Tom Shales, who was among the first television critics awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his commentary, died in a Fairfax County, Virginia, hospital, according to multiple reports. He was 79.
Shales, a former Washington Post columnist whose voice was regularly heard on WTOP, died of complications related to COVID-19 and renal failure on Jan. 13, his caretaker told the Washington Post.
The syndicated columnist started reporting for the paper after joining in 1972 and became chief TV critic in 1977. After more than a decade of work with the Washington Post, Shales became the fourth person to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1988.
Shales left the paper in 2010 as part of a buyout offered to employees, he said in an interview, marking roughly 39 years of covering news programs, sitcoms and other media moments.
“Tom Shales was nationally syndicated,” the D.C. city council wrote, in part, ” … But for us in the District, Shales was just our local guy we read on the Metro on our way to work.”
Before his death, the lauded columnist had produced the book “Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live,” alongside author James Andrew Miller.
“I go way back to Saturday Night Live’s dawning. I was there, not for the first show, but I used to go up to New York and sort of hang around and make a nuisance of myself because I was immediately attracted to it,” Shales said in an interview on the book at the National Press Club in 2014. “It was something both new and old.”
A decade after the interview, Miller shared his thoughts on Shales in a post on X.
“I loved him like a brother … he will be missed by many,” Miller said.
Tom Shales passed away this morning. The Pulitzer Prize winning former critic at The Washington Post — and one of the country’s most brilliant writers — was 79. I loved him like a brother … he will be missed by many. @RealTomShales #TomShales pic.twitter.com/TVrZOtaWCh
— james andrew miller (@JimMiller) January 13, 2024
The Elgin, Illinois-born writer was an alumni of American University in D.C., whose work bloomed as television picked up steam — “Mr. Shales grew up with the medium,” Washington Post reporters Adam Bernstein and Brian Murphy wrote in his obituary.
“Mr. Shales spent his career in a high profile but eternally frustrating job. His hope of finding originality, risk-taking and even beauty in the TV industry was often dashed,” the obituary reads. “But he forged on, as a matter of faith in a medium he fundamentally adored.”
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