I just read in an MRC e-mail that Jerry Nachman died Monday night. I'm surprised I'm just hearing about this today. I always liked him whenever he was on MSNBC, and he seemed like a really great reporter.
Newsman Jerry Nachman Dies at 57
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Jerry Nachman, 57, the brash, rotund journalist for MSNBC who formerly was a vice president at WRC-TV in Washington and edited the New York Post, was found dead Jan. 20 at his home in Hoboken, N.J. He died sometime overnight, an MSNBC spokesman said.
Mr. Nachman had been editor in chief and vice president of MSNBC since 2002. He told the viewers of his evening interview show, "Nachman," last January that doctors had found a malignancy in his gallbladder.
In the early 1980s, he was vice president and general manager of WRC-AM radio in Washington. He won a promotion and became news director of WNBC-TV, the flagship NBC station in New York, and reportedly made the station a winner in the major evening time periods, 5, 6 and 11.
He returned to Washington in 1986 as vice president and general manager of the NBC affiliate WRC-TV (Channel 4). He quit the next year, telling The Washington Post: "I've been on the fast track at NBC for six years, with four vice-presidencies. It's been nice, but I'm 41, and I'm just not sure I want to stay on the train."
He was a New York Post columnist in 1988 and then served as the pugnacious tabloid's editor in chief from 1989 to 1992.
After leaving the Post, he settled in Santa Fe, N.M., to write books and be a consultant -- a quieter life.
In the mid-1990s, he returned to New York and worked at WCBS-TV. He was an executive producer of a program about New York City school corruption that won a Peabody Award in 1995.
The next year, when he was vice president of news, the station received the Edward R. Murrow Award for outstanding achievements in electronic journalism from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. The entry, "Flunking Lunch," investigated the city's school lunch program, which the station found was serving outdated and spoiled food to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren.
He worked in late 2001 as a staff writer for the NBC television series "UC: Undercover" and was a staff writer and executive producer at "Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher."
Mr. Nachman's final assignment for MSNBC was reporting on the Michael Jackson case in California, the network said.
Jerome Nachman was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in Pittsburgh by his mother and stepfather after his parents divorced. He said he attended Youngstown State University "for years and years" before becoming a newspaper reporter in Ohio and Pittsburgh.
Starting in the early 1970s, he was an on-air reporter for WCBS Radio and a correspondent for WCBS-TV in New York. He was lured to NBC in 1981.
His marriage to Nancy Cook ended in divorce.
Survivors include a brother.