Richard Grozier

Richard Grozier (1887–1946) was the owner, publisher and editor of The Boston Post from 1924 until his death. He inherited the paper from his father, Edwin Grozier.

Grozier and The Boston Post received one of the first Pulitzer prizes for the Post's contribution to journalism while investigating Charles Ponzi.

Grozier was born in Brooklyn to Edwin and Alice Grozier. The family moved to Boston in 1891, soon after Edwin bought the Post. The younger Grozier graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1905, and from Harvard College in 1909. However, he was an indifferent student; he barely maintained a C at Exeter and was "separated" (flunked out) of Harvard three times. He immediately began working for his father's paper, eventually rising to assistant publisher and assistant editor. However, he was given few opportunities to prove himself until his father suffered a total physical breakdown in the spring of 1920. With his managing editor on summer vacation, Richard became operating head of the Post as acting publisher and editor.

Soon afterward, Charles Ponzi set up his Securities Exchange Company a few blocks from the Post's headquarters. Grozier was very skeptical of Ponzi's claim to double his investors' money in 45 days. At that time, there were about seven respectable newspapers in Boston, but none of them had written about Ponzi's ITC scheme in detail. Six weeks earlier, Boston Traveller had written about his company without naming him. Another story three weeks earlier in the Post had described a million dollar law suit against Ponzi by a furniture dealer, but this had improved Ponzi's reputation as a wealthy person. Grozier felt this was an opportunity for him to investigate Ponzi and make his mark in the field of respectable media.

Grozier assigned several investigative reporters to check Ponzi out. He got in touch with Clarence Barron, the noted financial journalist, who expressed doubts that Ponzi's operation could possibly be legitimate. The Post published its first story on Ponzi on its front page on July 24 1920, describing the Ponzi's luxurious locomobile limousine and its Irish immigrant chauffeur John Collins. The story was more or less positive and resulted in further investors rushing to Ponzi's office to invest money. However, Barron maintained his skepticism, and started to co-author articles for the Post as a consultant. The first of these appeared on July 26, as the Post subsequently began running several articles that questioned whether Ponzi was on the level, causing a panic run on Ponzi's company.

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