George Creel
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George Creel (December 1, 1876-October 2, 1953) was an investigative journalist, a politician, and most famously the head of the United States Committee on Public Information, a propaganda organization created by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I.
Creel began his career as a reporter for the Kansas City World in 1894 before starting his own newspaper, the Kansas City Independent, in 1899.
He also worked for the Denver Post (1909-10) and the Rocky Mountain News (1911-17) before President Woodrow Wilson appointed him head of the United States Committee on Public Information during World War I. As head of this organization, he assembled a team of 75,000 public speakers, the "Four Minute Men," to give brief speeches throughout the country in favour of the First World War.
He published his memoirs of the experience, How We Advertised America, in 1920, and would write fourteen other books during his lifetime.
He served on the San Francisco Regional Labor Board in 1933 and became chairman of the National Advisory Board of the Works Progress Administration in 1935.
He was an active member of the Democratic Party and ran against the novelist Upton Sinclair for the post of Governor of California.