Name—James Reston
Date of death—Wednesday at his home in Washington, D.C.
Age—86
Cause of death—Cancer after a long illness, according to his son, Thomas Reston
Services—Pending
Background—Reston was a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for The New York Times. He was a columnist and Washington bureau chief who covered national and international affairs for about 50 years. He helped create the nation's first Op-Ed page. That was in 1970. The Op-Ed page is the page across from newspaper editorials. It forms a stage for columnists' opinion pieces. He was chief of the Times' Washington bureau from 1953 to 1974. He then spent his time writing columns after serving briefly as the newspaper's executive editor in New York. He wrote his last column for the Times in 1987. He retired in 1989.
His Pulitzer Prizes—The first came when he obtained the Allies' secret proposals at the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks conference on planning the United Nations. He won his second for covering the 1956 presidential campaign.
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More background—He was born in Clydebank, Scotland. He came to the United States with his parents when he was 11 years old. His newspaper career was launched as a reporter on the Springfield (Ohio) Daily News in 1932. He later was a sports writer for The Associated Press in New York and London. He went to work for The New York Times in 1938. He transferred to Washington in 1941. He succeeded Arthur Krock as Washington bureau chief. Reston hired several people who went on to become big names in journalism: Tom Wicker, Anthony Lewis, Allen Drury and Russell Baker.
Quotation—From R. W. Apple, Washington bureau chief for the Times: "He was the greatest journalist of his generation. And he recruited and trained two more generations of journalists at the Times and elsewhere."
Quotation—From Washington Post Publisher Donald Graham: "Scotty Reston was a great columnist and a great man. He broke many of the biggest stories of his time, and hired many of the best reporters. I never knew anyone more deeply admired by those who knew him best."
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Exercise 13.11
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2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education