Pulitzer-winning reporter, author Johnson dies at 81

WASHINGTON – Haynes Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who migrated from newspapers to television, books and teaching, died Friday. He was 81.

The Washington Post reported he died at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. In a statement to the Post newsroom, Managing Editor Kevin Merida said Johnson died of a heart attack.

Johnson was awarded a Pulitzer in 1966 for reporting on the civil rights struggle in Selma, Ala., while with the Washington Star. He spent about 12 years at the Star before joining its chief rival, the Washington Post, in 1969. He was a columnist for the Post from 1977 to 1994.

The author, co-author or editor of 18 books, Johnson also appeared regularly on the PBS programs “Washington Week in Review” and “The NewsHour.” He was a member of the “NewsHour” historians panel from 1994 to 2004.

“I knew I wanted to write about America, our times, both in journalism and I also wanted to do books,” he told C-SPAN in 1991. “I wanted to try to see if I could combine what I do as a newspaper person as well as step back a little bit and write about American life, and I was lucky enough to be able to do that.”

Johnson had taught at the University of Maryland since 1998.

He was born in New York City on July 9, 1931. His mother, Emmie, was a pianist and his father, Malcolm Johnson, a newspaperman. The elder Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Sun in 1949 for his reporting on the city’s dockyards, and his series suggested the story told in the Oscar-winning film “On the Waterfront.”