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Donald Kaul

American columnist

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ5294628
Source-derived summary

Donald William Kaul (December 25, 1934 – July 22, 2018) was an American journalist, best known for his syndicated columns and his work with The Des Moines Register and OtherWords.

Education and career

Kaul earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in 1958 and a master's degree in journalism in 1960. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1987 and 1999. Kaul wrote columns for The Des Moines Register for over 35 years before retiring in 2000. His work was recognized for its liberal perspective, particularly in Iowa. In 2001, he resumed writing for OtherWords, a non-profit editorial service focused on progressive commentary. His final column was published in 2017.

Kaul co-founded The Des Moines Register's Annual Weeklong Bike Ride Across Iowa, RAGBRAI. It began in 1973 with a column by Kaul, who launched the ride with John Karras, another Register writer.

Around 1963, Kaul began contributing to The Register's Over the Coffee column, taking it over full-time in the spring of 1965. In 1970, the newspaper assigned him to its Washington, D.C., bureau.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Donald Kaul” is american columnist. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Donald, Kaul and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1934, 2018, 1958, 1960—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1934-12-25. For this dossier, Donald, Kaul and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american columnist” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5294628. VIAF identifies the subject as 62829557. The Library of Congress control number is n79121729. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1934, 2018, 1958 and 1960.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Donald Kaul”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Donald Kaul primary sources, Donald Kaul archive and Donald research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Donald Kaul” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.