Jim Lehrer

About Jim

• His dream growing up was to become a professional baseball player, but he was told in high school that he wasn’t good enough to play professionally.
• Had always been a good writer, so he began writing about sports for the school paper—by the time he graduated, he was the co-editor.
• His family didn’t have enough money to send him to a four-year state school or university, so they moved to Victoria, TX, where he attended the local community college, Victoria College.
• After graduating from Victoria College, he applied to 37 universities—got accepted into the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri.
• In 1956, was drafted into the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant during the Korean War—credits this experience with helping him feel a connection to world.
• He has worked as a reporter and correspondent for The Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Times-Herald, and NPACT, but his big break came in 1975 when he reported on the Watergate scandal for PBS.
• He is best known as being the anchor of PBS NewsHour—a position he held for over 30 years—and for being a prolific writer of several novels, plays, screenplays, and memoirs.
• Admits he is one of the rare people who found his passion early in life and did exactly what he set out to do.