Anthony Insolia, a down-to-earth former editor of Newsday who presided over that Long Island newspaper’s expansion and several big investigative projects, died on Saturday, April 6, in Philadelphia. He was 98.
His death, in a hospice, was confirmed by his stepdaughter, Robin Ireland.
Mr. Insolia was the editor of Newsday from late 1977 until his retirement 10 years later, a period when the newspaper, a tabloid owned then by the Times Mirror Co., won seven Pulitzer Prizes, expanded its foreign reporting staff to multiple far-flung bureaus and solidified its reputation for hard-hitting, streetwise journalism close to home.
But it was an undertaking a year before he took charge of Newsday that was among his most significant journalistic accomplishments: what came to be known as the Arizona Project, a pioneering effort in collaborative journalism across many news organizations.
