lynch received the honor posthumously.
A memorial service was held on January 13, 2012, at the University Presbyterian Church.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/theadvocate/obituary.aspx?n=Jack-Wardlaw&pid=155425264|title=Jack Dalton Wardlaw|publisher=''The Baton Rouge Advocate''|accessdate=December 3, 2013}}</ref>
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wardlaw, Jack}}
[[Category:Louisiana People]]
[[Category:Mississippi]]
[[Category:Journalists]]
[[Category:American Authors]]
[[Category:Presbyterians]]
[[Category:Inductees of the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame]]
|name=Jack Dalton Wardlaw
(Louisiana investigative journalist)
| nationality=[[United States|American]]
| birth_date=March 28, 1937
| birth_place=McComb, Pike County<br>[[Mississippi]], USA
| death_date =January 4, 2012 (aged 74)
| death_place =[[Baton Rouge]], [[Louisiana]]
| spouse =(1) Ruby Wardlaw<br><ref name=book/>
(2) Mary Billing Wardlaw
| children=Terry D. Wardlaw<br>
Ruth Polk Bumgardner<br>
Edward B. Polk<br>
Jackie Wardlaw Priest
| alma_mater=Medill School of Journalism at<br>
[[Northwestern University]]}}
'''Jack Dalton Wardlaw''' (March 28, 1937 – January 4, 2012), was an [[United States|American]] [[journalist]] who was a political writer and head of the capital bureau in [[Baton Rouge]], [[Louisiana]], for ''The New Orleans Times-Picayune.''
==Career==
Wardlaw was born in McComb in Pike County in southwestern [[Mississippi]]. He graduated with bachelor's and master's degrees<ref name=book/> from the Medill School of Journalism at [[Northwestern University]] in Evanston, [[Illinois]]. He was briefly the municipal government reporter at ''The Meridian Star'' in Meridian in eastern Mississippi and a police reporter for the City News Bureau in [[Chicago]]. In March 1961, he joined the staff in [[New Orleans]] of the since defunct afternoon daily, ''The States-Item," for which he was over time a copy editor, assistant city editor, and political and judicial reporter. Wardlaw reported on the construction of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and the sensational trial of Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman who was [[Acquittal|acquitted]] in what Orleans Parish District Attorney Jim Garrison had alleged to have been a [[conspiracy]] behind the assassination of [[John F. Kennedy]]. Wardlaw and fellow journalist Rosemary James, a native of [[South Carolina]], co-authored ''Plot or Politics,'' a 1967 book which takes issue with the Garrison investigation.<ref name=bio/><ref name="The Tuscaloosa News; September 24, 1967">{{cite web|author=Larry O'Hara|date=September 24, 1967 |title=The Tuscaloosa News |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19670923&id=YQ4fAAAAIBAJ&sjid=I5sEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7300,4169949&hl=en |publisher=The Tuscaloosa News|page=30 |access-date=August 17, 2015}}</ref> Wardlaw won an [[Associated Press]] award for his story on the death of David W. Ferrie, one of the multiple mysterious figures of the Garrison investigation.<ref name=book>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lGnINlzlpsIC&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=Jack+D.+Wardlaw&source=bl&ots=a34FHztWCW&sig=vcG-4ub2EfPG3GNnITWTfJyO-JI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aCGeUsGIKuqg2QXY9IHYAQ&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Jack%20D.%20Wardlaw&f=false|author=Rosemary James and Jack Wardlaw|title=Plot or Politics: The Garrison Case & Its Cast, p. 84 and copyright page|publisher=Pelican Publishing Company, 1967|accessdate=December 3, 2013}}</ref>
Wardlaw was named ''States-Item'' capital bureau chief in 1979. In 1980, he assumed the same position for ''The Times-Picayune,'' a position which he held for the next twenty-two years.<ref name=bio>{{cite web|url=http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/01/longtime_times-picayune_politi.html|title=Ed Anderson, "Former Times-Picayune political reporter, capital bureau chief Jack Wardlaw dies," January 6, 2012|publisher=''The New Orleans Times-Picayune''|accessdate=December 3, 2013}}</ref>
Wardlaw investigated all four terms of [[Governor]] [[Edwin Edwards]]. In the third nonconsecutive term in 1984 Edwards and his brother, Marion Edwards, were indicted on federal charges dealing with the licensure of hospitals and nursing homes. The Edwards brothers were acquitted in a second trial after a hung jury develped in the first case.<ref name=whlynch/> Though Edwards had often cited "that lyin' Jack Wardlaw" for Wardlaw's coverage and critical columns, upon Wardlaw's death, Edwards said, "He was a gentleman. As a journalist, he was very effective and very fair. He called things like he saw them."<ref name=bio/> Wardlaw also covered the 1973 Louisiana Constitutional Convention and the other governors of the era, [[Republican Party|Republican]]s [[David C. Treen]], [[Buddy Roemer]], and [[Mike Foster|Murphy James "Mike" Foster, Jr.]]<ref name=bio/>
Wardlaw's colleagues included well-known state journalists Iris Kelso and William Hawthorn Lynch, who in 1988 was appointed by Governor Roemer as the first ever state inspector general.<ref name=whlynch>''New Orleans Times-Picayune,'' February 16, 2004.</ref>
==Death and legacy==
Wardlaw died at his home in Baton Rouge at the age of seventy-four; he was survived by his second wife and four children. He had been retired for nearly a decade.
Walter James "Jim" Amoss (born 1947), the editor of ''The Times-Picayune'' in 2012, described Wardlaw as having "set the standard for political reporting in Louisiana. In our smoke-filled rooms, he had perfect journalistic vision. [Our] readers were the beneficiaries of his cogent analysis and clear writing. So were the many newspeople he mentored."<ref name=bio/>
In 2002, Wardlaw received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the New Orleans Press Club. He was a former president of the Capital Correspondents Association, which stages the annual Gridiron Show in Baton Rouge, of which he was a cast member. Wardlaw was heavily involved in activities at the University [[Presbyterian]] Church in Baton Rouge, of which he was the "clerk of session."<ref name=bio/> In 2004, he was inducted into the [[Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame]] in Winnfield,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cityofwinnfield.com/visitor-info/Old-LA-Depot-LA-Political-Museum|title=Hall of Fame inductees|publisher=cityofwinnfield.com|accessdate=November 25, 2013}}</ref> a year before Bill Lynch received the honor posthumously.
A memorial service was held on January 13, 2012, at the University Presbyterian Church.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/theadvocate/obituary.aspx?n=Jack-Wardlaw&pid=155425264|title=Jack Dalton Wardlaw|publisher=''The Baton Rouge Advocate''|accessdate=December 3, 2013}}</ref>
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wardlaw, Jack}}
[[Category:Louisiana People]]
[[Category:Mississippi]]
[[Category:Journalists]]
[[Category:American Authors]]
[[Category:Presbyterians]]
[[Category:Inductees of the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame]]