Reporter, editor and author Meyer passes away

Karl E. Meyer, who served as foreign correspondent and editorial writer for The Washington Post and The New York Times, died on Sunday in Manhattan at the age of 91.

The cause was prostate cancer.

Meyer covered many topics including the revolution in Cuba, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and much more. As a columnist and editorialist with a doctorate in politics, he shaped and supported his opinions through firsthand reporting.

Meyer was also among the first journalists to report on the failed coup.

Another notable cover was in 1990, as an editorial writer for The Times, Meyer was assigned the delicate task of responding to a new biography by S.J. Taylor, “Stalin’s Apologist,” which elaborated on serious reporting lapses by Walter Duranty, the Moscow bureau chief of The Times.

Karl Ernest Meyer was born on May 22, 1928, in Madison, Wisconsin, a grandson of George Meyer, the editor of Die Germania, a German-language newspaper in Milwaukee. Meyer, was a columnist for The Capital Times in Madison and moved to New York in 1935 to write a column for The New York Post.

Meyer earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and a doctorate in politics from Princeton.