OBITUARIES : T. Dorsey, 60; Ex-Times News Service Chief

Thomas B. Dorsey, former director of the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News service and a veteran editor credited with the development of many syndicated features, died Wednesday at Cedars Sinai Medical Center after a heart attack. He was 60.

Dorsey, who came to the Times syndicate and news service after working for the New York Herald Tribune, Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, Newsday and the Knight News Service, helped popularize and encourage such newspaper writers and columnists as Erma Bombeck, Jeane Dixon, Evans and Novak, Stewart Alsop, Art Buchwald, Cleveland Amory, Rex Reed, Joe Hyams, Julia Child, Dr. Neil Solomon and many more.

He brought to comics pages across the country the Wizard of Id, Broom-Hilda, Modesty Blaise, Big George and others, and he helped license the conversion of the comic strip Little Orphan Annie to the musical production of “Annie” on Broadway and in film.

For television, he produced “Adlai Stevenson Reports” on ABC in the early 1960s.

Dorsey moved to the syndication field after working as a journalist. He was a correspondent for the Des Moines Register, European correspondent for the Times Publishing Co. and national affairs editor for American Weekend in Washington.

In 1957, he joined the Herald Tribune News Service and after work with other syndicates and news wire services, became editor of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate in 1975 and director of the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post News Service that same year. Since leaving that syndicate in 1977 he has been head of his own Dorsey Communications Inc. in Los Angeles.

Survivors include his wife, Helen, a son, Blinn, and daughter, Diana. Services will be private.