Russell Wayne Baker

Mr. Russell Wayne Baker is a former Columnist of the New York Times and the Baltimore Sun as well as a host for the PBS Show Masterpiece Theatre. At the Washington bureau of the New York Times (1954–62), he covered the White House, the State Department, and the Congress. In the early 1960s he began writing the “Observer” column on the paper’s editorial page. In this syndicated humour column he initially concentrated on political satire, writing about the administrations of U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon. Moving to New York City in 1974, he found other subjects to skewer, and in 1979 he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. His topics included tax reform, the artist Norman Rockwell, inflation, and fear. Baker's Growing Up (1982), which recalls his peripatetic childhood, won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for biography. A sequel, The Good Times, was published in 1989.