Spencer Klaw, Former 'CJR' Editor, Dies

Posted Monday, June 21, 2004 12:00 am

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(AP) Spencer Klaw, an author and former editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, died June 3 at his West Cornwall home. He was 84.

Klaw taught magazine writing at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 1970 and was named editor of CJR in 1980.

He oversaw an expansion of the magazine's coverage, which had formerly been limited mostly to press criticism. Under his editorship, CJR published articles on such topics as repetitive stress injury and labor issues at newspapers.

Klaw also was editor when Columbia University, which had published CJR since 1962, granted the magazine ""full editorial control.""

He graduated from Harvard University in 1941 and worked as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, United Press and The New Yorker magazine. He was an editor at The New York Herald Tribune and Fortune magazine.

He was author of several books, including ""The New Brahmins: Scientific Life in America"" (1968) and ""Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community"" (1993).

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Spencer Klaw, Former 'CJR' Editor, Dies

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