Beloved editor dies
Mooney, ex-Newser, succumbs to cancer at 66
MARK MOONEY, a newsroom favorite at the Daily News as both reporter and editor during a long journalistic career, died Friday after a years-long bout with prostate cancer. He was 66.
Mooney announced his own death in a posthumous posting via a blog where he provided a courageous, terrifying and inspiring blow-by-blow of his final months alive.
“If you are reading this, that means that I am no longer here,” Mooney wrote in a column titled “My Last Byline.”
“The prostate cancer finished toying with me on Oct. 6, 2017. I was ... glad to be done with the damn disease.”
A 12:30 p.m. memorial service is set for Oct. 14 at the Prospect Presbyterian Church in Maplewood, N.J.
Mooney arrived in New York as a 17-year-old Fordham University freshman and soon found a home, personally and professionally. He worked at a variety of news outlets, from the Bronxville Review Press Reporter to United Press International to ABC News. And he served as a mentor to dozens of young journalists at each stop along the way.
“Mark Mooney was a wonderful writer, fantastic editor & kind man,” tweeted ABC News White House correspondent Karen Travers. “Condolences to his family.”
Mooney reached the Daily News in 1991, covering City Hall, the city’s prison system and New York’s hospitals before his promotion to deputy national editor.
“Mark was a fine journalist and an even better person,” said Robert Moore, head of news at The News. “He was very helpful to me in the beginning of my Daily News career, as I tried to navigate the big city. I’ll always remember him for that.”
Between 2000-07, Mooney worked as national/international editor, overseeing the Daily News staff in Washington along with 10 freelancers stationed around the globe.
In 2005, he spent a month reporting from Iraq, writing a series of stories on everything from the Iraqi elections to the graying of American troops in the country to an Army chiropractor.
He moved to ABCNews.com as its national editor in 2008 before his final stop at CNNMoney. Mooney took particular pride in his memoir “Three Cents A Mile,” the tale of a two-year global hitchhiking trek starting in March 1978.
He quit his newspaper job in New Rochelle and headed to Ireland, the first stop on a 41,000-mile odyssey that brought him across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Mooney was survived by his wife, Thomson Reuters national correspondent Barbara Goldberg, and their children Maura and Paul. In lieu of flowers, Mooney suggested donations to Doctors Without Borders.