M. Justin Baum, Sales Manager at the Washington Star, December 28, 2013

M. Justin Baum, who worked in advertising in the Washington area for more than four decades, died Dec. 28 at his home in Bethesda. He was 93.

The cause was complications from dementia and congestive heart failure, said his son, Bobby Baum.

Mr. Baum retired in the early 1990s after a decade as an advertising consultant. He had previously been a sales manager at the Washington Star newspaper and an advertising manager with Lansburgh’s department stores. He began his career working for advertising agencies including the Ernest S. Johnston Agency, where he was an account executive.

M. Justin Baum was born in the District, where he graduated from Western High School in 1937 and attended Wilson Teachers College. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II and received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from American University in 1955.

Attribution: Emily Langer, washingtonpost.com

Former TV sports award-winning columnist Bill Taaffe dies at 70

TAAFFE--William (Bill), Jr, passed at home in Henderson, NV on December 12. Born September 27, 1943 in Queens, NY. Survived by wife, Donna, son, Will, and sister, Joan Engel. Attended Oratory Prep and Seton Hall in New Jersey. Award-winning columnist, esp sports. Staff editor at New York Times sports desk more than seven years. Co-edited New York Times' anthology Sports of the Times. His pioneering TV sports column for Sports Illustrated won National Headliners Award for best national magazine column. Was also a columnist for The Washington Post, The Washington Star, and Las Vegas Review Journal. Co-authored Gimme a Break by sportscaster Warner Wolf, and Stripped with Pastor Jud Wilhite. Chaplain with Marketplace Chaplains.

Attribution: NYTimes

John Rosson, 28 Year Star Veteran Reporter and Editor, December 7, 2013

JOHN MacNAIR ROSSON (Age 86) Of Washington, DC, died Saturday, December 7, 2013 at Hospice of the Chesapeake, in the Baltimore Washington Medical Center. He was born to the late Leon Glenmore and Dorothy MacNair Rosson on June 29, 1927, in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school, Rosson served in the United States Navy at the end of World War II. Upon Honorable Discharge, he went on to attend the University of Maryland, serving as Managing Editor of the school's newspaper, the Diamondback, and graduating with a degree in Journalism in 1951.

After graduating from Maryland, Rosson worked for the Evening Capitol in Annapolis, MD, covering city and county government and the State House. In 1953 he moved to the Evening Star, later the Washington Star, where for the next 28 years he was a police reporter, nightly news reporter, education reporter covering the District Board of Education, editor of the Star's weekly Teen section, assistant picture editor and picture editor.

Jack Kelso, October 27, 2013, WBNG Front Page Award Winner

Jack Kelso, 81, of Greenacres, FL, formerly of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, passed away peacefully under the care of Hospice oat his home on October 27, 2013. Born in Haverhill, MA, he graduated from Boston University and earned a Master's degree in Journalism. He was a reporter for a variety of papers including the Wooster Telegram and Gazette and the Newark Evening News. He was a staff writer for The Evening Star where he won a Front Page Award from the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. He was an associate editor For Changing Times the Kiplinger magazine. He also wrote articles in Better Homes and Gardens and outdoor magazines. He wrote a national financial newsletter for REC and radio scripts until he retired. He loved to play golf and earned a brown belt in Karate with Jhon Rhee.

Attribution (full article): Palm Beach Post

Claudia Clark Baskin - Award winning Journalist, October 14, 1927 - October 22, 2013

Claudia Clark Baskin, 86, of Leesburg, passed away on Tuesday, October 22, 2013. Born in Dallas, Texas on October 14, 1927 to the late Claude C. Clark and the late Carolyn J. Griffin. She was preceded in death by her husband, Robert E. Baskin.
She attended the University of Texas and worked as a reporter for the Fort Worth Star Telegram. An award winning journalist for the Washington Evening Star, she was an editor for the Washington Times until her retirement. She also worked for the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association and the Republican National Committee. She was an Oblate of St. Anselm's Abby for many years. In her retirement, she volunteered for Meals on Wheels.

Attribution legacy.com

Jack Germond, syndicated columnist and TV commentator, dead at 85

Jack W. Germond, a syndicated columnist and droll TV commentator who became an authority on national politics and championed “horse race journalism” that predicts election winners and losers, died Aug. 14 at his home in Charles Town, W.Va. He was 85.

The cause of death was complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said Mr. Germond’s wife, Alice Travis Germond, a former secretary of the Democratic National Committee. She told friends in an e-mail that Mr. Germond had just completed writing his first novel, “A Small Story for Page 3,” about a reporter enmeshed in political intrigue.

As Washington bureau chief of one of the leading newspaper chains in the country, Gannett, and later as a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, he was a dominant figure in political journalism. He spent nearly 25 years sharing a byline in newspapers and books with journalist Jules Witcover.

Mr. Germond built a solid reputation for his aggressive pursuit of news, his skill as a storyteller, the high-level sources he cultivated in Washington and state capitals over 50 years and a vivid understanding of how the U.S. political system functioned for better and, often, for worse.

While reveling in the persona of an ink-stained wretch — down to the poker playing and whiskey drinking — Mr. Germond was among the first of his breed to make the transition to television. He cut an unlikely TV figure, with a pugnacious manner, bald head and generous stomach, but his knowledge was unquestioned.
The combination of his books, columns and appearances on such TV programs as “Today,” “Meet the Press” and “The McLaughlin Group” made him a top interpreter of American politics.

Lary Lewman, voice of The Star, voice-over artist for Democrats, dies at 76

Lary Lewman, who entertained Baltimore children as Pete the Pirate on an afternoon television program and who later became the preferred voice-over artist for thousands of Democratic political commercials, died July 11 at his home in the Howard County community of Clarksville. He was 76.

He had Parkinson’s disease, said his son, Lance Lewman.

Early in his career, Mr. Lewman had ambitions of being a stage actor before turning to television. He donned a false beard and a black hat with a skull-and-crossbones emblem to create the role of Pete the Pirate for a kids’ show on Baltimore’s WBAL-TV (Channel 11) in the early 1960s.

He was the host of “Consumer Survival Kit,” a syndicated TV program produced by Maryland Public Television in the 1970s, but by 1976 Mr. Lewman began to focus almost exclusively on his career as a voice-over actor.

He was the announcer for hundreds of commercials and industrial films and narrated documentaries for the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. But he found his steadiest work as the anonymous, if ubiquitous, voice speaking on TV commercials for every Democratic presidential candidate from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton.

Haynes Bonner Johnson (July 9, 1931 - May 24, 2013) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, best-selling author, and TV analyst.

Haynes Bonner Johnson (July 9, 1931 - May 24, 2013) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, best-selling author, and TV analyst. He reported on most of the major news stories of the latter half of the 20th century and was widely regarded as one of the nation's top political commentators.

He began his newspaper career in 1956 as a reporter for the Wilmington (Delaware) News-Journal. In 1957, Johnson joined the Washington Evening Star where he worked for 12 years, variously as a reporter, copy editor, night city editor and national reporter. He joined The Washington Post in 1969, serving first as a National correspondent, as a special assignment correspondent at home and abroad, then as the paper's Assistant Managing Editor and finally, as a national affairs columnist.

Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished national reporting in 1966 for his coverage of the civil rights crisis in Selma, Alabama. The award marked the first time in Pulitzer Prize history that a father and son both received awards for reporting; his father, Malcolm Johnson, won in 1949 for the New York Sun series, "Crime on the Waterfront," which was the basis for the Academy Award-winning film, On the Waterfront.

He was the author or editor of sixteen books, five of them best-sellers, including his most recent work, co-authored with Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz, The Battle for America: 2008.

Johnson was born in New York City. He earned his bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri in 1952 and his Master's in American History from the University of Wisconsin in 1956. Johnson served in the U.S. Army as a first lieutenant in artillery during the Korean War. He has held academic appointments at Duke, Princeton, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and George Washington University and served as the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Maryland from 1998 until his death in 2013.

Attribution: wikipedia.org/

L. Edgar Prina, Prize-winning Journalist, Age 95

On May 14, 2013, in Washington, Ed Prina was a prize-winning journalist, served in the U.S. Navy in World War II and Korean War (retired as captain in USNR), and held two Syracuse University degrees. Ed was a retired Washington Bureau Chief in Military Correspondent from Copley News Service. He had been a member of the National Press Club for 58 years. He covered every Secretary of Defense from Forest to Weinberger.

Robert W. Adams, Shoppers Guide owner Thursday, April 30, 2013

Robert W. Adams, 81, a former delivery truck driver for the old Washington Star newspaper who later owned and operated the Prince George’s Shoppers Guide tabloid, died of pneumonia April 30 at a hospital in West Palm Beach, Fla.

His daughter, Karen Orofino, confirmed his death.

Robert Wayne Adams was born in Lafayette, Ala. He moved to the Washington area in 1940 and graduated in 1950 from Hyattsville High School.

He served in the Army during the Korean War. For many years, before the newspaper closed in 1981, Mr. Adams was a delivery truck driver for the Washington Star. He then started the Shoppers Guide, which he operated for 30 years.

Six months ago, he moved from Hyattsville to West Palm Beach.

Attribution: Bart Barnes - Washingtonpost.com

Lowell Mellett - Inducted to The Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame April 27, 2013

Lowell Mellett

Mellett ended his journalism career as a nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Star, ending his "On the Other Hand" column in 1956 because of ill health; Mellett died on April 6, 1960. Upon Mellett's death J. Russell Wiggins, executive editor of the Washington Post, called him "one of the greatest newspapermen of the country and of Washington. He was a gifted writer and a brilliant editor whose work will long be remembered in his profession."

The late Lowell Mellett, an Elwood native who was a newspaper executive in Washington before becoming a top aide to President Franklin Roosevelt. Mellett’s journalism career started at age 16 when the The Muncie Star sent him to cover the 1900 Democratic National Convention. He worked at several newspapers around the country and overseas during World War I before becoming editor of Collier’s Weekly and, later, editor of the Washington Daily News in the 1930s. He held several posts in the Roosevelt administration before leaving government in 1944 to start writing what became a nationally syndicated newspaper column that continued until his retirement in 1956. He died in 1960.

Gus Constantine, Foreign Desk Editor - January 29, 2013

Veteran Journalist of The Washington Star. Gus Constantine joined The Washington Times from at or near its beginning and spent more than 20 years there, specializing in coverage of Africa and the Far East. Retired in 2007. At the Times he was known among his colleagues for his encyclopedic knowledge of world history and his devotion to his work and his family.

 Birth: Jan. 24, 1929, New York, USA Death: Jan. 29, 2013, Fairfax County Virginia, USA

Former Times’ foreign desk editor Gus Constantine dies 

Gus Constantine, a longtime editor in The Washington Times newsroom whose passion for knowledge was matched only by his love for family, died Jan. 29. He was 84.
Originally a history major, Mr. Constantine joined The Times when it opened in 1982, and worked as an editor on the foreign desk until 2008. In his nearly three decades at the paper, he came to be known as a dedicated and tenacious editor with an encyclopedic knowledge of history and the world.