Legendary Columbia West Coast A&R exec RON OBERMAN has passed away

from Michael Oberman

Ron Oberman 8/28/1943 to 11/21/2019

Ron started as a copyboy at age eighteen in 1961.  He quickly moved to the position of dictationist.  From 1964 to 1967, Ron wrote the weekly Top Tunes column in addition to general assignment reporting.

In 1967, Ron went to work at Mercury Records in Chicago as Director of Publicity.  Later, Ron became VP of A & R (artists and repertoire) at Columbia Records.  After a long stint at Columbia, Ron became Executive VP of A & R at MCA Records.  When he retired from MCA, Ron played poker.  Ron passed peacefully in his sleep in Reno, NV.
------------------------------------------
from allaccess.com
Legendary COLUMBIA WEST COAST A&R exec RON OBERMAN has passed away.  During his storied career OBERMAN helped shape the careers of artist like DAVID BOWIE, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, THE BANGLES, TOAD THE WET SPROCKET, WARRANT, WILDERNESS ROAD, MARTIKA and many others.

OBERMAN had been suffering from dementia for the last decade. Details on services are pending.
-----------------------------------------
from TimesofIsrael.com
David Bowie didn’t start his first trip to the United States with a drug-filled party or a wild show, but instead with a quiet evening at the home of a Maryland Jewish family.

The now-iconic English rocker had just released the album “The Man Who Sold the World,” which built on the success of his popular “Space Oddity” album in Europe. But he wasn’t yet a household name in the States when his first US tour was set to kick off in January 1971.

Bowie’s North American publicist, Ron Oberman of Mercury Records, invited him to stay at his parents in Silver Spring for a night before setting out to play shows in cities from New York to Los Angeles.

The Rev. James M. ‘Mike’ Coram, who had dual careers as an Episcopal priest and a newspaperman, dies - November 15, 2019

The Rev. James M. Coram worked in The Sun's
Howard and Carroll bureaus.

The Rev. James M. “Mike” Coram, who had dual careers as an Episcopal priest and a Baltimore Sun newspaperman, died Nov. 15 of complications from a blood infection at Mercy Medical Center. The Columbia resident was 80.

“Mike was a straightforward reporter, and the best thing I can say about him was that he had a great wit,” said William T.M. Grigg, a former Washington Star reporter and newspaper colleague. “Then he chucked his newspaper career and went into the ministry and then came back to newspapers when he joined The Baltimore Sun.”

“Mike was a wonderful guy, and we called him ‘Captain’ in those days when we were kids in the Howard County bureau,” said Mike James, a former Baltimore Sun editor who is now national editor for USA Today. “His beat was government, but he was a jack of all trades and could cover anything.”

Anne Haddad, a North Baltimore resident, was a reporter with Mr. Coram in The Sun’s Westminster bureau, where they were staff reporters on the paper’s old Carroll Sun zoned edition.

Charles Thomas Alexander - Professor Emeritus, Assistant City Editor - November 15, 2019

Professor emeritus, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, passed away November 15, 2019 in Alexandria, VA at 91. A long-time Alexandria resident, he is survived by his wife of 68 years, Elizabeth Brown Alexander; daughters Elizabeth "Liza" Alexander Marshall (John) of Arlington, VA; Lucy Alexander Murphy (Braden) of Potomac, MD; grandchildren Charlie and Emma Marshall.
Born in Minneapolis, MN on September 21, 1928 to Dr. Charles Thomas and Mary Stinson Alexander. His family home was in Mount Vernon IN. He received his BA from Duke University in 1950. After two years military service during the Korean War, Ft. Belvoir, VA, and two years studying at Boston University School of Theology, he obtained an MS from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He began his journalism career with the Washington Star (1956-61) as assistant city editor, followed by managing editor of the Wilmington (DE) Morning News and Evening Journal (1961-66), and editor and publisher of the Dayton (OH) Journal Herald. He returned to Washington, DC in 1975 as professor of journalism and director of the Medill News Service, retiring in 1994.

He had a lifelong love of sports, music, theater, travel and the church, serving as elder of the Georgetown Presbyterian Church for over 30 years. A memorial service will be held at Georgetown Presbyterian Church Jan 4, 2020 at 2 pm. Interment in 2020 at Christ Church, St. Simon's Island, GA. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions should be made to Georgetown Presbyterian Church, 3115 P St., NW, Washington, DC 20007.

Published in The Washington Post on Nov. 22, 2019

Attribution: Legacy.com
Story: Alexander

Diane Woolley Bauer, Investigative Reporter, 1932- 2019

She was a muck-raking investigative reporter, a cab driver, a U. S. Senate press aide, a merchant seaman, and a mother of four who served on Berkeley's Waterfront Commission as well as two terms on the Berkeley City Council. She was briefly hospitalized, and died surrounded by family on June 7th, 2019 after a few years of declining health. She leaves a legacy of extraordinary work both as a journalist and as a Berkeley councilmember dedicated to serving District 5's neighborhoods.

Diane Woolley Bauer's father was a writer with MGM in Los Angeles, where she was born, but had been a commander in the British Royal Navy who served in World War I. He was called back for World War II and stationed in Jamaica, where Diane spent a portion of her young life. After the war the family moved to Washington D.C. where during her college years Diane took a two-week job as a vacation replacement for what was then called a copy girl at the Washington Post and her career as an investigative reporter began.

She became the youngest reporter in Washington D.C. Then-owner of the Post, Eugene Meyer, set aside the rule requiring that reporters have a college degree to put Bauer in charge of what is now called the Style section of the Post covering "politicians, diplomats and debutantes", as she put it, doing the layout and writing an advice column for college girls under her picture and byline. It should go without saying that women were an uncommon part of such workplaces.

She continued to work part-time as a young wife and mother writing ad copy, serving as a U.S. Senate press aide and a campaign director, but excelled as a self-taught journalist. She is credited for doubling the Washington Daily News' Maryland circulation with her hard-driving public interest stories, often scooping the full-timer reporters at the Washington Post and Evening Star. When the Daily News folded into the Evening Star she was one of the few reporters who were kept on. She wrote, investigated, and consulted for public interest research and law firms working special assignments for Newsweek, CBS television, panels, and documentaries such as ABC's "The Paper Prison" specializing in courts, police and prisons, juvenile detention, privacy and records-keeping, and medical ethics. One of her pieces on juvenile offenders' treatment provoked a letter from J. Edgar Hoover defending the FBI's procedures; she kept the letter.

Her work was so thorough it is cited in several books on civil liberties, behavior modification, privacy, and bioethics as well as some Supreme Court cases. Her writing is credited for playing a role in highlighting atrocities and instituting reforms at Maryland's infamous Patuxent Institution where she revealed an expensive behavior modification scandal. Author Nat Hentoff wrote a story about her tireless investigative journalism, including the illumination of "a hitherto hidden plan...to form a secret intelligence unit to combat organized crime" which her writing revealed arranged to violate, among other things, privacy laws. The unit had to be scrapped.

Attribution: Carol Denney, berkeleydailyplanet.com
Full Story:  Bauer

Robert Pear, scrupulous chronicler of health care for the New York Times, dies at 69

In the hands of many Washington reporters, the ins and outs of Medicare and Medicaid, the Clinton administration’s failed health-care overhaul and President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act could be insufferably technical. But health policy is also intensely personal. For millions of Americans, it determines what conditions their health insurance will cover, how much insurance — if any — their grown children can afford, and how their elderly parents will pay for prescription drugs.

By all accounts, Robert Pear of the New York Times was one of the most relentlessly probing journalists on the health-care beat, enlightening readers and rankling partisans with the clarity of his reportage and his savantlike understanding of the federal government and its arcana. With a seemingly ever-present byline on Page One of the Times, Mr. Pear was a constant and authoritative presence in Washington for four decades.

He died May 7 at 69 at a hospice center in Rockville, Md. The cause was complications from a severe stroke that he suffered April 29, said his brother, Doug Pear.

Attribution: Emily Langer, washingtonpost.com
Full Story: Pear

The Rev. Arnold Godfrey Taylor August 24, 1925~March 20, 2019

Arnold Taylor, 93, an Episcopal priest who served as rector of Christ Church, Durham Parish, in Nanjemoy, MD, from 1971 to 1993, died March 20, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Mr. Taylor was born in Providence, R.I., and grew up both in the city and on a farm. He served in WWII as a military policeman with the 99th Infantry Division in Germany.

After earning a degree in journalism at Pacific University in Oregon, Mr. Taylor settled in 1952 in Washington, DC, where he worked at the Evening Star, advancing from copy boy to photographer to assistant picture editor.

He married Lilian Bedinger on July 3, 1954, and they had three children.

In 1965, Taylor left the newspaper business to attend Virginia Theological Seminary. He was ordained in 1969.

He served first as assistant rector at Christ Church in Clinton, MD. In 1971, he was called as rector of Christ Church, Durham Parish, where he served for 22 years. He was a gifted pastor, always ready to meet people where they were. In the larger community, his contributions included organizing a Boy Scout troop and helping to establish Hospice of Charles County.

Attribution: somdnews.com
Full Story: Taylor

Shirlita H. Bolton, Author, Producer and Talent Agent - January 9, 2019

Shirlita H. Bolton, 86, of Orlando, Florida, passed away on January 9, 2019 at Cornerstone Hospice & Palliative Care. She was born on February 29, 1932 in Kingsport, Tennessee to Maurice Lee Hutchins and Alberta Jane Hutchins (Foglesong). Her parents named her Shirley Jean Hutchins. She attended Dobbins Bennett High School in Kingsport. She and her husband Herb Blizzard moved to Washington, D.C. when she was 19 years old so he could work in the construction field. He would later return to Kingsport, but Lita, as she would be known, preferred the exciting big city to small town life, and remained while the couple divorced. While working for the Washington Star Newspaper, she was attracted to the growing Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. She married Captain Joseph L. Stephenson, a veteran WWII Buffalo Soldier when interracial marriage was illegal in many states and disapproved of by society in general.

Attribution: orlandosentinel.com/
Full Story: Bolton

Tim Warren - Award-winning Journalist And Critic, January 26, 2019

Photo courtesy - Paul McCardell  Baltimore Sun Librarian 

TIMOTHY PHILIP MICHAEL WARREN "Tim"  August 19, 1951 - January 26, 2019
Award-winning journalist and critic Tim Warren died January 26, after an eight-year battle with cancer.

Tim was a multi-skilled journalist with more than 40 years experience as a writer, editor, and copy editor for several daily newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and the Washington Star. He also served as a contributing writer for Smithsonian, Washingtonian and other magazines.