Alumni Oral History: John Higgins
John Higgins, November 14, 2025
In the interview, alumnus John Higgins ’65 recounts his early childhood fascination with communications, sparked by his father’s printing business and his own creation of a neighborhood newspaper at age nine. After working on his high school newspaper and considering careers in journalism or advertising, Higgins majored in marketing at Boston College (BC) before switching to English. He worked two summers at a local New Jersey weekly, and also served as co-editor-in-chief of BC’s campus newspaper. He recounts his experience at the Annenberg School in the fall of 1964, joining George Gerbner’s first incoming class as dean. He describes an “October Revolution,” when his cohort pushed back against the shift toward social science study then underway. Higgins describes his experience with Annenberg’s writing lab, where he worked closely with Joel Sayre. The balance of the interview tracks Higgins’ career as an economics reporter and, later, newsletter editor, at McGraw-Hill’s Business Week (with stints in Cleveland and Minneapolis) and then work in the magazine’s Washington bureau. His work for McGraw-Hill newsletters led to a pair of additional newsletter roles, before his retirement in the early 2000s.