Olsen, Jack

Internationally known journalist Jack Olsen was born in Indianapolis in 1925. His journalistic career began when he was hired as a reporter for the San Diego Journal. Jack Olsen made the switch from newpaper to magazine journalism in 1956. He was a correspondent at Time Magazine and senior editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has been published in Vanity Fair, People, Paris Match, Readers Digest, Playboy, Life, Fortune, the New York Times Book Review and others. His magazine journalism appears in thirteen anthologies and has won him numerous awards. His career moved from magazine article writing to book writing in the lates 1960s. He is an award-winning author of thirty-one books published around the world and has been said to set the standard for the crime writing genre. He died July 16, 2002 in his home on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, Washington.

From the description of Jack Olsen papers, 1950-1968. (University of Oregon Libraries). WorldCat record id: 50915412

Internationally known journalist Jack Olsen was born in Indianapolis in 1925. As a young boy, his family moved to Upper Darby, Philadelphia where his father managed semiprofessional baseball. Olsen discovered his passion for writing while he was a student of engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Once out of college, Olsen served in OSS during WWII before moving westward to California in the late 1940s to embark on a lifelong path of writing for a living.

Jack Olsen's journalist career began when he was hired as a reporter for the San Diego Journal . His early work writing for the San Diego Journal and then Washington D.C. Daily News, New Orleans Item, and Chicago Sun Times earned him a reputation for being both tough and trustworthy. Olsen's newspaper work revealed an interest and an ability to investigate just about everything, but even his early work reveals his fascination with the intriguing and complex stories of true crime.

Jack Olsen made the switch from newspaper to magazine journalism in 1956. He was hired as a correspondent at the Chicago bureau of Time Magazine in 1956 and was made chief correspondent there one year later. Then in 1959 he transferred to Time's New York City office. The following year he moved again, taking a position at Sports Illustrated as a writer and associate editor. Soon after, Olsen was appointed a Sport's Illustrated senior editor.

At Sports Illustrated, Jack Olsen's writing ranged from bridge to boxing to baseball, always seeking out the part of each story that was less about the technical specifics of each particular sport and more about finding the emotional substance that could connect his subject personally to his audience. In addition to the above periodicals, Olsen's work has been published in Vanity Fair, People, Paris Match, Readers Digest, Playboy, Life, Fortune, The New York Times Book Review and others. His magazine journalism appears in thirteen anthologies and has won him numerous awards.

Jack Olsen's career moved from magazine article writing to book writing in the late 1960s. Since he made this switch, he has developed a career as an award-winning author of thirty-one books published around the world. Olsen has been said to set the standard for the crime writing genre. Many of Olsen's books confront difficult subjects such as rape and murder; subjects that tend to get sensationalized. Yet Jack Olsen's commitment to substantive in-depth investigative journalism has enabled him to avoid sensationalism and arrive at carefully documented pieces used frequently in University criminology courses. Even though most of his career has been devoted to figuring out the incomprehensible world of crime, his favorite of the books he has published is The Climb Up to Hell . This book chronicles the devastating story of two teams of two Germans and two Italians who attempted to climb the formidable north wall of the Eiger Mountain.

From the guide to the Jack Olsen papers, 1950-1968, (Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries)