Born in Brooklyn, New York, he is best remembered for his writing on social issues and his championing of the underdog.

He began his professional career writing baseball stories in the sports section of the New York Morning Telegraph.

Broun's column was published in the World-Telegram until Scripps-Howard abruptly decided not to renew his contract.

His column included criticism of another employer, the New York World, who fired Broun as a result.

[9] On June 7, 1917, Broun married writer-editor Ruth Hale, a feminist who later co-founded the Lucy Stone League.

At their wedding, the columnist Franklin P. Adams characterized the usually easygoing Broun and the more strident Hale as "the clinging oak and the sturdy vine.

Along with his friends (the critic Alexander Woollcott, writer Dorothy Parker and humorist Robert Benchley), Broun was a member of the famed Algonquin Round Table from 1919 to 1929.

Broun joked that his tombstone would read, "killed by getting in the way of some scene shifters at a Marx Brothers show."

Attendees included New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Franklin P. Adams, actor-director George M. Cohan, playwright-director George S. Kaufman, New York World editor Herbert Bayard Swope, columnist Walter Winchell and actress Tallulah Bankhead.