G. Gordon Strong, Publisher and Former Thomson Chief, Dies

By: G. Gordon Strong, who headed a pair of newspaper chains and later served as publisher of the Oakland Tribune, has died. Strong died of pneumonia Monday at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, according to his son George. He was 92.

For 15 years in the 1950s and 1960s Strong ran the Brush-Moore Newspapers chain, which included the San Gabriel Valley Daily Tribune and the Oxnard Press Courier.

He oversaw the sale of Brush-Moore to the Thomson Newspaper Group in 1967 for $72 million, then a record for an American journalism property. He became the chairman of the board of Thomson until 1977, when the company had grown to more than 100 papers.

Days after retiring from the Thomson board, he accepted a job as publisher of the Oakland Tribune, where he worked until retiring for good in 1980. He lived in Oakland until moving to Southern California in 1990.

In addition to his son, Strong is survived by a daughter, Jeanne Strong Cassayre of Napa, along with six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.