Blair Clark

Ledyard Blair Clark (August 22, 1917 – June 6, 2000) was an American liberal journalist and political activist who played key roles both as a journalist and a political operator. He was general manager and vice president of CBS News from 1961 to 1964, and later became editor of The Nation magazine. He was Senator Eugene McCarthy's national campaign manager for the 1968 presidential nomination.

Early life

Clark was born in East Hampton, New York, in 1917, the son of Wiliam Clark (1891–1957) and Marjory (née Blair) Clark (1893–1975). He was named after his maternal grandfather, investment banker C. Ledyard Blair. He was raised in Princeton, New Jersey and attended boarding school at St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts. In 1940 he graduated with an A.B. degree from Harvard College, where he was a member of the Spee Club and Hasty Pudding Institute of 1770.

Clark had a knack for connecting with talented and ambitious people. At St. Mark's School, Clark became friends with poet Robert Lowell. At Harvard he befriended classmate John F. Kennedy; they remained in touch throughout Kennedy's political career, and Clark and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis corresponded for decades. Journalist Theodore H. White was also a long-time contact.

Career From 1941 to 1946, Clark reported for the Joseph Pulitzer Jr.-owned St. Louis Post-Dispatch before serving in the United States Army.

New Hampshire Sunday News In 1946, Clark used a $60,000 inheritance from his grandmother to found The New Hampshire Sunday News. The newspaper's star reporter was Ben Bradlee, who was also an alumnus of St. Mark's and Harvard and later become executive editor of The Washington Post. Within two years, the Sunday News had the highest circulation in New Hampshire. When the New Hampshire Union Leader threatened to compete with its own Sunday paper, Clark sold the Sunday News to Union-Leader Corporation in 1948 for a substantial profit.

During World War II, Clark served in the Army as deputy historian for Gen. George S. Patton Jr.'s 3rd Army. he was married to Jessie Holladay Philbin, daughter of Jesse Holliday Philbin (d. 1978) and granddaughter of Eugene A. Philbin (1857–1920), the New York County District Attorney. They had two children, Timothy B. Clark The couple divorced in 1960.

Jessie Philbin remarried John Sumner Runnells James in 1965. In 1971, Blair married his second wife Joanna (née Rostropowicz) Malinowski (b. 1939), who was born in Warsaw, Poland and was the daughter of Wladyslaw and Helena (née Baranski) Rostropowicz. Joanna, the mother of Tomasz Malinowski (b. 1965), received a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and is a writer. They had a son.

In 2000, Clark died at his home in Princeton, New Jersey at the age of 82.