Melloan, longtime WSJ staffer, dies at 92

George Melloan, who worked at The Wall Street Journal for 54 years, died on Wednesday at the age of 92.

His last byline for the paper was in June.

In his last assignment he was deputy editor, international, of the editorial page and author of a weekly op-ed column titled “Global View.” He moved to New York in 1962 to join the Journal’s Page One department as an editor and rewrite specialist.

From 1966 to 1970 he was a foreign correspondent based in London, covering such major stories as the Six-Day War in the Middle East, the Biafran War in Nigeria and an attempted economic reform in the Soviet Union.

After joining the editorial page in New York in 1970, Melloan became deputy editor in 1973. In 1990, he took responsibility for the Journal’s overseas editorial pages, writing editorials and columns for the Journal’s foreign and domestic editions about such momentous events as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the open door policy that brought billions of foreign investment into China, fueling its enormous economic growth over a period of 25 years.

Melloan was winner of the Gerald Loeb award for distinguished business and financial journalism in 1982 and twice in the 1980s won the Daily Gleaner award of the Inter-American Press Association for his writings about the rising Soviet influence in Central America.

In 2005, he received the Barbara Olson Award for excellence and independence in journalism from The American Spectator.