Bryce Nelson, a former Los Angeles Instances reporter and a longtime professor at USC’s journalism college, the place he served as director within the Nineteen Eighties, died Saturday of issues from Parkinson’s illness, his household stated. He was 84.
After stints on the Washington Put up, the place he reported on Congress and overseas affairs, and Science journal, Nelson joined the Los Angeles Instances in 1969. Over the following 13 years, he served as a Washington correspondent and as Midwest bureau chief, masking the nuclear catastrophe at Three Mile Island, the Attica jail riot and the rebellion at Wounded Knee, amongst different tales. He then joined the science employees of the New York Instances, reporting on human conduct.
A protracted educational profession adopted. He was director of USC’s College of Journalism from 1984 to 1988, served as chair of the varsity’s graduate research from 1993 to 1997 and remained a professor there till his retirement in 2014.
“Bryce had a really robust ethical heart,” stated Joe Saltzman, a USC journalism professor and former colleague. “He wasn’t swayed by developments. He wasn’t swayed by what’s standard at present.” He described Nelson as a champion of “old style values of accuracy, equity and transparency.”
Nelson was recognized to college students for giving generously of his time.
“You give me an inventory of professors who're incredible with college students, he’d be on that checklist,” Saltzman stated. “He by no means stated, ‘I’m busy.’ He stated, ‘Come on in, let’s speak.’ He would spend actually hours together with his college students, the place few of his colleagues would.”
Nelson was born Dec. 16, 1937, in Reno, Nev., to Herman and Jennie Nelson. He graduated from Harvard, the place he was president of the scholar newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, and later earned a grasp of philosophy diploma in politics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. For years, he inspired USC college students to use to the scholarship program.
Nelson served as senior advisor for press data for the Christopher Fee, which investigated the Los Angeles Police Division after the beating of Rodney King.
When the fee issued its report in 1991, Nelson had copies distributed to journalists with the proviso that they wait two hours to share it with the general public — a technique generally known as an “embargo.”
“He trusted that everyone would abide by it, and all of us did, apart from one TV reporter,” stated Judy Muller, a former ABC information correspondent and later one in every of Nelson’s colleagues at USC.
“I bear in mind he was so appalled that any person would try this after he’d labored so arduous to get an settlement that was honest to everyone,” she stated. “Bryce simply seemed crestfallen. It was the one time I’d ever seen him specific anger about one thing.”
She stated Nelson was a print journalist by way of and thru, coming of age within the a long time earlier than scholar reporters have been studying to tweet within the area.
“He was positively from one other period,” she stated. “He had this actually excessive sense of the integrity of the occupation that needed to be adhered to, whether or not you have been tweeting or writing an extended piece within the New York Instances. That was the underside line for him.”
After he was recognized with Parkinson’s, which curtailed his mobility, he got here by Muller’s workplace at USC and requested her when she deliberate to retire.
“He stated, ‘Don’t wait too lengthy, as a result of I assumed I’d have all this time to journey and do all of the issues I wished to do, and now I can’t,’” Muller stated.
Nelson was a go-to supply when reporters wished a quote on journalistic ethics or the state of the information business.
In 1995, Nelson blasted CBS Information for being on a “quest for gossipy journalism” after interviewer Connie Chung coaxed Newt Gingrich’s mom right into a nasty comment about Hillary Clinton.
In a 1996 Tampa Tribune story about Time journal’s Most Influential Folks checklist, Nelson lamented the rise of “sales-oriented journalism” that crowded out “extra essential, critical journalism.”
In a 2005 Every day Trojan story about left-leaning political bias amongst school journalism lecturers, Nelson stated ideology was irrelevant in his classroom, and he taught college students to maintain their private emotions out of their reportage.
“Journalists attempt to view issues as dispassionately and nonpartisan as potential,” he stated. “Journalism professors observe an expert mannequin. Folks aren’t carefully recognized with a political social gathering, and if they're, as journalists, they are usually suspect.”
Nelson hardly ever turned away interview requests, and his years as a reporter gave him a way of what journalists wanted.
“He wouldn’t give flip, fast solutions simply to get a journalist off the telephone,” Saltzman stated. “He didn’t thoughts silence. So if a reporter requested him a query, there is likely to be an extended pause on the opposite finish. He would very rigorously give a measured, considerate reply, which is uncommon.”
Nelson was married to Martha Streiff Nelson, a kids’s therapist, for 41 years earlier than her loss of life in 2002. His daughter, Kristin Nelson Winton, died in 2015.
“Bryce was a fantastic man,” stated his second spouse, Mary Shipp Bartlett, of Pasadena. “He did all the things with grace, even his exit from the world.”
Nelson is survived by Bartlett; his son, Matthew Nelson, of Richardson, Texas; granddaughter Anneka Winton of Bend, Ore.; and two brothers.
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