Max Frankel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times corresponded who would rise to become its executive editor, has died, his wife confirmed to the paper on Sunday. He was 94.
Frankel died Sunday in his Manhattan home, wife Joyce Purnick, herself a former reporter and editor at The Times, said.
Frankel fled Nazi Germany as a child and came to New York not knowing any English. He gravitated toward journalism, a career that would see him rise to the summit of his profession, befriending world leaders and leading the Times during eight years of great change and turmoil on the global stage.
Frankel went with Richard Nixon to China on his 1972 mission to normalize relations, and chronicled the president’s meetings with Mao and Chou En-lai, along the way giving American readers a look into the lives of everyday Chinese, who had been in isolation since the Communist revolution of 1949. His 24 articles in those eight days won the 1973 Pulitzer for international reporting.
Frankel served as the Times’ opinions editor and later executive editor from 1986 to 1994, a time of mostly massive growth for the storied newspaper.
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