VOL. 23, NO. 18	MARCH 27, 1998

Norman Isaacs

orman E. Isaacs, considered dean of American newspaper editors, former executive editor of the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times in Kentucky and teacher in Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, died Mar. 7 in an Alzheimer’s clinic in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 89.

  He died of heart failure, said his son, Stephen, a professor in the Journalism School.

  Isaacs was a mentor to scores of students at Columbia as a lecturer and editor-in-residence from 1970 to 1980. He interrupted his Columbia career for a year, in 1975-76, when he was brought in as president and publisher of the daily newspapers of Wilmington, Del., to successfully resolve a management crisis and restore newsroom morale.

  Isaacs was a highly regarded authority on journalism practice and ethics. He led the two Louisville papers during the 1950s and 1960s, when they won three Pulitzer Prizes, and where he created the first newspaper ombudsman. He was a special lecturer and editor-in-residence at Columbia for a decade and was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

  He attempted to overhaul the ethics codes of the Associated Press Managing Editors when he was the group’s president in 1953 and of the American Society of Newspaper Editors when he became its president in 1969. He was a founder of the National News Council and its chairman for five of its 10 years of existence in the 1970s and ‘80s. His book, Untended Gates: The Mismanaged Press, was published by Columbia University Press in 1986.

  Norman Ellis Isaacs was born Mar. 28, 1908, in Manchester, England, and moved to Canada with his family when he was 3 and to Indianapolis when he was 13. His newspaper career began as a high school sports correspondent for the Indianapolis Star. After putting up briefly with an editor who took money from a sports promoter to run stories, he quit and joined the Indianapolis Times, found an ethical tutor in an editor there and rose to become managing editor of the paper at the age of 27. He became editorial director of the Indianapolis News in 1943 and managing editor of the St. Louis Star-Times in 1945.

  He moved to The Louisville Times as managing editor in 1951 and became vice president and executive editor of The Courier-Journal & Louisville Times in 1961, remaining until 1970. The Courier-Journal won journalism’s highest award, the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for public service, in 1967 for articles on the Kentucky strip mining industry that advanced the conservation of natural resources. The papers also won Pulitzers in 1956 for editorial cartooning and 1969 for local spot news reporting.

  His wife, Dorothy Ritz, died in 1977. He is survived by their two children, Stephen D. Isaacs of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., and Roberta Matthews of Washington, D.C.; his second wife, Mildred, of Santa Barbara, five grandchildren and three great grandsons.

  Contributions in his memory may be made to the Journalism Fund at the Columbia Journalism School.