Newsroom Diversity Advocate Nancy Maynard Dies

By: Nancy Hicks Maynard, a journalist and advocate of diversity in the newsroom, has died.

Maynard died Sunday in Los Angeles of organ failure. She was 61 years old.

Maynard was a former co-publisher of the Oakland Tribune and helped establish the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

She began her journalism career in the mid-1960s at the New York Post. Later, at age 23, she became the first black woman reporter at the New York Times.

After marrying Washington Post reporter Robert C. Maynard in 1975, the couple founded the nonprofit institute to train minority journalists.

In 1983, the couple purchased the financially struggling Oakland Tribune from Gannett. They decided to sell it in 1992 after Robert Maynard was struggling with prostate cancer. The paper remains the only major metropolitan daily to have ever been black-owned.

Funeral services were pending.