Overview

• His family confirmed his death, and a University of South Carolina spokesman said he died Friday at his home in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, with no medical cause given beyond the obituary’s note that “his generous heart gave out.”
• He joined CNN in 1981 as the network’s first Pentagon correspondent and later served nine years as senior White House correspondent before retiring in 2001.
• His reporting spanned presidential campaigns from 1984 to 2000, the Supreme Court, and U.S.-Soviet summits, and he served as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association from 1991 to 1992.
• He won an Emmy for coverage of the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta and hosted CNN’s weekly program Newsmaker Saturday for a decade.
• After CNN, he became the first dean of the University of South Carolina’s journalism college, leading modernization and literacy initiatives; he is survived by his wife, former AP journalist Susanne Schafer, four children, grandchildren, and a great-grandchild, with CNN colleagues offering tributes.