Ray Baker
Inducted 1986
magazine journalist and author
Ray Stannard Baker (1870-1946) was a journalist and biographer who won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for his biography of President Woodrow Wilson. Born in Lansing, Baker graduated from Michigan Agricultural College (now MSU) in 1889. He began his journalism career at the Chicago News Record and went on to become the associate editor ofMcClure’s Magazine from 1899 to 1905 and ofAmerican Magazine from 1906 to 1915. Baker was a leading “muckraking” journalist along with Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and William Allen White. He became a close associate of President Wilson and in 1925 became his official biographer. In addition to his eight-volume biography of Wilson, Baker wrote nearly five hundred articles, stories, essays and books during his distinguished career.