David Broder, Pulitzer Prize-winning political writer for the Washington Post, dies at 81 [updated]

David Broder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post political columnist whose evenhanded treatment of Democrats and Republicans set him apart from the ideological warriors on the nation's op-ed pages, died Wednesday. He was 81.

Post officials said Broder died of complications from diabetes.

Broder, an Illinois native, was familiar to television viewers as a frequent panelist on NBC's "Meet the Press" program. He appeared on the program more than 400 times, far more than any other journalist in the show's history.

To newspaper readers, he was one of the nation's most prominent syndicated columnists. A September 2007 study by the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters found that Broder was second among columnists only to George Will in the combined circulation of newspapers in which his column appeared.

He was the only one of the top five that the group did not label as either conservative or liberal.

"His evenhanded approach has never wavered. He'd make a good umpire," wrote Alan Shear, editorial director of the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicated Broder's column. "Dave is neither left nor right, and can't even be called reliably centrist. He reports exhaustively and his conclusions are grounded in hard facts."

One of his hallmarks was a special effort to meet lots of average citizens who, in the end, really decide elections. In a 1991 lecture, Broder said reporters should spend "a lot of time with voters ... walking precincts, knocking on doors, talking to people in their living rooms. If we really got clearly in our heads what it is voters are concerned about, it might be possible to let their agenda drive our agenda."

The full Times obituary is here.

-- Associated Press

Photo: David Broder on "Meet the Press" in 2008. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images for "Meet the Press"

James F. Neal, who prosecuted Jimmy Hoffa and defended Exxon, dies at 81

James F. Neal, who successfully prosecuted Jimmy Hoffa and key Watergate figures and later defended such prominent clients as Exxon Corp. after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, has died. He was 81.

Neal died Thursday night at a Nashville hospital after battling cancer for several months, said his law partner, Aubrey Harwell.

In 1964, Neal successfully prosecuted Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa on jury-tampering charges in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Neal was the special Watergate prosecutor who in 1974 won the convictions of onetime Richard Nixon aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell.

He was working as a special assistant to then-U.S. Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy when he secured the government's first conviction against Hoffa -- sending him to prison. Four previous government efforts to convict Hoffa had failed.

In private practice, Neal successfully defended Ford Motor Co. against reckless-homicide charges in Indiana after the gas tank of a 1973 Ford Pinto exploded, killing the car's driver.

A year later, in 1981, he also successfully defended Dr. George Nichopoulos of Memphis, Tenn., against charges that he over-prescribed drugs to Elvis Presley.

After actor Vic Morrow and two others died in 1982 during the filming of the movie "The Twilight Zone," Neal successfully defended director John Landis against charges of voluntary manslaughter in 1987.

He was hired in 1990 to represent Exxon Corp., which was charged with polluting the Alaska shoreline with the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill.

Neal, who grew up on a farm in Tennessee, was a graduate of the University of Wyoming and Vanderbilt University School of Law in Nashville. He received a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington.

He was U.S. attorney for middle Tennessee from 1964 to 1966. Neal then entered private practice and in 1973 was called to Washington to become chief trial lawyer for the Watergate special prosecutor's office.

In 1982, he was chief counsel to a special Senate committee that investigated the federal government's Abscam bribery allegations.

Neal was very animated, slapping people on the back and calling them "pal." But in the courtroom, he fixed a steely gaze. Though intensely competitive, he expressed a liking for many he met in court.

He said in a 1981 Associated Press interview, "Jurors are people. I like people. All kinds of people."

-- Associated Press

Photo: James F. Neal. Credit: Associated Press

One year ago: Jack Nelson

Jack Nelson was a Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times reporter and Washington, D.C., bureau chief who helped establish the paper's national reputation in the 1960s and '70s.

Nelson broke major stories on the civil rights movement for The Times, particularly in his coverage of the shooting of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo and the slaying of three black students in South Carolina in what is known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

He also scored an enviable scoop in the Watergate scandal with his interview of an ex-FBI agent who witnessed the break-in at the Democratic National Committee's headquarters. The stories resulting from Nelson's interview were the first to link the burglary "right to the heart of the Nixon reelection campaign," David Halberstam wrote in his 1979 media history, “The Powers That Be.”

Nelson became The Times' Washinton bureau chief in 1975, and for 20 years he oversaw its development into what Gene Roberts Jr., former managing editor of the New York Times, called "arguably one of the finest bureaus ever in Washington."

Nelson had made a noteworthy career for himself before even arriving at The Times. At wht was then the Atlanta Constitution, he exposed in a series of articles an array of abuses at a mental institution. As a result of his reporting, the hospital was overhauled and Nelson won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in 1960.

In addition to reporting, Nelson wrote or co-wrote several books and was a regular commentator on public television's "Washington Week in Review."

Read more about the award-winning reporter in Jack Nelson's obituary by The Times. Also, see a video of some of his appearances on "Washington Week in Review."

-- Michael Farr

Photo: Jack Nelson. Credit: Los Angeles Times

One year ago: Herbert G. Klein

Herbert G. Klein made his career in two often competing worlds: journalism and politics. The longtime San Diego resident and USC graduate started out as a political reporter but went on to become press secretary for President Richard Nixon and the first White House director of communications. He died one year ago Friday.

"Journalism has been my profession, and politics have been an avocation," Klein said on the occasion of his retirement in 2003.

It was as a special correspondent for Copley that Klein covered Nixon's 1946 run for Congress, getting a taste for the interaction between politicians and the press. He quit his newspaper positions to serve as press secretary for Nixon's failed campaigns for the White House against John F. Kennedy in 1960 and for the California governorship in 1962. Klein was still there when Nixon finally won the presidency six years later.

Klein parted ways with the president he had supported for three decades a year before Nixon's 1974 resignation, settling into his longtime role as editor of Copley Newspapers.

For more, read Herbert Klein's obituary by The Times.

-- Michael Farr

Photo: Herbert G. Klein. Credit: Alexander Gallardo / Los Angeles Times

Marvin Minoff and the Nixon-Frost interviews

TV and film producer Marvin Minoff, who died Nov. 11 at age 78, worked with David Frost when the British talk show host interviewed former President Nixon in a series of televised exchanges.

Minoff shows up frequently in newspaper coverage of the interviews, which were taped in 1977 in a south Laguna Beach home after electronic interference made it impossible to film at Nixon's mansion south of San Clemente.

"I believe viewers will feel that this confrontation tests the Nixon accounting of Watergate the way — and with the intensity — that it should be tested," Minoff told The Times' Lee Margulies on April 27, 1977. "I think the reaction is going to be spectacular."  Minoff was identified as executive vice president of Frost's Paradine Productions and executive in charge of production for the Nixon shows.

By July, the first four interviews had been shown, with a fifth program of additional material scheduled for September.

"I still think, all in all, the ratings were terrific. Everybody seemed pleased," Minoff said. "We were happy both in terms of quality and ratings. I don't think there's been another news show that's ever done as well."

-- Keith Thursby

Photo: Former President Nixon and David Frost during their 1977 interviews. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Jack Nelson, 80, former L.A. Times investigative reporter and Washington bureau chief

Jack Nelson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsman who led The Times' Washington bureau for two decades, was known for scooping the Washington Post on a crucial Watergate story. But for "sheer drama and witnessing history in the making," he wrote some years ago, nothing equaled the five years he spent covering the civil rights movement in his native South.

One of his greatest achievements was uncovering the real story behind the violent 1968 clash at predominantly black South Carolina State College in Orangeburg that left three students dead and 27 injured. Nelson was suspicious of the initial news reports that said the police had acted in self-defense after the students attacked them with rocks and other crude weapons.

How Nelson, who died Wednesday, disproved the official accounts became journalism legend.

With utter confidence — "He had what the military calls command presence," said Gene Roberts Jr., a longtime friend and former top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times — Nelson walked into the hospital where the injured students were being treated and told the medical personnel, "My name is Nelson. I'm with the bureau out of Atlanta and I've come to see the charts."

His statements were technically correct: He was with The Times' Atlanta bureau. But in his dark suit and crew-cut, he easily passed for an agent of the bureau, as in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The hospital staff handed over the students' medical charts.

Those records showed Nelson that most of the students had been shot in the back or the soles of their feet — proof that they had been retreating or lying on the ground to escape the gunfire when the lawmen shot them. "The truth emerging about the shooting was entirely dependent on Jack," Roberts said recently. Thanks to Nelson's reporting, the incident went down in civil rights history as the Orangeburg Massacre, which also was the title of a book Nelson and colleague Jack Bass wrote on it.

For more on Nelson's adventures in the South, see "The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation" by Roberts and Hank Klibanoff.

-- Elaine Woo

Photo: Jack Nelson, longtime Washington bureau chief of The Times, in an undated photo. Credit: Los Angeles Times