Bill Moyers dies

The acclaimed journalist was 91:

Billy Don Moyers was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, on June 5, 1934, and grew up in the northeast Texas town of Marshall. His father worked as a day laborer, while Mr. Moyers’s mother raised him and an older brother, James.

After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Mr. Moyers, not yet 30, became one of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s key lieutenants. Time magazine called him “LBJ’s young man in charge of everything.” He was named White House press secretary in July 1965.

[In 1967], Mr. Moyers took a lucrative job as publisher of Newsday, the large-circulation Long Island newspaper. He tilted the paper leftward in its support of anti-war demonstrators, lured a stream of leading authors to write for its pages and led the newsroom to two Pulitzer Prizes. But his tenure was cut short in 1970 amid clashes with newspaper’s conservative owner.

Mr. Moyers then began a television career that would bring him more than 30 Emmy Awards, including one for lifetime achievement. He was mainly associated with PBS, which he joined in 1971, but he detoured to CBS from 1976 to 1986.

I really enjoyed his writing and reporting. He will be missed.