Howard Fineman, Former HuffPost Global Editor And Prolific Washington Journalist, Dies At 75

Howard Fineman, a titan of the Washington journalism establishment, died of pancreatic cancer Tuesday, his wife said in a statement. He was 75.

Fineman spent three decades at Newsweek, traveling the nation as the magazine’s chief political correspondent. He interviewed presidents and presidential wannabes, and provided a critical look behind the curtain of Capitol Hill as a regular analyst on cable television, dissecting the daily machinations of politics with a sharp wit and the mind of a journalism historian that spanned decades.

Fineman began his career in the late 1960s at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, as a cub reporter and, later, editor-in-chief of The Colgate Maroon student newspaper.

Colgate would leave a lasting impression. Fineman mentored a stable of young alumni who followed in his path, some of whom remain at HuffPost and other prominent news outlets.

“If I am any guide — and today I am supposed to be — this lovely college will be a constant star, a steady torchlight, as influential as family, faith or profession,” he recounted during Colgate’s 2011commencement address. “Friends I made here remain my friends. My great teachers still guide me through the years. The town of Hamilton and its genial people, the beauty of the campus and the Chenango Valley, forever remind me of what is best about our country and its history.”

Fineman was born in 1948 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was raised in the “very large and very wonderful” Jewish community of Squirrel Hill, he recalled in an interview. He recounted traveling to Ukraine — then part of the Soviet Union — in 1970, shortly after graduation, with plans to drive a Volkswagon bus to explore his Jewish roots.

Shortly into his trip, he was