Blair Clark

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Ledyard Blair Clark (1917–2000)^[1]^[2] was a liberal journalist and political activist who played key roles both as a journalist and a political operator. He was general manager and vice president of CBS News from 1961 to 1964, and later became editor of The Nation magazine. In 1968 he was Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy's national campaign manager for the Democratic presidential nomination. Later Clark became treasurer of the New Democratic Coalition, a group of disaffected liberals from the 1968. When the Watergate break-in occurred, Clark was the Democratic National Committee's communications director.

Born in East Hampton, New York in 1917, Clark attended boarding school at St. Mark's School and graduated in 1940 from Harvard College, where he was editor and president of the Harvard Crimson newspaper.

Clark had a knack for connecting with talented and ambitious people. At St. Mark's School, Clark became friends with poet Robert Lowell. At Harvard he befriended classmate John F. Kennedy; they remained in touch throughout Kennedy's political career, and Clark and Jacqueline Kennedy corresponded for decades. Journalist Theodore H. White was also a long-time contact. Clark reported for the Joseph Pulitzer Jr.-owned St. Louis Post-Dispatch before serving in the Army from 1941 to 1946.

In 1953 he joined CBS News in Paris, and later became producer and anchor of The World Tonight on the [[CBS Radio Network], now known as the nighttime edition of the CBS World News Roundup.

From 1961 to 1964 Clark was general manager and vice president of CBS News. He expanded the radio and television coverage of CBS News by hiring additional correspondents in the United States and abroad. He worked with Edward R. Murrow, and among those hired during his tenure were Walter Cronkite and [Dan Rather]].

After leaving CBS, Clark was associate publisher of the New York Post, editor of The Nation magazine, and a fellow of the New York Institute for Humanities at New York University. He was an influential early supporter of The New York Review of Books. Subsequently he taught at New York University and Princeton University.