R. Maynard, Leading Black Journalist, Dies

Robert C. Maynard, a high school dropout who rose to become editor of the Oakland Tribune and the only African-American ever to own a major metropolitan newspaper, has died after a long fight with cancer, friends said Wednesday. He was 56.

Maynard, who was found to have prostate cancer in 1988 and who underwent several rounds of radiation treatment, died Tuesday night at his home in the Oakland hills, a family spokesman said.

A lifelong journalist, Maynard was perhaps best known for his wizardry in keeping the Tribune afloat during the 1980s, when a recession, suburban competition and a devastating earthquake eroded its advertising base.

But his greater accomplishment, some say, was winning expanded opportunities for minority journalists, whose representation has slowly but steadily increased in American newsrooms.

Washington Post columnist Dorothy Gilliam, president of the National Assn. of Black Journalists, called Maynard a mentor for thousands of minority reporters and editors, declaring: “The fields of journalism and mass communication have lost a giant.”

Gov. Pete Wilson praised Maynard “as a pioneer, as an innovator and as one of California’s great newspaper publishers (who) exemplified public service and a commitment to the community.”

Characterized by his dignified bearing, elegant suits and resonant voice, Maynard became editor of the Tribune in 1979 and purchased the paper from Gannett Co. for $22 million four years later. The sale evolved into a paper transaction as concessions on the debt were made in efforts to preserve the paper.

In the Bay Area, Maynard will best be remembered for keeping the Tribune alive when financial troubles appeared ready to steal its last breath. The closest call came in 1991 when the paper, facing a $32-million debt, was within a week of closing. Maynard engineered its rescue with a cash infusion from the nonprofit Freedom Forum, an Arlington, Va.-based media foundation.

Under Maynard’s stewardship, the 119-year-old daily integrated and beefed up its staff, vastly increased coverage of urban problems plaguing Oakland and won numerous awards, culminating in a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for photographic coverage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

But Maynard’s failing health--along with the paper’s money woes and declining readership--prompted him to sell the Tribune to the Alameda Newspaper Group, a suburban chain, last November. All 630 employees were laid off. Although about 200 were rehired, the paper is a much different product today.

Maynard, however, maintained his national profile in journalism, continuing to write a syndicated column and serving on the board of directors of the nonprofit Institute for Journalism Education, which he co-founded to push for increased diversity in media coverage and staffing.

The mood in the Tribune newsroom was somber Wednesday as reporters mulled the loss of the charismatic editor and publisher who believed that newspapers should be used as instruments for social change.

Mary Ellen Butler, a longtime friend and editorial page editor for the Tribune, said Maynard used the paper “as a bully pulpit to address the problems of Oakland, because he really believed the newspaper could make the city a better place.”

Unlike the owners of many papers, Maynard was a constant presence in the Tribune newsroom, where he encouraged writers tackling big stories and often bummed cigarettes, but never, his staff agreed, meddled.

Harry Harris, a veteran Tribune police reporter, recalled his amazement as he watched his boss clamber beneath a collapsed Oakland viaduct in the hours after the 1989 earthquake.

“He was crawling under this perilous freeway--which could have crushed him at any moment--and snapping pictures,” Harris recalled. “The cops thought he was crazy, but we ended up using some of his photos.”

The youngest of six children born to an immigrant from Barbados, Maynard dropped out of a Brooklyn high school at age 16 to become a writer for a now-defunct black weekly, New York Age.

But when he tried to ascend the journalism ladder, he met resistance from editors of regional papers, who “believed it was impossible that I, a black man, could understand and cover the white suburbs,” he recalled in a 1979 interview.

Eventually, however, he landed a job as a police reporter on a daily in York, Pa. Four years later, in 1965, he won a prestigious Nieman fellowship to Harvard University. After Harvard, Maynard was hired by the Washington Post, where he covered civil rights as a national correspondent before becoming an ombudsman and member of the editorial board.

Maynard took a leave from the Post in 1976 to launch the Institute for Journalism Education, which established a summer training program for minority journalists at UC Berkeley. Between 1976 and 1989, the program trained 206 nonwhite journalists and placed them in daily newspaper jobs.

Maynard is survived by his wife, Nancy Hicks Maynard; his daughter, Dori; sons David and Alex, and four brothers and sisters. Memorial services are scheduled for Friday in Oakland and early next week in Washington.

Times researcher Norma Kaufman contributed to this story.