Joseph Wright Alsop V was an American journalist and syndicated newspaper columnist from the 1930s through the 1970s. Alsop was born in Avon, Connecticut, to the socially prominent family of Joseph Wright Alsop IV and his wife Corinne Douglas Robinson . His mother was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt and was also related to President James Monroe. Both his parents were active in Republican politics. His father sought the governorship of Connecticut several times, his mother founded the Connecticut League of Republican Women in 1917, and both served in the Connecticut General Assembly. Alsop... graduated from the Groton School in 1928, and from Harvard University in 1932. After college, Alsop became a reporter, then an unusual career for someone with an Ivy League diploma. He began his career with the New York Herald Tribune and in a short time he established a substantial reputation as a journalist, particularly by his comprehensive reportage of the Bruno Hauptmann trial in 1934. Because of his family ties to the Roosevelts, Alsop soon became well-connected in Franklin Roosevelt's Washington.
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