Charles ferguson inside job

Charles Ferguson was born in New Orleans in 1937 and is a graduate of Fortier High School and received undergraduate and law degrees from Tulane University. He has been involved in journalism nearly his entire life from working as a copy boy at the New Orleans Item, where his father worked, to becoming a reporter in 1961 for the States-Item. After a year as a Neimann Fellow at Harvard University in 1966, he returned to New Orleans to become an Associate Editor with the States-Item in 1967. Ferguson became editor of the Times-Picayune when that paper merged with the States-Item in 1980 and remained in that post until 1900.

This interview focuses primarily on the years between 1969 and the mid 1980s and parallels Charles Ferguson’s time as an editor at the New Orleans States-Item through the 1980 merger of the States-Item and Times-Picayune, when Ferguson became Editor-in-Chief of the combined papers. Topics of particular interest include the 1969 mayoral election of Maurice “Moon” Landrieu and the role that an independent States-Item played in promoting political a

•