William Woo
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William Franklin Woo (吳惠連, pinyin: Wú Huìlián, b. October 4, 1936 - d. April 12, 2006) was the first
Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from ...
to become editor of a major U.S. daily newspaper. Woo was born in Shanghai to Kyatang Woo and American Elizabeth Hart, who met in the early '30s as graduate students at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. His parents divorced after World War II, and Woo and his mother moved to the United States in 1946 and settled in
Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...
with her adoptive father. Woo attended the University of Kansas and joined The Kansas City Times in 1957. From 1962 to 1996, Woo held a variety of posts at the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch The ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' is a major regional newspaper based in St. Louis, Missouri, serving the St. Louis metropolitan area. It is the largest daily newspaper in the metropolitan area by circulation, surpassing the ''Belleville News-Dem ...
, founded by Joseph Pulitzer. In 1986, Woo became the first chief editor of the paper who was not named Joseph Pulitzer (there had been three). Joseph Pulitzer Jr., who had been Woo's mentor, died in 1995, and his half-brother, Michael Pulitzer, took over leadership of the company. In July 1996, Woo resigned under pressure to provide more bottom line- oriented leadership. In September 1996, Woo became the
Lorry I. Lokey Lorry I. Lokey (March 27, 1927 – October 1, 2022) was an American businessperson and philanthropist. A native of Portland, Oregon, he founded the company Business Wire in 1961 and donated in excess of $700 million to charities, with the majori ...
visiting professor of professional journalism at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, a post he held until his death. He was a member of the
Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
s Board of Jurors from 1997 to 2003.William Woo Since 1999, he had also served as a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong. When he died he was interim director of Stanford's Graduate Program in Journalism. Woo was married three times, to Sonia Flournoy, Tricia Ernst Woo, and Martha Shirk. He and his wife, Martha Shirk, a former Post-Dispatch reporter and author of four books, were the parents of three sons (Thomas Woo of San Francisco, California; and Bennett Woo and Peter Woo, both of Palo Alto). Woo often wrote about his children in a column that appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1986 through his retirement. Besides leaving behind wife Martha, he also left behind two half brothers (Robert C. Woo of St. Louis and John Woo of New York City); stepbrother Willie Woo of New York; half-sister Wendy Woo of San Mateo, California; and stepsister Elizabeth Li of Hong Kong. Woo died of
colon cancer Colorectal cancer (CRC), also known as bowel cancer, colon cancer, or rectal cancer, is the development of cancer from the colon or rectum (parts of the large intestine). Signs and symptoms may include blood in the stool, a change in bowel mo ...
at home in Palo Alto, California. In 2007, the University of Missouri Press published "Letters from the Editor: Lessons from Journalism and Life," a collection of weekly letters that Woo wrote to his Stanford students about the craft of journalism. In his introduction, Philip Meyer, the editor, wrote: "The career of William F. Woo tracked what many of our generation once considered the golden age of newspaper journalism... For the students and journalists of the 21st Century, Bill Woo's platform is a reminder of the values worth preserving."


References


William F. Woo, 69, Editor and Professor of Journalism, Dies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Woo, William American people of Chinese descent 1936 births 2006 deaths Deaths from colorectal cancer American male journalists 20th-century American journalists Deaths from cancer in California Kansas City Times people St. Louis Post-Dispatch people