Journalist Kneeland dies in Lincoln at 78

LINCOLN – Douglas E. Kneeland, a member of the Maine Press Association Hall of Fame, longtime New York Times correspondent and former Chicago Tribune editor, died Saturday after a battle with lung cancer. He was 78.

During his 22 years with the Times, Kneeland reported on some of the most important events of the 20th century, including Watergate, race riots after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Vietnam War protests, the trial of Charles Manson and the Kent State killings.

He was one of the “Boys on the Bus” during Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign, and he wrote the story for the Times of the Saturday Night Massacre – Nixon’s dismissal of Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and the subsequent resignation of Attorney General Elliot Richardson. He counted this among his most significant professional achievements.

Gene Roberts, Kneeland’s friend and editor at the Times, once said, “He’s our profession’s equivalent of a triple threat quarterback, only better.”

A Lincoln native and Mattanawcook Academy graduate, Kneeland attended the University of Maine, where he studied under former Philadelphia Inquirer editor Wayne Jordan. While a student at UM, Kneeland met his first wife, Anne Libby, and started his professional career in journalism at the Bangor Daily News.

After stints at the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram and the Lorain Journal in Ohio, he was hired by The New York Times, where he worked on the foreign and metropolitan desks before becoming a roving national correspondent based in Kansas City.

In 1969, Roberts wanted to turn the Times into a national newspaper, and he asked Kneeland to return to New York to help with the transition. In exchange, Roberts made Kneeland an offer he couldn’t refuse: if he stayed in New York for a year, he could have any assignment he wanted, which led to a national correspondent gig in California.

Roberts later called Kneeland “a pivotal force in making the Times into the comprehensive national newspaper that it is today.”

Kneeland left the Times in 1981 to become a national and foreign editor of the Chicago Tribune. He went on to serve as the paper’s associate managing editor and public editor.

Shortly after Kneeland’s wife died of cancer in 1989, he had his first brush with the disease. Though he underwent a successful surgery, the experience changed him, and he “decided to focus attention on whatever future I was lucky enough to have.” He retired to his hometown of Lincoln and wrote a regular column for the Lincoln News.

He also reunited with an old friend from high school, Barbara Jordan Lees, whom he later married. The couple enjoyed spending time with friends and family, eating at local restaurants and cheering on local and UMaine sports teams – especially women’s basketball.

For a short time, Kneeland taught journalism courses at UM, where he served as a mentor and friend to aspiring reporters.

“Doug taught me that good writing came from hard work and careful thought,” said Jeff Tuttle, a former student of Kneeland’s who now works at the Bangor Daily News. “Writing wasn’t always meant to be easy, but it was always meant to be satisfying to the writer.”

Kneeland’s colleagues in Maine held him in the highest esteem. In 2003, he was inducted into the Maine Press Association Hall of Fame.

“Doug was an important part of the MPA, and we’re saddened by his death,” said the organization’s president, Kevin Burnham. “Doug was well-liked and well-respected within the ranks and he is deserving of being a Maine Press Association hall-of-famer.”

Steve Riley, a veteran Portland newsman, said Kneeland was the consummate reporter’s reporter. He praised Kneeland’s human-interest features about the Midwest, which conveyed a sense of the region, its landscape and its people. The two studied together at UM and both wrote for the student newspaper, The Maine Campus. Riley said it was evident early on that Kneeland had talent.

“Wayne Jordan was holding him up as an example for us seniors,” Riley recalled, laughing. “He was a freshman at the time, and we were all very offended.”

In 2005, Kneeland received an honorary doctorate from the University of Maine, where he served as chairman of the Alumni Association’s publications committee until earlier this year. At the time of his death, Kneeland was in the process of establishing a journalism scholarship at UM, which is expected to be in place in 2008.

Though the scholarship will provide financial resources for young journalists, Riley said Kneeland’s most important legacy may be his example.

“He was really a straightforward reporter,” Riley said Monday. “I followed his stuff for a long time, especially his political reporting, and we were never on the same side – he was a lot more liberal than I am. But I could see no evidence of that at all. No bias. … He was fair, which I think is the highest accolade for a political reporter.”

Kneeland is survived by his widow, Barbara; his sister, Pamela Greene of Chatham, N.J.; his children Debra Jo Wentz of Sioux City, Iowa, Wayne and Bruce Kneeland of Bristol, R.I., and Libby Anne Williams of San Jose, Calif.; and five grandchildren.