Name George Thiem Role Journalist | Books The Hodge Scandal | |
Awards Pulitzer Prize for Public Service | ||
Ezra George Thiem (July 8, 1897 – July 8, 1987) was an American journalist, an investigative reporter who won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Public Service twice, and then a politician who served in the Illinois state legislature.
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Journalism career
Thiem was born in Evanston, Illinois. He began in journalism in the 1920s, as editor of the Prairie Farmer; he also served as information officer of the Illinois Agricultural Association.
In 1942, he joined the Chicago Daily News. In 1950, his work for the News, in collaboration with Roy J. Harris of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, earned those papers a joint Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for "exposing the presence of 37 Illinois newspapermen on an Illinois State payroll". His coverage of the "Hodge scandal" in 1956 won the Public Service Pulitzer for the Daily News alone, citing "determined and courageous public service in exposing a $2,500,000 fraud centering in the office of the State Auditor of Illinois, resulting in the indictment and conviction of the State Auditor and others. This led to the reorganization of State procedures to prevent a recurrence of the fraud." The Illinois official Orville Hodge had been a personal friend of Thiem, until Thiem's work demonstrated that Hodge was embezzling from the state. In 1962, Thiem's book The Hodge Scandal: a Pattern of American Political Corruption was published by St Martin's Press.
After journalism
In 1962, Thiem retired from journalism and entered politics. He was elected to the Illinois General Assembly as a Republican and served from 1964 to 1966.
Thiem died in a nursing home in his native city on his 90th birthday.