Last Updated: April 06, 2000
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ASNE on the move
Former president Lee Hills dies
Lee Hills, former ASNE president and chairman of Knight Ridder,
died Feb. 3 at a medical institute in Miami Beach. He was 93.
Hills was known for his lifelong devotion to the newspaper business,
high standards, and unflinching values.
“This is a man who did it all,” said David Lawrence Jr., a longtime
associate of Hills and another former ASNE president. He was a man “who
mastered the craft and who taught others. Who had great energy, and so
many important things to do, but was unfailingly gracious in sharing his
time with other people.”
“The quality of those he hired and promoted was so superb that the wisdom
of his decisions was obvious,” Lawrence said. “He once said: ‘If, God forbid,
someone writes an epitath for me, I hope it will simply say: “He chose
good people and helped them do their best.” ’ ”
Hills was a Pulitzer winner with both the Detroit Free Press and The
Miami Herald. When he won the prize at the Free Press, in fact, he was
shuttling between Miami and Detroit as executive editor of both newspapers.
In July 1962, while ASNE president, Hills led a dozen editors on the
Society’s first visit to the Soviet Union, a 23-day whirlwind tour visiting
editors, government officials and industrial plants.
At one point, as Hills recounted in the ASNE Bulletin, the group was
told it was going to appear at Communist Peace Congress, where it would
get to see Premier Khrushchev. “I replied that under no circumstances would
we attend the congress. We had no intention of letting ourselves be used
for its propaganda purposes. Also, that if this were a condition of the
interview, (Khrushchev) could forget the interview.”
The Russians backed down. And the editors got their interview.
