Categories: OLD Media Moves

Osborn Elliott, who started at Newsweek as biz editor, dies at 83

Osborn Elliott, the former editor of Newsweek and dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism whose career started as a business journalist, has died at the age of 83.

Laurence Arnold of Bloomberg News writes, “After beginning his journalism career at the Journal of Commerce and at Time magazine, Elliott joined Newsweek in 1955 as senior editor in charge of business news. He was promoted to managing editor in 1959 and editor in 1961, when the magazine was bought by Washington Post Co.

“Elliott had the magazine devote its Nov. 20, 1967, edition to an in-depth report, ‘The Negro in America: What Must Be Done.’ It examined the root causes of black poverty and urban unrest and proposed a 12-point plan for opening a war on poverty on par with the war in Vietnam.

“Elliott said he viewed the project as Newsweek’s inaugural venture into advocacy journalism.

“‘Nobody had come up with prescriptive solutions. Since nobody else did, we decided to,’ he later told the New York Times. Primarily because of that special issue, Newsweek won the 1968 Magazine of the Year Award from Columbia’s journalism school.”