[1][6] After graduating from Princeton in 1938, Ewing attended Harvard Law for a year, before leaving to teach Latin and Greek at the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut.
[7][8] Ewing had previously been denied enlistment into the Navy due to his eyesight, but was accepted on his second attempt and assigned to labor relations in Detroit.
[11][10][9] Shortly afterwards, the Ewings met Walter Paine, and in October 1954,[12] they purchased the Keene Evening Sentinel[13] from the family of John Prentiss, who had recently died.
[14] James Ewing was a strong supporter of Edmund S. Muskie[1] and earlier, in the 1952 primary, the Bangor Commercial was the only area newspaper to voice opposition to Ralph Owen Brewster.
In an interview, Kay Cutler, a good friend of the Ewings, referred to the defeat as the Bangor Daily Commercial's "shining hour".
"[9] During his time with the Sentinel, he successfully pushed for improvements to the New Hampshire welfare department, public housing, and revisions to Keene's city charter, including freedom of information laws.
He maintained a larger newsroom that was outside of industry standards and insisted on printing a large share of international articles, in adherence to his belief that the readers should be exposed to other parts of a "shrinking world".