Roger Tatarian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
H. Roger Tatarian (1917–1995) was vice-president and editor-in-chief of United Press International, a worldwide news-reporting service that supplied stories to thousands of newspapers, magazines, and broadcast outlets.
Tatarian's family came to the United States from Bitlis, Turkey. The son of a shoemaker, he grew up in Fresno, California amid the same Armenian-American community that produced Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright William Saroyan. At Longfellow Junior High School, Tatarian's English teacher asked him to write for the school paper, the Longfellow Poet. He became sports editor and set his sights on a career in journalism.
With UPI
Tatarian graduated from Fresno State College in 1938 with a degree in political science. He went to work for UPI that same year and became a war correspondent during World War II. His career as a news reporter and editor took him to farflung outposts. Over 34 years with UPI, he worked his way up through the organization, becoming general news manager for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; bureau chief in both London and Rome; and news editor in Washington, D.C. (During his residency in Rome he became fluent in Italian.) Tatarian eventually became the top editor of the news service, which at the time was a rival to the Associated Press.
