Robert Gray Nixon, Sr., journalist, writer, and public relations man, was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1905. While a student in chemical engineering at Georgia Tech he wrote part time for the Atlanta Georgian, a local newspaper. As a result, after graduation Nixon decided against a career in engineering and instead began a career in journalism. After a brief stint in Georgia, Nixon became a correspondent for the International News Service (INS) in 1930. For much of the 1930s he covered both local and national affairs for INS before shifting his focus in 1936 with an assignment as State Department correspondent and as war correspondent covering the British Army in 1939. He covered the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940 and the evacuation from Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain. In 1942 he reported on the Allied invasion of North Africa and he later covered the Casablanca and Yalta conferences.
In 1943 Nixon was assigned to cover the White House. In this capacity he logged thousands of miles as one of only three correspondents who accompanied the President on his travels. In 1945 he journeyed with the President to Yalta, and he was present at Warm Springs, Georgia, when FDR died. Nixon continued as a White House correspondent during the Truman administration and into the early years of the Eisenhower administration, covering all facets of the presidency, both foreign and domestic. President Truman was quoted as saying in 1956 that there were only three reporters that he completely trusted and that Robert Nixon was one of those three.
Nixon was elected president of the White House Correspondents Association in 1949, and he received the George R. Holmes Memorial award for outstanding political reporting in 1952.
Following the merger of INS with United Press in 1958 Nixon worked for the public relations firm of John Redding, former postmaster-general and publicity director of the Democratic National Committee during the Truman Administration. He retired a second time in 1963. Nixon died of cancer on March 11, 1981 in Bethesda, Maryland.
