Shaun D. Mullen journalism papers

Collection

Identifier: MSS 0653

Staff Only

Scope and Content Note

The Shaun D. Mullen journalism papers is a personally selected collection of articles, editorials, and features from the author's writing career, primarily at the Philadelphia Daily News. In addition to some personal miscellany ranging from press passes to a t-shirt and political buttons, the collection also includes selected blog entries from Mullen's weblog, Kiko's House. Mullen's features and editorials included "The Six Hundred and Thirty: Stories of Philadelphia's Vietnam War Dead," the nationally syndicated "Simpson File" from columns about the O.J. Simpson trial, a year-long column written under the pen name of Millennium Man, and the issue of terrorism after the events of 9/11/2001.

The Mullen papers is organized in several small groups of material, as selected and organized by the author: biographical overview and photographs; selected Daily News stories with Mullen byline, editorials by Mullen, investigative reports edited by Mullen, special sections edited or written by Mullen, articles on the O.J. Simpson case, The Six Hundred and Thirty, and Millennium Man. "Best of" blog entries, 2008-2015, from Kiko's House are followed by two folders of blog topics that received wide following: "Bush torture regime" and "golden retriever cancer epidemic" posts. Personal miscellany includes press passes, buttons, an original caricature of Mullen drawn by Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, and a 10-card pack of Torture Team trading cards created to raise awareness of torture tactics and treatment of terrorist suspects, 2009. The collection also includes several newspaper issues of special significance to the author.

Detailed descriptions of the collection contents were provided by the author.

Dates

Creation: 1964-2014
Creation: Majority of material found within 1993-2011

Creator

Mullen, Shaun D., 1947- (Person)

Language of Materials

Materials entirely in English.

Access Restrictions

The collection is open for research.

Terms Governing Use and Reproduction

Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. Please contact Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library, https://library.udel.edu/static/purl.php?askspec

Biographical Note

Newspaper journalist and blogger Shaun D. Mullen was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on March 14, 1947. His 20-year career at the Philadelphia Daily News (1981-2001) included work as night city editor and special projects editor, with numerous investigative reporting assignments, features, and special columns. He created a weblog, Kiko's House, in 2005.

Shaun D. Mullen was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on March 14, 1947. He was graduated from John Dickinson High School and pursued lifelong interests in journalism and writing, which had been cemented during a summer institute at the Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois. Mullen attended the University of Delaware, where he served as editor-in-chief of the school paper, The Review, during the socially, politically, and culturally momentous years of 1967-1969. He went to work for the Wilmington (Delaware) News Journal after leaving the University but he was drafted into the Army in August 1969. Mullen eventually was stationed in Tokyo, Japan, where he worked for Pacific Stars & Stripes. After his Army discharge and a freelance career in the Far East, Mullen returned to the News Journal in 1973 as deputy city editor.

Mullen was hired as night city editor of the Philadelphia Daily News in 1981 and in the course of his 20-year career there also worked as special projects editor on investigative projects. He also worked as an editorial writer and as a reporter who covered, among other stories, the O.J. Simpson murders, criminal and civil trials, and the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. In 1987, Mullen supervised "The Six Hundred and Thirty," a special Daily News section with biographies of the 630 Philadelphians (all men) who died or went missing in Vietnam. (The number of identified dead and missing has since increased.) The 630 stories were collected in time for the city's dedication of a Vietnam War Memorial at Penn's Landing in 1987. From January 2000-2001, Mullen wrote a five-day-a-week column--from the perspective of a 120-year-old "lost soul"--under the pen name of Millennium Man, in which he recounted historic 20th-century events in Philadelphia, the U.S., and abroad.

Mullen took up blogging in 2005. He blogs at Kiko's House and The Moderate Voice. He has edited several books and is the author of The Bottom of the Fox: A True Story of Love, Devotion & Cold-Blooded Murder, a non-fiction account of an unsolved murder published in 2010; Brothers at Arms, an oral history of identical twin Korean War veterans published in 2012, and There's a House in the Land, a tale of the 1970s published in 2014.

Biographical information derived from the collection. (See Box 1, Folder 1.)

Extent

1 linear foot

2 oversize box

1 oversize removal

Additional Description

Abstract

Arrangement

The collection is arranged topically/chronologically by nature of the collection content.

Source

Gift of Shaun D. Mullen, 2012.

Additional gift from Shaun D. Mullen, 2014.

Related Materials

MSS 0799, University of Delaware Library collection of websites relating to the Library’s literary collections. This web archive collection contains one or more websites relating to Mullen's life and work.

MSS 0697, George Wolkind papers

Materials Cataloged Separately

Hardbound copies of The Review, 1967-1968 and 1968-1969, edited by Shaun D. Mullen are available with imprints in Special Collections.

The full content of Kiko's House, Shaun D. Mullen's blog, is being archived as part of the University of Delaware Library collection of websites related to the Library's literarly collections, MSS 0799.