Fred R. Bleakley
fredbleak270@gmail.com
DOB — May 9, 1943
UPDATE – 09/2022 -- After retiring from a career in journalism, I recently
wrote about an Auschwitz escapee I had interviewed in 1995 for an article
in the Wall Street Journal. The book, “Auschwitz Protocols: Ceslav
Mordowicz and the Race to Save Hungary’s Jews,” was published this past
April by Post Hill Press and is being distributed by Simon & Schuster. An
interview with me on what the book is about and why I wrote it can be found
on History Unplugged Podcast. The date it was aired was Aug. 18. If anyone
knows of a literary agent with connections to Hollywood for an online video
series, please let me know. My email address is fredbleak270@gmail.com.
INSITUTIONAL INVESTOR : 1998 — Retirement Sept. 30, 2016.
Editorial Director — II Memberships
Managing Editor - Institutional Investor Magazine (International Edition)
WALL STREET JOURNAL: 1990— 1998
Senior Special Writer
Finance Editor
AMERICAN BANKER: 1989 - 1990
Editor in Chief
NEW YORK TIMES; 1982 —1989
Deputy Editor — Business Day section
ENTREPRENEUR: 1980— 1982
Attempted to start a new weekly magazine, "CAPITAL", about Wall Street and institutional investing, but unsuccessful at raising seed capital.
INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR: 1970— 1980
Editor/Founder — II Newsletter Division
Senior Editor — II Magazine
BUSINESS WEEK: 1966— 1970
Assistant Finance Editor — New York
WORCESTER (MASS.) TELEGRAM & GAZETTE: 1964— 1965
Reporter, nights while attending Holy Cross College
GREENSBURG (PA.) TRIBUNE REVIEW: Summer 1964
Reporter on Wall Street Journal Newspaper Fund internship
EDUCATION: 1961 —1966
University of Missouri Journalism School (M.A.)
Holy Cross College (B.A. — English)
-30-
*Article in 2011 (amended) about my career. It is from the U. of Missouri
School of Journalism website. *
Waitlisted by the Ivy League and nearly sidetracked by a college president
and an egregious spelling error did not halt Fred Bleakley’s ambition for a
successful career in journalism. Determination, perhaps, is the key to his
achievements. He has won prestigious awards, including the John Hancock
Award for Excellence in Business Writing. He has held editorial positions
at BusinessWeek, the Institutional Investor, The New York Times, The Wall
Street Journal and the American Banker, where he redesigned the entire
paper.
Bleakley was exposed to journalism at a young age and developed a passion
for reporting and writing. His father worked for the New York Herald
Tribune, a daily newspaper with a circulation of more than 400,000. On
Saturdays during his last two years of high school, Bleakley also worked at
“The Trib” as a clerk in the advertising department. This limited time at a
major publication only whetted his appetite for a future in journalism.
Aiming to hone his writing, Bleakley pursued a bachelor’s degree in English
from Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and practiced journalism throughout
his undergraduate years. He was news editor of the Crusader, the Holy Cross
campus newspaper, where he assigned stories and looked for the college
angle on local,
The President of Holy Cross, however, scolded Bleakley for spending too
much time on the paper and neglecting his studies. All too soon, Bleakley’s
ambitious goals for the Crusader were cut short. Bleakley obeyed the
President’s request,, but he didn’t leave journalism. He found a night
reporting job at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, a Scripps-Howard daily
for the city of Worcester and the surrounding area with an approximate
circulation of 200,000. He worked from 4 p.m. to midnight five nights a
week; he covered local politics and police nearly 20 miles outside of
Worcester for the Fitchburg, Mass., bureau.
The Telegram & Gazette was impressed by the quality of Bleakley’s work and
wanted to hire him. Just before graduating from Holy Cross in 1965, he was
offered a full-time position that started at $80 per week. Knowing his
fellow reporters with master’s degrees earned more than this amount,
Bleakley turned down the offer and applied for graduate programs at
Columbia University and the University of Missouri.
Columbia University was his first choice, but he was placed on the waitlist
and told he would be accepted the following year. Fortunately, he was
immediately accepted at the U. of Missouri School of Journalism.He found an
ally in Professor Tim Hubbard, who oversaw the business journalism program
.Before joining the school’s faculty, Hubbard worked at BusinessWeek. Ken
Kramer, editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek at the time, contacted Hubbard
seeking suitable candidates for an open position at the St. Louis
BusinessWeek bureau.
Hubbard made a sign that read, “Why not start at the top?” and posted it on
a bulletin board at the J-School. Bleakley was intrigued and immediately
spoke to Hubbard about this opportunity. After recommending Bleakley for
the BusinessWeek job, Hubbard required Bleakley to take the business
journalism course as preparation for the job.
For the final assignment, students reported on new businesses in the
Columbia area. Bleakley chose to write about the Xerox store, the first
copy center in Columbia.“Right after I turned in my assignment, I knew I
had made a huge mistake,” Bleakley explained. “I called Professor Hubbard
at his house and asked him to change the ‘Z’ in my version of ‘Xerox’ to an
‘X’.”
Fortunately, Hubbard didn’t pull his recommendation. But he had little
patience for careless spelling errors, as he clearly indicated a few weeks
later when Bleakley stopped by his office to say thanks before starting his
BusinessWeek job. “His parting words to me,” recalls Bleakley, “were…’Oh,
don’t screw up!'” Bleakley graduated with ab M.A. in 1966.
The pay at this national publication started at $135 per week. Earning a
master’s degree was paying off. “I doubt BusinessWeek hired straight out of
Columbia, but I made it in the back door by starting out in the St. Louis
news bureau.”
With no prior financial reporting experience, Bleakley jumped right in and
got off to a good start by beating the other national press in breaking the
news that the McDonnell Company was in secret negotiations to merge with
Douglas Aircraft, which would eventually become the first billion-dollar
merger. He was quickly promoted from St. Louis to the New York BusinessWeek
headquarters. After covering financial markets for BusinessWeek where he
wrote several cover stories, Bleakley joined the Institutional Investor
Magazine as a senior editor.“It was the hot new magazine at the time, and
the pay was a lot better,” Bleakley says.
While there, he won the John Hancock Award and also founded a newsletter
division. He left to try to start his own magazine, to be called “CAPITAL,”
which was unable to raise enough money during the recession of the early
1980s.“The 1980s and ’90s were great times to be a financial journalist
because everything was changing and changing fast,” Bleakley says.
After freelancing for The New York Times, he was asked to join the business
section full time. His stint there, where he rose to be deputy editor of
the section, included heading the paper’s extensive coverage of the 1987
stock market crash.
Then, the American Banker Newspaper, a daily, called to recruit him to
revamp the paper as its new editor. “It stirred my entrepreneurial
Instincts,” Bleakley says.mAfter a total makeover of all the sections and
adding staff, with readership and advertising gains, Bleakley moved on to
The Wall Street Journal as its finance editor. There, throughout the ’90s,
he headed a team of banking, real estate and insurance reporters and then
crisscrossed the country as a writer of grassroots economic stories.
Bleakley went back to the Institutional Investor in mid 1998 to become
Managing Editor of the international edition and later served as Editorial
Director of memberships, which are private forums for executives in asset
management. He retired in 2016.
Read less
