Howard Fineman, a longtime Washington scribe who mastered many different mediums during a decades-long distinguished journalism career, died after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He died on Tuesday night at the age of 75. The news was announced by his wife, Amy Nathan.
Howard may be a familiar figure to everyone. Not only was he ubiquitous on MSNBC and a prolific writer during the golden age of Newsweek, but he also played a major role at The Huffington Post, serving for a time as the site’s global editor.
“Global” is a good description of Howard. There is a gravitational pull about him. He was a man who never stopped reporting, writing and commenting – seemingly unsatisfied unless he was contributing to the day’s conversation.
“I’ve gone from a manual typewriter to Twitter,” he told me of his career when we spoke for this article. “I’ve done everything except sky writing.”
Suffering from terminal cancer, he said he would try it during his lifetime. Of course, this is a joke. But in that moment, it wasn’t hard to imagine him on the plane. There are few stories he wouldn’t pursue.
I first met Howard as a researcher for his book Thirteen Arguments for America. It’s a noble project, an attempt to distill some 250 years of history into any number of elaborate binary controversies. He later admitted that this was “classic over-nervousness.” Still, it was a bestseller.
From that point on, Howard played a huge role in my career, getting me into Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism (where he also went) and the Newsweek internship program. He then joined me at The Huffington Post, where I was political editor.
Despite a lot of overlapping history, our relationship grew even closer in the years after we both left The Huffington Post. I developed a huge love for Howard when I ran into him in the neighborhood or sat down for coffee. He is a man in the true sense of the word. He loved mentoring young reporters, and we grew attached to him.
I began to realize that the man I had long considered a symbol of Washington, D.C., was actually uncomfortable with it. He wanted to witness history, not be a part of it. He got into journalism because it fueled his curiosity and (like many in the field) eased his insecurities. He has a good outlook on work. I’m not sure what else he could enjoy.
“I’m not the most sociable person in the world at heart,” he told me. “The way I can be both an outsider and part of the human race is working in a newsroom.”
Howard was born on November 17, 1948 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His mother was an English teacher and his father was a manufacturer’s representative for a shoe company. From an early age, he had a clear career path mapped out.
On election night in 1956, as an 8-year-old, he transformed his family’s study into a makeshift newsroom, where he broadcast the election results to his parents and laid out stacks of paper to look like the network was feeding them basic information. Same as the cards in .
“It was truly one of the nerdiest things you could imagine,” Howard recalled.
He attended Colgate University, where he served as editor of the Colgate Maroon, and graduated from Columbia Journalism School in 1973.
A Jewish kid from Squirrel Hill might not seem like a good fit in bourbon country. But this paper would become the spiritual pillar of his career. Southern politics was unsettling—he covered Ku Klux Klan rallies during the day because his editor prohibited him from doing so at night—but it had an undeniable charm. It’s a “porch style,” as he puts it, suitable for “storytelling.”
“In a lot of ways, that was the best,” he said of his days in Louisville. “The irony is that for many reporters at the time who were eager to come to Washington, they didn’t realize how lucky they were. It was awesome and I loved every minute of it.
I’ve always wondered why Howard didn’t stay at Louisville because his time there was so sentimental. But he shooed away those assumptions like pesky mosquitoes. DC is his target. He saw the city as “an empire distinct from Rome” where “all the vectors of power in the country met.” He wanted to be at that intersection.
In 1977, he joined the Washington bureau of the Courier Journal and within three years was hired by Newsweek. His trajectory continued from there: labor reporter, political correspondent, chief political correspondent, senior editor and then Washington bureau chief.
Charting that path requires obvious skill, and Howard certainly has that. But it also requires a bit of professional perseverance. Colleagues described to Howard a strong attitude that I saw late in his career. He wants to have the best Rolodex and the best homework. He is well known for his competitiveness, which has also fostered his work ethic. He worked late into the night to practice for a hit TV show the next morning. He litigated everything — a byproduct of his law degree from night classes at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law.
“He was a force of nature,” recalled Jonathan Alter, his longtime colleague at Newsweek. “He knew everyone in Washington. Not only did he know them, but he had a deep understanding of who they were and what they were doing. He was very politically astute.
But Howard is also benefiting from larger structural changes in the media industry. News magazines are elevating their reporters into true must-reads. Broadcast journalism is turning to young broadcast talent. Watergate gave reporting moral virtue and real fame.
“I went into Columbia wanting to be Teddy White and coming out wanting to be Woodward and Bernstein,” Howard told me. “One might say they saved American constitutional government. Let’s just say they became famous.
Howard continued to drive these tectonic shifts: becoming one of the most recognized pundits in cable news and then joining the network news wave at its peak. But he – at least in my opinion – had a complicated relationship with the concept of reputation. I once asked him if he was motivated by this.
“If you do this to me, I will come back from the grave and kill you,” he shot back. Minutes later, he admitted the appeal.
For Howard, the unease isn’t the fame he’s rightfully earned, but that he’s moved away from his Pittsburgh roots and Louisville for something lighter.
During our conversation, he repeatedly described himself as an “outsider.” It’s not lost on him that Newsweek is the scrappy underdog next to Time and the Huffington Post is the traitor among its peers. He was proud of these episodes. He was also critical of journalists because they disagreed with his belief that careers were not part of power but a check on power.
“In Washington,” he said, “as journalists, we fool ourselves into thinking we are part of the establishment. We ultimately are not.
It’s because of this that I not only admire Howard, I love him. He was righteous about what was right and stood up for it in the right way. He has great ideas and surprising depth. He has a value system in an industry and a town that is often lost. Of all the articles he has written, the presidents he has interviewed, and the places he has visited, his reflections on the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue — where he was bar mitzvahed — he considers this to be the most important. His best work.
He never really left the nest at home in Pittsburgh.
I will miss my friends. But more importantly, we in the political journalism community will miss the example he set. Goodbye, Howard.
