I.F. Stone

1921

At the young age of 14, I.F. Stone starts his first newspaper, The Progress, writing about topics such as a free India and support for Woodrow Wilson’s peace plan.

1923

J. David Stern, publisher of the Camden (N.J.) Courier-Post, asks Stone to be a correspondent in Haddonfield, where his family lived.

1924

Graduating from high school at age 16, Stone becomes active in the campaign of third-party candidate Robert La Follette while continuing to work as a reporter. He enters the University of Pennsylvania, studying philosophy. Stone drops out after his junior year.

1927

Looking for work, Stone lands a job editing articles at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

1928

In his last direct involvement in a political campaign, Stone volunteers to be a publicist for the presidential campaign of socialist Norman Thomas. Later that year he returns to work for Stern at the Courier-Post.

1929

When Stern acquires the Philadelphia Record, he transfers Stone to the Record’s staff.

1931

With most newspapers in financial trouble, Stern fires many of the Record’s upper ranks and Stone becomes the youngest lead editorial writer on a major daily newspaper.

1933

Stone moves his family to New York to write editorials for the New York Post, which Stern buys. Stone also contributes articles to The Nation and Modern Monthly.

1937

Educating himself in constitutional law and following all of the New Deal legislation as it passes through the courts, Stone writes his first book, “The Court Disposes.”

1938

Isador Feinstein legally changes his name to I.F. Stone.

1939

In a dispute with Stern and the managing editor of the Post, Stone is demoted from the editorial staff to the news department as a special writer. He files suit through the Newspaper Guild alleging unfair practices, and in arbitration, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Francis Biddle rules against Stone. He resigns from the newspaper.

1940

Stone accepts an offer to work full time at The Nation as an associate editor. Later that year, he moves to Washington with his family and becomes the Washington correspondent.

1941

Investigating the industrial defense program and the Office of Production Management, Stone looks at the loopholes of the defense industry and offers solutions in his second book, “Business as Usual: The First Year of Defense.”

1943

In a series for The Nation titled “Washington Gestapo,” Stone uses an anonymous source to reveal that J. Edgar Hoover is spying on government workers. The FBI had been keeping a file on Stone since 1936 because of Stone’s editorial comments on the bureau.

1946

Stone is fired as Washington correspondent at The Nation after he fails to tell his editor, Freda Kirchwey, that he is illegally traveling to Palestine with the underground Jewish group Haganah to do a story for PM . These stories are later compiled and expanded into his third book, “Underground to Palestine.”

1947

When “Meet the Press” begins airing on the radio, Stone becomes an occasional guest commentator. As the program moves to television, Stone continues his appearances and assumes the role as the show’s “hot radical.”

1949

When PM folds, Stone writes briefly for the New York Star and then for the Daily Compass.

1952

Writing “The Hidden History of the Korean War: 1950-1951” in the midst of the war, Stone investigates its origins and questions the official explanations for why America went to war.

1953

After the Daily Compass collapses, Stone starts his own paper, I.F. Stone’s Weekly. He conducts all of the investigating, writing, printing and distribution with the assistance of his wife, Esther.

1957

Contradicting the official line, Stone reports that the Atomic Energy Commission’s first underground atomic test was detected up to 2,600 miles away instead of the mere 200 miles away as the United States government had claimed. His reporting dispels the government argument that the test ban allows the Soviet Union to cheat without fear of discovery.

1963

Stone’s defense of the Warren Commission report , which rejected a conspiracy in the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, angers many of his readers.

1964

In galvanizing public support for the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson uses the orchestrated Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify the escalation, passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress just three days later. Stone is the first reporter to question the credibility of the government’s account, and he criticizes of the mainstream press for its omissions, lack of curiosity and susceptibility to official propaganda in reporting on the event.

1967

Stone suffers a mild heart attack.

1971

Former Department of Defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg confides in Stone that he was about to start leaking the secret history of the Vietnam War, known as the Pentagon Papers.

In “The Killings at Kent State: How Murder Went Unpunished,” Stone writes about the shootings of four war protesters in 1970 by the Ohio National Guard.

Suffering from severe angina and bad eyesight, Stone announces that he is shutting down his four-page, 19-year-old newsletter. I.F. Stone’s Weekly had a paid annual circulation of 70,000.

1972

Stone does his main writing in The New York Review of Books.

1975

Although Stone dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania, the university awards him an honorary degree, making him an official member of the class of 1928.

1978

Decades after Stone’s underground journey around the tumultuous areas in Europe and into Haifa after World War II, he updates “Underground to Palestine.”

1988

In the decade before his death, Stone studies and masters Greek at American University in order to read untranslated works. He uses the material in his final book, “The Trial of Socrates.”

1989

I.F. “Izzy” Stone dies of a heart attack in Boston on June 18, 1989.