by: Robert D. McFadden | New York Times

James M. Naughton, a prank-loving White House and national correspondent for The New York Times during the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations and later a senior editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer for almost two decades, died on Saturday at his home in St. Petersburg, Fla. He would have been 74 on Monday.

The cause was complications of prostate cancer, said his wife, Diana Naughton.