Paul Duke, 78, Longtime Moderator Of ‘Washington Week in Review’
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Paul Duke, who died Monday at 78, was for two decades the congenial moderator of public television’s oldest news discussion program, “Washington Week in Review.”
A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and NBC News, Duke joined PBS and “Washington Week” in 1974. He broadened the diversity of journalists represented on the panel to include women and minorities and helped to expand the audience to 4.5 million from 900,000.
Duke was born in 1926 in Bethlehem, Pa. He grew up in Richmond, Va., where he circulated a handwritten newspaper at 13, served as a radio station announcer at 16, and ran a nightly sportscast before he was 20. After graduating from the University of Richmond in 1947, he began his journalism career at the local Associated Press office. Duke started by writing a weekly Virginia Sports Reel column. He then developed an interest in politics and covered Virginia’s civil rights battles of the 1950s, which earned him a spot in the AP’s Washington bureau. In 1959, he left to report on politics for the Wall Street Journal, and later joined NBC.
In addition to leading the “Washington Week” panel at PBS, Duke hosted documentaries and news specials, including co-anchoring with Jim Lehrer coverage of impeachment proceedings against President Nixon in 1974.
After retiring from “Washington Week” in 1994, Duke moved to London and reported on life there in a weekly “Letter from London” for WETA-FM in Washington, D.C. He returned to “Washington Week” in 1999 to temporarily replace moderator Ken Bode. That year, Duke received the $25,000 John Chancellor Prize for lifetime journalistic excellence from the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Reminiscing about his career, Duke claimed that “the greatest freedom is to be able to do what you like to do, and for me, there’s nothing more rewarding than pursuing and publicizing the truth. H.L. Mencken had it right – journalists live the life of kings.”
Paul Duke
Born in 1926 in Bethlehem, Pa.; died July 18 in Washington of acute leukemia; survived by his wife, Janet Wachterand, and two children; Paul Duke Jr. and Amy Rider.
