Ex-Hearst Newspaper chief Robert Danzig
Robert J. Danzig, who overcame difficult beginnings as a foster child during the Great Depression to become the head of Hearst Newspapers, has died, the company said. He was 85.
Mr. Danzig led the newspaper division at Hearst from 1977 to 1997, overseeing its growth to become the seventh largest newspaper company in the United States, the company said. He died Wednesday on Cape Cod after a long illness.
Under Mr. Danzig’s leadership, Hearst acquired the Houston Chronicle, San Antonio ExpressNews and several community newspapers. It gained a daily circulation of more than 1.3 million and a Sunday circulation of more than 2.5 million, the company said.
“Bob Danzig played a pivotal role in the dramatic growth of Hearst’s newspaper operations in a career that spanned more than 50 years,” Hearst President and CEO Steven R. Swartz said. “He was the rarest of executive talent, with equal measures of pragmatism and warmth, and his leadership lessons are part of Hearst’s DNA.”
Mr. Danzig was also a senior Hearst executive and a member of the company’s board of directors.
After his retirement from the company in 1998, he wrote several books about foster children, inspired by his own childhood. Mr. Danzig’s parents divorced during the Great Depression and abandoned him in Albany, N.Y., at the age of 2, Hearst said. He spent the next 14 years in various foster homes.