Brown, Ashmun Norris, 1872-1948.

Journalist.

Ashmun Norris Brown was born in 1872 to a newspaper family. His father, Beriah Brown, was a printer/journalist from Wisconsin. He had earned a reputation as a crusading newspaper editor since launching the Puget Sound Dispatch in December 1871. At the time, the Dispatch was the only paper published daily in Seattle, WA. Beriah Brown had at least three sons: Beriah, Jr., James H. ,and Ashmun N. All were active journalists and editors in Olympia and Seattle, WA. Ashmun Brown began his career in journalism in 1890 as a reporter in Seattle. For the next fifteen years he held reporting and editorial positions with newspapers in Seattle, Tacoma, San Francisco, Victoria, Spokane, Butte and Anaconda. From 1905 to 1907 he was Private Secretary to Governor Albert Mead of Washington, after which he relocated at Washington, D.C., beginning his career as a capitol reporter. He left reporting in 1910 and 1911 to serve as Private Secretary to Secretary of Interior Richard Ballinger and, after a short interlude as a periodical editor, returned to reporting the news. From 1914 until his retirement in the early 1940's, Brown was the Washington Bureau correspondent successively for several newspapers. During this time he wrote about 25,000 stories, features and columns. His thoroughness of reporting earned him a citation from the Pulitzer Prize Committee in 1936.