RIP

Journalist Jack Germond Dies

Just after completing a novel, his wife says.

Longtime political journalist Jack Germond died early Wednesday morning, his wife, Alice, confirmed. He was 85. Germond was a columnist for the Washington Star, after spending 20 years at the Baltimore Sun and 20 years prior to that at Gannett papers. From 1977 until 2000, he wrote a syndicated column with Jules Witcover that ran five days a week. The pair also wrote four books together about the presidential elections in 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992. He appeared on PBS’s McLaughlin Group since it began in 1981. Germond’s wife said in an email to Politico he died “peacefully and quickly” just before 4 a.m.—and just after completing a novel he had been thinking about for years.