Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer
Ed Guthman, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, former press secretary for Robert Kennedy, and a man known as a relentless editor, died on August 31 in his home in Pacific Palisades. Guthman, 89, died from complications of a rare disorder involving the buildup of proteins in organs and tissues. His career spanned five decades, including his rookie years at the Seattle Times in the 1940s, his stint as a special assistant for public information in Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department in the ’60s, a dozen years as national editor at the L. A. Times, and a longtime USC professor until his retirement last year. Guthman was born on August 11, 1919 in Seattle and graduated from the University of Washington in 1941. During his service in the Army during World War II, he earned a Purple Heart and a Silver Star, before retiring with the rank of captain. Guthman was a journalist at the time when reporters pounded the pavement, and when tight deadlines demanded filing stories via Western Union or dictating copy by phone. And while he acknowledged the boon technological advances offer today’s journalists, he stressed throughout his career the importance of key journalistic standards’thorough investigation and fact-checking. Early in his career at the Seattle Times, where for 13 years he specialized in political and investigative reporting, Guthman won the Pulitzer prize in 1950 for his series of articles proving the innocence of a victim of McCarthyism. While still at the Seattle Times, Guthman turned his reporting laser on the corruption in the Teamsters union and the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which attracted the attention of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It was then that Guthman met Robert Kennedy, who served as committee counsel, and whom the journalist considered a mentor. During John Kennedy’s presidency, Guthman worked for Bobby in the Justice Department and with his campaign for the U. S. Senate in 1964, and later as press secretary. Although Kennedy asked Guthman to stay on as his press secretary, he turned him down, acknowledging his true commitment. ‘I felt I was a reporter and didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in politics,’ Guthman told the Palisadian-Post in 2005. ‘So he gave me some advice that helped me with the next step in my career. He said, ‘Go to anybody you respect, and they’ll be happy to spare a half-hour to give you advice for your future.’ So I talked to people I knew who I thought had good judgment: a number of friends at the Justice Department, the CEO at IBM, where I was offered a job in PR, Norman Lear’and I talked to Otis Chandler, who at that time, 1965, wanted to beef up the L.A. Times’ national bureau and asked me to be editor.’ During his years at the Times (1965-1977), Guthman was known as the paper’s most relentless editor, always pushing his reporters to make one more phone call to nail an important story. This demand for integrity, truth and common sense proved invaluable in the early 1970s, when the Times was one of the few papers in the country doing any Watergate stories, particularly in 1972, when the Times’ Washington correspondent Ronald Ostrow and reporter Jack Nelson secured an interview with an eyewitness to the Watergate break-in. Under Guthman’s insistence, the Times ran the piece, which ‘brought Watergate right to the heart of the Nixon reelection campaign in a more dramatic way than any other story so far,’ said Pulizer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam. While at one time Guthman was considered on the short list for editor at the Times, he left the paper in 1977, as result of a dispute with other editors. He spent the next decade at the Philadelphia Inquirer as editorial and Op-Ed editor until his official retirement in 1987. ‘When it came time to choose where we would retire, I let Jo make the decision,’ Guthman recalled in a Post interview in 1993. ‘She had packed up the four kids and dragged after me from one end of the country to the other for so long, it was now her turn to choose where she would like to live. She picked the Palisades, so we moved right back into our house [in the Riviera] that we had rented out for 10 years.’ Guthman then spent the next 20 years on the faculty of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, where he helped to fashion freshmen and sophomores into newspapermen and women Surveying the journalistic landscape these days, Guthman never let up on the importance of thorough investigation and good judgment. ‘Most of the kids have not had an opportunity to do newswriting, so we have them starting from scratch,’ he said in the Post interview. ‘The student are bright, with no problems with spelling and grammar. What they don’t realize is that they have to make decisions and judgments as reporter/journalists. They mustn’t take it all for granted. They must learn to recognize the hooks.’ Guthman was predeceased by his wife JoAnn in 1990. He is survived by sons Lester, Edwin H. and Gary, daughter Diane and five grandchildren. Services will be held at 1 p.m. Friday, September 5 at Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary, 6001 W. Centinela Blvd. Memorial donations may be made to the Edwin O. and JoAnn Guthman Endowed Scholarship for Investigative Reporting at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, 3502 Watt Way, Los Angeles, CA 90089.
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