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Gordon Bishop Biography Gordon Bishop is a national award-winning author, historian and syndicated columnist. He is the recipient of 8 Congressional Commendations, 12 National and 15 State Journalism Awards, including New Jersey's first "Journalist-of-the-Year" -- 1986/New Jersey Press Association. He is the unprecedented five-time consecutive winner of the Scripps-Howard Foundation's National Journalism Award, the unprecedented four-time winner of the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists (Sigma Delta Chi) Public Service Award, and author of thirteen books, including his current history of the "Gateway to America" in bookstores and on www.amazon.com. He has also been in Who's Who in America since 1976.
Bishop is also the recipient of the U.S. EPA's first annual media award; the National Recycling Award and the New Jersey State Recycling Award, and the National Land-Use Award and New Jersey State Planning Award.
Bishop attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at the ANTA Theater on West 52nd Street in 1956-57, where his roommate was Mark Goddard, who starred in the CBS TV series "Lost in Space" in the 1960s. He is a graduate of Rutgers University-College, Newark, Class of '67.
Bishop's newspaper career began in 1959 at The North Jersey Herald-News in Passaic-Bergen counties, as a reporter and columnist. He was the Herald's first theater and movie critic 1960-68. In 1963, his first play, "The Purple Canary," was produced at the Midway Theater at 42nd Street and Ninth Avenue, Manhattan. In 1965, Bishop won the New Jersey Press Association's "Best Column" award, followed by the "Best Reporting" in 1966.
In 1969, Bishop joined the editorial staff of The Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest newspaper, where he was a special writer and columnist from 1969-1996. He was the author of New Jersey's first official State book, "Gems of New Jersey," in 1985, and the first official book of the City of Newark, "Greater Newark -- A Microcosm of America," in 1989. He also hosted a weekly syndicated TV program, New Jersey Issues, from 1988 to 1996, winning several cable industry awards for best series and best programs.
He has written, produced and narrated a dozen documentaries for public television (PBS, NJN, CTN), including the definitive two-hour motion picture documentary on the City of Newark in 1980, "It's My Home," featuring Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson, Congressman Peter Rodino of Watergate fame, and U.S. Senator Bill Bradley.
Bishop has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize several times by Senator Bradley, Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader's Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), and the United States Justice Department/U.S. Attorney's Office, Newark, when he was a Pulitzer finalist in 1971 for an unprecedented case in which the federal government, for the first time, sued 45 municipal governments along the Jersey Shore for discharging raw sewage waste into coastal waters. That investigative series was a catalyst in the nation's first Clean Water Act in 1972.
Bishop, a native of Hackensack, lives in Eatontown with his wife, Jeanne, a retired third grade teacher. They have two daughters, and three grandchildren.
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