Rowse began his journalism career at the age of 10 in Lexington, Mass., serving as a reporter, editor and publisher of his own weekly newspaper, Naborhood News from 1930-1934. He continued writing for newspapers throughout high school and college, interrupting his senior year to enlist in World War II from 1942-45. His only brother died at 19, during the last days of the war.
After the war, Rowse obtained an MBA from Harvard and from 1949-52 was editor and publisher of The Beacon, a weekly newspaper serving Maynard, Mass., and nearby towns. During the 1950s, he worked at The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald Traveler.
His interest in media analysis took shape in 1957, when he wrote his first book, “Slanted News,” a pioneering case study of how 32 major American daily papers handled the Nixon-Stevenson fund stories of the 1952 presidential campaign. In 1960, Rowse began working at The Washington Post as an assistant city editor.
In 1965, he was named executive director of President Lyndon Johnson's Committee on Consumer Interests. Rowse helped organize a 1966 meeting that eventually led to the creation of the Consumer Assembly and the Consumer Federation of America. It spurred passage of landmark consumer legislation in Congress, including the Truth-in-Packaging Act, the Truth-in-Lending Act and the Highway Traffic Safety Act.
Rowse established Consumer News Inc., in 1967 and for years produced a twice-weekly syndicated column, a weekly newsletter and a syndicated national consumer action line column that helped resolve buyer-seller disputes.
Rowse joined U.S. News & World Report in 1982 as an associate editor of Washington Report and later became a freelance writer and author of more books, including “Drive-By Journalism: The Assault on Your Need to Know,” 2000; and “Amglish, in Like, Ten Easy Lessons: A Celebration of the New World Lingo,” 2011. He also won several awards from Project Censor for magazine articles on topics not well-covered by the major media.
"His were the views of someone informed by...McCarthyism, Kennedy, LBJ, the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, Nixon and Watergate,” Rowse Award recipient and former Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi wrote in an email. “He was a better textbook than any I could remember reading. He was an advocate for the kind of journalism I have always believed in—rigorous, tough, fair, compassionate and truthful—for much of his long life.”
Rowse loved sailing and tennis, playing in many Club tennis tournaments into his 90s. He won the USTA Middle Atlantic division singles championship for 90-year-olds in 2012 and gained a national ranking (18) in a USTA tournament in North Carolina. He also played jazz piano most of his life, occasionally composing humorous songs for special occasions.
Contributions in Rowse's name may be made to (1) the nonprofit National Press Club Journalism Institute which will direct funds to benefit the "Arthur E. Rowse Award for Excellence in Examining the News Media"; or (2) to Philips Exeter Academy to benefit the Robert M. Rowse, Class of 1944, Memorial Scholarship Fund.
