William Woestendiek: 1924 - 2015
William Woestendiek, an editor and journalist whose career spanned more than five decades, passed away at age 90 on Jan. 16, 2015, at a Mesa, Arizona nursing facility after a lengthy illness.
Born in Newark, New Jersey and raised in Saugerties, New York, Woestendiek was a prize winning journalist and newspaper editor who got his start serving as editor of the University of North Carolina's student publication, The Daily Tar Heel.
After graduating from UNC, he began reporting in 1948 for the Winston-Salem Journal, where he later became city editor.
He was a Neiman fellow at Harvard University in 1954-55, after which he became an editor for Newsday in Long Island.
Serving as editorial director and assistant to the publisher, he organized and directed that newspaper’s first Washington, D.C., bureau. In 1962, while at Newsday, he won the 1962 Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Foreign Correspondence Award for reporting on the Soviet Union.
Woestendiek was named editor of the Houston Post in 1964. The next year, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its expose of government corruption in Pasadena, Texas, which resulted in widespread reforms.
Later, he served as editor of IBM’s Think magazine, editor of This Week, a syndicated Sunday magazine, and, in 1969, the anchor and producer of “Newsroom,” a daily news program on public television station WETA in Washington D.C..
His departure from that position, before the news program first aired, was well-publicized. When his wife, Kay Hurley, accepted a position as press secretary for Martha Mitchell, the colorful and controversial wife of Attorney General John N. Mitchell, WETA management told Woestendiek to tell her to quit, or he would lose his job. He refused to do so.
In 1970, he was named editor and publisher of The Colorado Springs Sun, and in 1976 he became editor of the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, where he led the news team that won a 1981 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into the University of Arizona athletic department.
He went to the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1982, starting as editorial page editor, but becoming executive editor less than two years later.
He was credited with expanding the paper's investigative and in-depth reporting and regularly feuded with the newspaper’s owners when he felt advertisers were being permitted to influence news coverage.
"A newspaper shouldn't be above its readership -- not aloof and arrogant," Woestendiek said during a City Club forum in 1983. "It should be opinionated, even outrageous, but it should be sensible, informative, controversial and above all, fair."
After being fired from the Plain-Dealer, he served from 1988 until his retirement in 1994 as the director of the University of Southern California's journalism school.
Woestendiek was a president of the Arizona Newspaper Association, served on committees of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the National Conference of Editorial Writers, and was an editor-in-residence at more than 20 journalism schools. He was a member of the Board of Visitors of the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, where he was named a member of the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame.
He was a loving father, a courageous and principled editor and willing mentor to many journalism students and young reporters.
He served in the U.S. Army during both World War II and the Korean War.
After retiring from the newspaper industry, Woestendiek traveled to Bulgaria and other countries as part of U.S. State Department programs helping to coordinate their transitions to a free press.
Woestendiek is survived by his wife Bonnie Woestendiek of Gilbert, Arizona, and his three children, Kathryn Woestendiek Scepanski (husband John) of Deforest, Wisconsin, William John Woestendiek Jr. of Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and Theodore Woestendiek also of Winston-Salem (spouse James Wong).
He is also survived by his first wife, Jo Woestendiek of Winston-Salem, North Carolina; a brother, Eugene Woestendiek of Buffalo, New York; and many nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his second wife Kay Hurley of Tucson, Arizona, and his brother Fred Woestendiek of New Albany, Ohio.
Other survivors include three step children, Robert Gaston (wife Patty) of Austin, Texas, Maurita Thomas (husband Peter) of Woodland Park, Colorado; and Lauri Olsen (husband Bud) of Fair Oaks, California; and four grandchildren, Christopher Hughes of Seattle, Washington; Joe Woestendiek of New Albany, Mississippi; and Kendall Olsen and Carley Olsen of Fair Oaks, California.