R. W. Apple, Jr.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raymond Walter Apple, Jr. (November 20, 1934 – October 4, 2006), known to all as "Johnny", but bylined as R.W. Apple, was an associate editor at The New York Times, where he wrote on a variety of subjects, most notably politics, travel, and food.

Born in Akron, Ohio, Apple graduated from Western Reserve Academy, a private, coeducational boarding school in the small town of Hudson, Ohio, where he first practiced journalism. Apple first attended Princeton University, where he worked on the Daily Princetonian, but was kicked out of the school several times for devoting too much time to the paper. He later attended Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1961. He received honorary degrees from several institutions, including Denison University, Knox College, Gettysburg College, Marquette University, and the University of the South.

He began his career with The Wall Street Journal in the 1950s, covering business and social issues, including the early years of the American Civil Rights Movement. He served as a journalist and speechwriter in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1959, and returned to the Wall Street Journal after completing his service. In 1961, he went to work at NBC News, becoming the lifelong friend of a then young Tom Brokaw. While at NBC, Apple reported for the Huntley-Brinkley Report and won an Emmy Award for his work. In the last of his 29 appearances on the Charlie Rose talk show, he said that the most satisfying time of his career was when he was reporting on the American civil rights movement.

Apple joined the New York Times in 1963, and over more than 30 years, contributed foreign correspondence from over 100 countries, including coverage of the Vietnam War - where his penetrating questioning helped expose the unreliability of the military briefings known as the "Five O'Clock Follies" - the Biafra crisis, the Iranian revolution, and the fall of Communist governments in the Soviet bloc. In addition, he served as the Times' bureau chief in Saigon, Lagos, Nairobi, London and Moscow.

From 1993 to 1997 he was the bureau chief in Washington, D.C., which is considered the newspaper's most prestigious reporting assignment. He also served as the New York Times' National Political Correspondent in the 1970s.

Beyond the Times and the Journal, Apple has been published in many prominent magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, GQ, and Gourmet.

In addition to his reporting career, Apple was widely known as an expert on food and wine, and has lectured on those as well as political, social, and historical topics on several continents. He was the recipient of a number of honors and fellowships, including the Chubb Fellowship at Yale University. He was the chair of the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee for the U.S. mid-Atlantic region.

He was twice married, most recently to Betsey Pinckney Brown. They maintained residences in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.; on a farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; and in the Cotswold region of England.

On October 4, 2006, Apple passed away at the age of 71 from complications of thoracic cancer. His last article published for the New York Times while he still alive was an article on Singapore cuisine that was published on September 30. The last New York Times article he wrote, entitled "The Global Gourmet" ([1]), was published posthumously on October 5, 2006. The article was meant to be published in the Times' travel section several weeks later but was brought forward due to his unexpected and untimely death.

[edit] Quotations

• American Danish can be doughy, heavy, sticky, tasting of prunes and is usually wrapped in cellophane. Danish Danish is light, crisp, buttery and often tastes of marzipan or raisins; it is seldom wrapped in anything but loving care. ("The Danish Worth an Ocean Voyage", New York Times, November 22, 1978)

• Some of our best journalists take themselves even more seriously than the politicians they write about. (Reader's Digest, 1986)

[edit] Books

• Apple's America (North Point Press, 2005), ISBN 0-86547-685-3.
• Apple's Europe (Atheneum, 1986), ISBN 0-689-11607-1.

[edit] External links

• R. W. Apple Jr., Globe-Trotter for The Times and a Journalist in Full, Dies at 71
• Newshound Profile of Apple in the New Yorker
• Online NewsHour: R.W. Apple's Travel Guide to the United States
• A Military Quagmire Remembered: Afghanistan as Vietnam
• Archived listing of articles, op-eds, reviews and essys written by R.W. Apple
• R.W. Apple Quotes
• Apple Turnover
• Apple's America
• R.W. Apple Archive From The Gawker