Fred R. Bleakley
AUTHOR

Fred R. Bleakley

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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.
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