(Courtesy of The New York Times)

Claude Sitton, 89, Acclaimed Civil Rights Reporter, Dies

By Dennis Hevesi

March 10, 2015

Claude Sitton, a son of the South whose unwavering coverage of the civil rights movement for The New York Times through most of that tumultuous era was hailed as a benchmark of 20th-century journalism, died on Tuesday in Atlanta. He was 89.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his son Clint said. Mr. Sitton had been in a hospice.

(Current biography as of March 2016)

(Courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica)

Russell Baker, in full Russell Wayne Baker (born August 14, 1925, Loudoun County, Virginia, U.S.), American newspaper columnist, author, humorist, and political satirist, who used good-natured humour to comment slyly and trenchantly on a wide range of social and political matters.

Commendatore in the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy, 1991. Recipient, Citizens Union Civic Leadership Award, 1993. Columbia Law School Medal for Excellence, 1997. Town Hall Friend of the Arts Award, 2001. Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star from Japan, 2004. Centennial Medal, American Academy in Rome, 2006. Lawrence A. Wien Prize for Social Responsibility, 2010. After two years on the faculty at the University of Minnesota Law School, joined the Columbia faculty in 1957.

(Courtesty of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book)

Gene Roberts, a former executive editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, achieved national fame for leading the paper to 17 Pulitzer Prizes in an 18-year span. He was widely respected for his high standards in journalism and ability to run a newspaper. A former reporter of his once said, “He’s the ideal editor that a reporter dreams about.”

(Courtesy of The New York Times)

David Laventhol, Publisher on Both Coasts, Dies at 81

By Dennis Hevesi

April 9, 2015

David A. Laventhol, a former publisher of The Los Angeles Times and Newsday who made a journalistically acclaimed but financially doomed attempt to break into the New York City newspaper market by starting New York Newsday in 1985, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 81.

The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his son, Peter, said.

Burl Osborne, president and editor of The Dallas Morning News, has overall responsibility for the operation of the newspaper, including direct supervision of the news and editorial departments.

In October, 1980, Osborne joined The Morning News as executive editor, with responsibility for all news gathering and editing. In 1981 he became vice president and executive editor and in 1983 he was named senior vice president and editor. He was named president and editor in 1985.

Post Editor, Newsweek Columnist Meg Greenfield Dies

By J.Y. Smith

Special to The Washington Post

Friday, May 14, 1999; Page A1

Meg Greenfield, 68, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the editorial page of The Washington Post and a columnist for Newsweek magazine, died of cancer yesterday at her home in Washington.

Joan Konner has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence and received her M.S. from Columbia.

(Courtesy of the National Endowment for the Humanities)

“When you’re in a state of perplexity, sadness, gloom, elation, you look for a poem to match what you are feeling,” says Helen Vendler. She writes that “Poetry is analytic as well as expressive; it distinguishes, reconstructs, and redescribes what it discovers about the inner life. The poet accomplishes the analytic work of poetry chiefly by formal means.”