Wesley Pruden
James Wesley Pruden Jr., known as Wesley Pruden (December 18, 1935 – July 17, 2019) was an American journalist and author. He was the editor-in-chief of The Washington Times from 1992 until his retirement in 2008. Early life Pruden was born in 1935 in Little Rock, Arkansas, his family having lived in the state for several generations. His father, James Wesley Pruden, Sr. (1908-1979), was a Southern Baptist minister, the pastor of the Grace Baptist Church, and a radio evangelist. Some of his sermon titles are "Why I Became a Baptist After Preaching for the Nazarenes for Ten Years", "Why Every Baptist Should Get Drunk Once", and "Who's in Hell". The senior Pruden was also the president of the Little Rock chapter of the White Citizens' Council, a segregationist group that battled integration throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Newspaper career Pruden's first job in the newspaper business was in 1951 when, as a tenth grade student at Little Rock Central High School, he worked nights as a copyboy at the since defunct Arkansas Gazette, where he later became a sportswriter and an assistant state editor. After high school, he attended a two-year college, Little Rock Junior College, now incorporated into