Raymond Walter Apple Jr. (November 20, 1934 – October 4, 2006), known as Johnny Apple but bylined as R.W. Apple Jr., was a correspondent and associate editor at ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', where he wrote on a variety of subjects, most notably politics, travel, and food.
Biography
Early life and education
Born in Akron, Ohio, Apple graduated from
Western Reserve Academy
, motto_translation = Light and Truth
, address = 115 College Street
, city = Hudson
, state = Ohio
, zipcode = 44236-2999
, country = United ...
, a private, coeducational boarding school in the small suburban town of
Hudson, where he first practiced
journalism
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...
at the school's newspaper, "The Reserve Record." Apple first attended
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
, where he was twice expelled
for devoting too much time to working as chairman of the ''
Daily Princetonian
''The Daily Princetonian'', originally known as ''The Princetonian'' and nicknamed the Prince, is the independent daily student newspaper of Princeton University.
Founded on June 14, 1876 as ''The'' ''Princetonian'', it changed its name to ''T ...
''. He later received a
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
(''
magna cum laude'') from the
Columbia University School of General Studies
The School of General Studies, Columbia University (GS) is a liberal arts college and one of the undergraduate colleges of Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights, New York City. GS is known primarily ...
in 1961.
He began his career with ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' in the 1950s, covering business and social issues, including the early years of the
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
. He served as a journalist and speechwriter in the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
from 1957 to 1959, and returned to the ''Wall Street Journal'' after completing his service. In 1961, he went to work at
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...
, becoming the lifelong friend of a then young
Tom Brokaw
Thomas John Brokaw (; born February 6, 1940) is an American retired network television journalist and author. He first served as the co-anchor of ''The Today Show'' from 1976 to 1981 with Jane Pauley, then as the anchor and managing editor of '' ...
. While at NBC, Apple reported for the ''
Huntley-Brinkley Report'' and won an
Emmy Award for his work. In the last of his 29 appearances on the
Charlie Rose talk show, he said that the most satisfying time of his career was when he was reporting on the American civil rights movement.
Career in journalism
Apple joined ''The New York Times'' in 1963 and over more than 30 years, contributed foreign correspondence from over 100 countries, including coverage of the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
– where his penetrating questioning helped expose the unreliability of the military briefings known as the
Five O'Clock Follies – the
Biafra
Biafra, officially the Republic of Biafra, was a partially recognised secessionist state in West Africa that declared independence from Nigeria and existed from 1967 until 1970. Its territory consisted of the predominantly Igbo-populated form ...
crisis, the
Iranian revolution
The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dyna ...
, and the fall of
Communist governments in the
Soviet bloc. In addition, he served as the ''Times' '' bureau chief in
Saigon,
Lagos
Lagos (Nigerian English: ; ) is the largest city in Nigeria and the second most populous city in Africa, with a population of 15.4 million as of 2015 within the city proper. Lagos was the national capital of Nigeria until December 1991 fo ...
,
Nairobi
Nairobi ( ) is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The name is derived from the Maasai phrase ''Enkare Nairobi'', which translates to "place of cool waters", a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The city proper h ...
,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
and
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...
.
In Vietnam, Apple distinguished himself as chief of ''The New York Times'' bureau and won many awards for his work.
[ In a long article in 1967, "The Making of a Stalemate," he exposed the failure of the U.S. military to make progress in the war after years of fighting and with some 500,000 troops in the country. Nearly 40 years later it was revealed that one of the main sources for that influential story was Lt. Gen. Frederick Weyand, commander of U.S. forces in III Corps, the area around Saigon.
Apple covered combat stories in the field in Vietnam fearlessly. In 1966, he was nearly killed by friendly fire while covering a firefight at a village when a machine-gun bullet ripped through the back of his trousers and split his belt in half.
]Timothy Crouse
Timothy Crouse (born 1947) is an American journalist and writer.
Family
Crouse is the son of Anna (née Erskine) and Russel Crouse. His maternal grandparents were Pauline (Ives) and author, educator, and former Columbia professor John Erskine. T ...
profiled Apple in his book ''The Boys on the Bus
''The Boys on the Bus'' (1973) is author Timothy Crouse's seminal non-fiction book detailing life on the road for reporters covering the 1972 United States presidential election.
The book was one of the first treatises on pack journalism ever t ...
'' about journalists covering the 1972 presidential campaign. Reporters "recognized many of their own traits in him, grotesquely magnified. The shock of recognition frightened them. Apple was like them, only more blatant. He openly displayed the faults they tried to hide: the insecurity, the ambitiousness, the name-dropping" and "the weakness for powerful men."[
From 1993 to 1997, he was chief of the ]Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
bureau. He also served as the newspaper's National Political Correspondent in the 1970s and covered the 1972 presidential election.
Beyond the ''Times'' and the ''Journal'', Apple has been published in many prominent magazines, including ''The Atlantic Monthly
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', '' Esquire'', '' GQ'', and ''Gourmet
Gourmet (, ) is a cultural idea associated with the culinary arts of fine food and drink, or haute cuisine, which is characterized by refined, even elaborate preparations and presentations of aesthetically balanced meals of several contrasting, of ...
''.
Personal life
His first marriage was to Edith Smith, a former vice-consul in Saigon. He married Betsey Pinckney Brown in 1982. They maintained residences at 1509 28th Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. in the Georgetown neighborhood; on a farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Gettysburg (; non-locally ) is a borough and the county seat of Adams County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The Battle of Gettysburg (1863) and President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address are named for this town.
Gettysburg is home to th ...
; and in the Cotswold region of England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
.
Apple was widely known as an expert on food and wine
Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...
, and has lectured on those as well as political, social, and historical topics on several continents. According to his New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
colleague Adam Nagourney, "Johnny was the person to call for a restaurant recommendation when heading anywhere around the globe. To his eternal credit, he never kept secrets; he wrote about the places he discovered and loved. I soon learned a trick to find his recommendations without pestering him: I would search Nexis using three elements: his byline, the name of a city and the phrase "my wife, Betsey." For his 70th birthday, Apple threw a party at his favorite Paris bistro Chez l'Ami Louis that Calvin Trillin
Calvin Marshall Trillin (born 5 December 1935) is an American journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist. He is a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor (2012) and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts ...
wrote about in Gourmet Magazine: 'It's my understanding that Apple has simplified what could be a terribly difficult choice by telling them to bring everything."
On October 4, 2006, Apple died from complications of thoracic cancer. His last article published for the ''New York Times'' while he was still alive was an article on Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
cuisine that was published on September 30, 2006. The last ''New York Times'' article he wrote, entitled "The Global Gourmet," was published posthumously on October 5, 2006. The article was meant to be published in the ''Times travel section several weeks later but was brought forward due to his unexpected death.
Honors and awards
Apple was the recipient of a number of honors and fellowships, including the Chubb Fellowship
The Chubb Fellowship is a fellowship based and administered through Timothy Dwight College, one of Yale University's twelve residential colleges, and is one of Yale's highest honors for a visiting lecturer. In 1936, Hendon Chubb established a fund ...
at Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
.
He was the chair of the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee for the U.S. mid-Atlantic region.
He received honorary degrees from several institutions, including Denison University
Denison University is a private liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. One of the earliest colleges established in the former Northwest Territory, Denison University was founded in 1831. The college was first called the Granville Literary and ...
, Knox College, Gettysburg College
Gettysburg College is a private liberal arts college in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1832, the campus is adjacent to the Gettysburg Battlefield. Gettysburg College has about 2,600 students, with roughly equal numbers of men and women. ...
, Marquette University
Marquette University () is a private Jesuit research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Established by the Society of Jesus as Marquette College on August 28, 1881, it was founded by John Martin Henni, the first Bishop of the diocese of M ...
, and the University of the South
The University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee (), is a private Episcopal liberal arts college in Sewanee, Tennessee. It is owned by 28 southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church, and its School of Theology is an official seminary of ...
.
Bibliography
*
*
*
References
External links
*
Online NewsHour: R.W. Apple's Travel Guide to the United States
* ttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/r_w_apple_jr.html R.W. Apple Quotesbr>Apple Turnover on Slate Magazine
{{DEFAULTSORT:Apple, R.W. Jr.
1934 births
2006 deaths
Editors of New York City newspapers
American television journalists
American war correspondents
Emmy Award winners
Deaths from thoracic cancer
Columbia University School of General Studies alumni
American columnists
Writers from Akron, Ohio
Journalists from Washington, D.C.
American food writers
American restaurant critics
The New York Times editors
The New York Times writers
Critics employed by The New York Times
American male journalists
American war correspondents of the Vietnam War
War correspondents of the Nigerian Civil War
Journalists from Ohio
Western Reserve Academy alumni
People from Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)
20th-century American journalists