Biz journalist Dimond, editor of Pulitzer winner on SEC, dies at 81

Thomas F. Dimond, 81, a former business editor of the Washington Star who moved to The Washington Post and edited a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, died July 31.

A story in The Post states, “Mr. Dimond had worked at the Star for more than 20 years when it ceased publication on Aug. 7, 1981. Soon afterward, he joined The Post as an assistant financial editor.

“Mr. Dimond immediately became a cornerstone of The Post’s financial and economic coverage. He oversaw Post investigations of insider trading scandals that convulsed Wall Street in the late 1980s and was a key editor on a series of articles by Post reporters David A. Vise and Steve Coll that penetrated the Securities and Exchange Commission to scrutinize its oversight of financial markets at the end of that decade, as well as the actions of the SEC’s chairman at the time, John Shad.

“Mr. Dimond helped coordinate coverage, as Vise and Coll alternated roles every month, one spending full time on the project while the other chased daily news. The series won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism.

“Mr. Dimond edited The Post’s coverage of the harrowing Black Monday stock market contraction of 1987, the savings and loan industry scandal that lasted almost a decade into the mid-1990s, and the ‘dot-com’ bubble at the end of the decade. He retired from The Post as deputy business editor in 2002.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.