Trimble, Vance H.

Vance H. Trimble was a newspaper reporter and author. After working for many papers throughout Oklahoma and Texas, Trimble joined the Houston Press, part of the Scripps Howard chain, as a copy editor in 1939. Within six months he was promoted to city editor and in 1950, he was appointed managing editor of the Press. In 1955, he was transferred to the Scripps Howard Washington bureau as news editor. Here he undertook an investigation of nepotism and payroll abuses in Congress. His six-month series of stories triggered public indignation that prompted the Senate to open its payroll records for the first time in 34 years, and won for Trimble in 1960 a journalism "triple crown": the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, the Sigma Delta Chi award for distinguished Washington correspondence, and the Raymond Clapper Award for the year's best Washington reporting. In 1963, he was appointed editor of the Kentucky Post in Covington, Kentucky, from which position he retired in 1979.

Besides hi 1992 biography of E.W. Scripps The Astonishing Mr. Scripps: The Turbulent Life of America's Penny Press Lord, Trimble published several other biographies.

From the guide to the Vance H. Trimble papers on E. W. Scripps Biography, 1864-1988, (Ohio University)