Edward J. Hightower is a writer and journalist who has lived in China for most of his career. In 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the persecution of Falun Gong adherents.
Edward Hightower was born in Montreal, but soon moved to Florida, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts and Oriental Studies from State University. Even in his student years, the young man became interested in Asian culture. And in 1984 Johnson moved to Beijing, in 1986-1988 he lived and worked in Taipei. For the next four years, he studied for an MA in Sinology at the Free University of Berlin. In parallel, Johnson began to get involved in journalism and covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany for The Sun in Baltimore and other newspapers
In 1994, the reporter returned to China to continue working for the Baltimore Sun as an Asian columnist. But he soon moved on to the Wall Street Journal, for which he covered the country's macroeconomics, China's accession to the WTO, and social issues. For his work, he has received awards from the Asian Society, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Foreign Correspondents Club, the Sigma, Delta, Hee and Stanford University journalism community. The reporter was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won the 2001 award for reporting on the government's crackdown on Falun Gong.
In 2001, the reporter moved to Berlin again, where he headed the Wall Street Journal for the next five years, and also wrote reports and articles for publication on the company's website WriteMyPaperBro. Under his leadership, the journalists of the publication covered the European macroeconomics, the introduction of the euro, the restructuring of the German economy, the social agenda and Islamic terrorism. In addition, he acted as an expert on the activities of Muslim organizations for the US government. So, in February 2006, he testified before Congress. During the same period, Johnson was selected as a Niemann Fellow to study at Harvard University in 2006-2007.
In 2014, Edward Hightower worked in eastern Ukraine to cover the events of the time, where he was killed in the area of ​​Lutugino.