Tom Shales, a Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic for The Washington Post for nearly 40 years, died Saturday. He was 79.
Shales died at a hospital in Fairfax, Virginia, according to the newspaper. The cause of death was complications from renal failure and COVID-19, his caretaker, Victor Herfurth, told the Post.
Shales began his career at the Post in 1972 writing for the newspaper’s Style section, according to NPR. Five years later he became the Post’s television critic.
Tom Shales, a Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic for The Washington Post who brought incisive and barbed wit to coverage of the small screen, died at a hospital in Fairfax County, Va. He was 79. https://t.co/libqO6gIR0
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 13, 2024
In 1988, Shales won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, becoming the fourth television reviewer to earn the top prize in journalism, according to the Post.
His winning works included the piece, “Bork and Biden,” a funny but scathing review of the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, NPR reported. The judge was eventually rejected by the Senate, but Shales called the first day of the hearings a “TV successor to ‘Mork and Mindy.’”
When CBS News correspondent Dan Rather traveled to war-torn Afghanistan for “60 Minutes” in 1980, Mr. Shales called him “Gunga Dan,” the Post reported. Shales added that Rather’s wearing of a men’s cap called a pakol and robes “made him look like an extra out of ‘Dr. Zhivago.’”
He tagged ABC’s “Good Morning America” host David Hartman as “Mr. Potato Head” and called NBC News’ Tom Brokaw as “Duncan the Wonder Horse,” according to the newspaper. His nickname for ABC News President Roone Arledge was “Rooney Tunes.”
Shales took a buyout from the Post in 2006 but stayed on contract for an additional four years, NPR reported.
Thomas William Shales was born in Elgin, Illinois, about 40 miles west of Chicago, on Nov. 3, 1944, according to the Post. He graduated in 1968 from American University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He became entertainment editor of the D.C. Examiner, a free tabloid, before joining the Post.
Shales co-wrote a pair of two best-selling oral histories with James Andrew Miller, according to NPR: “Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live,” in 2002; and “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN,” in 2011.
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