Background
Martin Zama Agronsky was born on January 12, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Isador Nathan and Marcia (Dvorin) Agronsky.
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States
Agronsky received a Bachelor of Science from Rutgers University in 1936, and a Master of Arts in 1949.
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States
Agronsky received a Bachelor of Science from Rutgers University in 1936, and a Master of Arts in 1949.
Martin Zama Agronsky was born on January 12, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Isador Nathan and Marcia (Dvorin) Agronsky.
Agronsky received a Bachelor of Science from Rutgers University in 1936, and a Master of Arts in 1949.
Agronsky began his career as a print reporter after graduating from Rutgers University in 1936. He was a staff writer at the Palestine Post in Palestine (now Israel) for a year before becoming a freelancer. In 1940, he was hired by NBC to cover Europe, and he scoured the continent for stories during World War II. He resumed to the United States in 1943 for a job with ABC, spending his time covering Washington, D.C. From 1957 to 1964, he was a correspondent at NBC Radio and television. From 1964 to 1968, he was a correspondent and moderator at Columbia Broadcasting System' Face the Nation. Later, Agronsky worked for CBS where he anchored Face the Nation, and in 1969, he began hosting his own show.
In the early 1970s Agronsky had two shows on PBS, but it was Agronsky & Company, which ran from 1969 to 1986, where he made his mark. The show was the first of its kind to feature a panel of reporters talking to each other about current events rather than interviewing the people involved in those events. The show eventually became required viewing for Washington insiders and followers of the political scene and attracted participants like George Will and James Kilpatrick. It was said that several presidents, including Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan, all watched the show, sometimes sharing their views through personal phone calls or via press secretaries.
Agronsky was perhaps best known for his Washington-based television show, Agronsky & Company. Although known for his work in television, Agronsky was quite proud of the Alfred DuPont Award he received in 1961 for his coverage of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. He considered it his most important story, even though he received additional awards for different assignments.
During his career Agronsky received the Heywood Broun Award, a Peabody Award, the National Headliners Award, and an Emmy for a story about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black and the Bill of Rights. In addition, he received an award at the Venice Film Festival in 1963 for a documentary film he made about the voyage of a Polaris submarine.
Agronsky contributed writings to one book, Let Us Begin: The First 100 Days of the Kennedy Administration, which was published in 1961.
Martin Agronsky was a member of the national advisory board of American University and a member of Congressional Radio-television Corresponding Association (president 1953). He also held Omicron Delta Kappa (honorary) and Cap and Skull Society of Rutgers University fellowships.
On September 1, 1943, Agronsky married Helen Smathers. He had four children - Marcia, Jonathan, David and Julie.
