Richard Wald Obituary, Cause Of Death, Wife, Children

Richard Wald, a highly respected television executive who served as president of NBC News in the 1970s, played a huge role in steering coverage at ABC News for decades and also taught media industry practices at Columbia Journalism School, died Friday May 13, 2022.

Wald was 92 years.

According to Wald’s son Jonathan, Wald had a stroke in his sleep on Sunday (May 8, 2022) night and died from complications five days later, on May 13, at a hospital in New Rochelle, New York.

Wald began his career in journalism with The New York Herald Tribune, where he served as a reporter and foreign correspondent, and eventually rose to become the paper’s last managing editor before its demise in 1966.

Wald’s colleagues at the Tribune included major figures of the New Journalism movement, such as Jim Bellows, Jimmy Breslin, Gail Sheehy, and Tom Wolfe.

Wald also served as the Sunday editor of the New York World Journal Tribune and assistant managing editor of The Washington Post before joining NBC in 1967.

In January 1973, Wald became president of NBC News.

Wald left NBC News in 1977 due to friction with the management over unsatisfactory ratings and was hiredd Roone Arledge, then president of ABC News, to run the day-to-day operations of the news division in 1978.

Wald retired from ABC News in 1999 and following his retirement, he began teaching at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Wald was married to his wife, the former Edith Leslie, from 1954 until her death in 2021, and they had three children.