Steve Sansweet

Early life and education

Sansweet was raised in the Wynnefield neighborhood of Philadelphia. He decided at age six that he wanted to be a writer, hand-printing a newsletter and selling copies to neighbors for three cents. He later worked on school newspapers, magazines, and yearbooks before becoming a journalism major at Temple University. Sansweet found his classes, many taught by working journalists, valuable, but considered the hands-on experience of putting out the four-times-a-week Temple News equally important.

He worked on the special issue reporting the assassination of John F. Kennedy and, as two-term editor-in-chief, called in late-night instructions to hand-print a banner headline announcing a campus visit by President Lyndon Johnson. Between his junior and senior years, Sansweet obtained a rare summer internship at The Philadelphia Inquirer, working the night police beat. He graduated magna cum laude and was named an Outstanding Journalism Graduate at Temple; in 2009 he was inducted into Temple's Media Hall of Excellence.

Journalism career

After graduation, he worked full-time for the Inquirer while serving a six-year stint in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, later transferring to the Air National Guard. In early 1969, Sansweet became a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, working in its Philadelphia and Montreal bureaus before transferring to Los Angeles, where he covered gaming, aerospace, banking, and Hollywood. He helped break early stories on massive foreign bribery by U.S.-based multinationals and was part of a team that won the 1977 Sigma Delta Chi Public Service Award; he was a Loeb Award finalist in 1990.

Sansweet lectured in business journalism at the University of Southern California in the mid-1980s, teaching a course he created. He became the Wall Street Journal's Los Angeles bureau chief in 1987, a position he held until 1996, when he left to become Director of Specialty Marketing at Lucasfilm Ltd., later serving as Director of Content Management and Head of Fan Relations.

Did You Know?

• His collection of an estimated 300,000 items was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records in September 2013 as the largest of its kind in the world.
• In June 2017, Sansweet reported that over 100 items from his collection had been stolen, with several resold or appraised for more than $200,000.