Tagged: Obituaries

From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler introduced us to a spunky kid who, bored with the Connecticut suburbs, runs away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Konigsburg wrote more than 20 other books for children and won two Newbery medals. She died Friday at the age of 83.

Al Neuharth died Friday at his home in Cocoa Beach, Fla.

He was 89.

Al's name may not be familiar to you, but this blogger hopes that you are acquainted with the newspaper he willed to life in 1982: USA Today.

From 1984 to 2009, I was either a reporter or editor — and sometimes both — at McPaper (a nickname that critics bestowed upon USA Today, but which those of us who were there in its best days adopted with the pride of underdogs).

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Al Neuharth, the man who launched "USA Today" against all expert advice, has died at the age of 89. He was the chairman of Gannett newspapers who called himself a dreamer and schemer when he got the idea that satellite communications could make a daily national newspaper popular.