One year ago: Veteran journalist William Trombley

William Trombley's approach to covering a meeting of the UC regents left a lasting impression on Jane V. Wellman, a former UC budget analyst.

"He covered those meetings with gleeful intensity, forgiving them nothing if their work offended his idea of what a public governing board should do, which was to oversee and protect the public interest," Wellman told The Times' Elaine Woo.

Trombley spent nearly 30 years at The Times and was known for reshaping the paper's coverage of higher education.

After leaving The Times in 1992, Trombley founded and edited an influential quarterly called National CrossTalk with the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in San Jose. He also wrote for Life magazine.

His news obituary appeared on Sept. 11, 2009.

-- Keith Thursby

Photo: William Trombley, with his wife, Audrey, in 1999. Credit: Rod Searcey