Longtime Newsman, Former LSU J-school Director, Dead

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(AP) A.O. Goldsmith, a longtime newsman and former director of both the LSU Press and the LSU School of Journalism, has died at a nursing home in his Missouri home town.

He was in his mid-90s, Lyman Skyles, managing editor of The Daily Dunklin Democrat, said Sunday.

His grandson Miles Thorpe said Saturday that funeral plans were incomplete. The answering service for McDaniel Funeral Service had no information Sunday.

Thorpe said Goldsmith had been writing a weekly column for The Daily Dunklin Democrat, the Dunklin County newspaper, since he retired in 1974 as director of the LSU School of Journalism and returned to Kennett, Mo. His last column was published in mid-April.

He died Friday, Thorpe said.

Goldsmith was reporting news long before getting his first two degrees in journalism at LSU. He began his career where it ended, writing for the Dunklin Democrat in Kennett.

From there he went to the Arkansas Democrat; his column, ""Arkanstuff,"" was published by 30 weekly newspapers. He left the Arkansas Democrat when he was drafted to fight in World War II, serving under Army Gen. George S. Patton.

After the war, Goldsmith and his wife, Josephine, moved to Baton Rouge. At the age of 38, Goldsmith enrolled at LSU. He received his bachelor's and master's there, and his Ph.D. in mass communication at the University of Iowa.

Goldsmith returned to LSU as the director of the LSU Press in 1950. As a journalism professor, he wrote for several journals and publications, including writing book reviews and features in the Sunday Advocate.

Goldsmith was an elder in the University Presbyterian Church, past president of the Louisiana News Photographers Association and the Southwest Journalism Congress. He also was a member of several organizations, including the Radio-Television News Directors Association and the Louisiana Commission on Governmental Ethics.

Goldsmith is survived by his wife and one of three children, Nathan Kent Goldsmith.