Legendary political reporter Jack Germond dies at age 85

Susan Page @susanpage | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Jack Germond, a curmudgeonly chronicler of American politics for a half-century, died early Wednesday at his home in West Virginia, according to his widow, Alice Germond.

"I think he was a great reporter," she wrote in an e-mail to friends. "He had a bold journalistic ethic, and that matters. He was fortunate to spend his life working at a job he would have done for free during some halcyon times in the newspaper business."

The Baltimore Sun said he died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

He was 85 years old.

He had just completed a novel of political intrigue, A Small Story for Page Three. His previous non-fiction books included Fat Man in a Middle Seat: Forty Years of Covering Politics, published in 1999, and Fat Man Fed Up: How American Politics Went Bad, published in 2004.

Jack Worthen Germond, born during the Roaring 20s, worked for the Rochester Times-Union and became Washington Bureau chief for Gannett newspapers. In 1974, he moved to the Washington Star, where he started a syndicated political column with Jules Witcover. After the Star folded, they went to the Baltimore Evening Sun.

"Jack was a truly dedicated reporter and had an old-fashioned relationship with politicians. He liked them but that did not prevent him from being critical when they did bad things and behaved badly. That was a trademark of Jack's," Witcover told the The Baltimore Sun.

For many Americans, Germond was a familiar figure on television, as a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a frequent commentator on Meet the Press. "Jack Germond was one of the great happy warriors of political reporting," NBC's Chuck Todd wrote on Twitter. Journalist Jeff Greenfield wrote on Twitter: "Germond's bull---- detector should be implanted in every political reporter."

Germond was renowned for his no-nonsense manner and his cultivation of political sources around the country during a pre-Internet era when that was a crucial part of smart reportage. He was also famous for his love of fine food and drink — immortalized by "the Germond rule," which held that political reporters split the dinner tab evenly, regardless of who had eaten what.

"He was a little cannonball of a man," Timothy Crouse wrote in Boys on the Bus, an account published 40 years ago of press coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign, "with a leprechaunish face, a fringe of white hair around his bald head, and a pugnacious, hands-on-hip manner of talking. He was not simply drawn to journalism as a profession; like Hildy Johnson in Front Page, he was addicted to it as a way of life."

"Jack indeed played the horses, always studying the form and hoping for that elusive triple crown winner — but there was no such thing as a bad day at the track," Alice Germond wrote. She is secretary of the Democratic National Committee. "To his many friends, he appreciated the great company, story, scoop, competition and laughter. He fit his life and times so very well."