Newspaper Family Historian, J-Prof Susan E. Tifft Dies at 59

By: E&P Staff Susan E. Tifft, who co-wrote histories of the storied Bingham and Ochs-Sulzberger newspaper families with her husband Alex S. Jones, died Thursday at her home in Cambridge, Mass. She was 59.

?Susan died at about 8:30 a.m. on this beautiful April morning,? Jones wrote in her CaringBridge.com blog. ?Her brother Doug was holding her hand. He said she left like a candle going out, and her great spirit was released.? Tifft had been suffering from cancer of the uterus.

With Jones, Tifft wrote ?The Patriarch: The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty,? published in 1991 and ?The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times,? published in 1999.

Susan Elizabeth Tifft was born in Rumford, Me., and grew up in St. Louis and was a press secretary for the Federal Election Commission and campaign speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter before joining Time magazine, where she wrote until 1991.

Since 1998 she had Jones have shared the Eugene C. Patterson Professor of the Practice of Journalism at Duke University.

In addition to her husband and brother, she is survived by a sister, Sara.