John Carroll, former editor of the Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times, which won 13 Pulitzer Prizes during his five-year tenure, has died. He was 73.
Carroll died Sunday morning at his home in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was once editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, according to his wife, Lee Carroll. He had been suffering from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and debilitating neurological disorder.
Carroll was editor and senior vice-president of the Baltimore Sun from 1991 until 2000, when he left to take the head position at the Times, which would become his last journalism job in a career spanning 40 years.
John Carroll, who guided the L.A. Times to 13 Pulitzer Prizes during 5 years as top editor, has died at the age of 73 pic.twitter.com/PepabSLNy8— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 14, 2015
His years at the Times were considered a high point in the paper's recent history, and he and managing editor Dean Baquet (who would succeed Carroll there and go on to lead the New York Times) were given credit for reviving newsroom morale, after a revenue sharing agreement with the new downtown Staples Center arena for a 1999 issue of the paper's Sunday magazine became an ethical crisis and source of discord.
The Los Angeles Times' 13 Pulitzers during Carroll's five years there came after it won only eight in the 1990s.
Carroll's departure took place amid increasing tensions over newsroom budget cuts and the paper's direction with corporate owner, the Tribune Company.
He received a standing ovation from staff members when he announced his resignation, and the Times' then-publisher Jeff Johnson told The Associated Press that Carroll left behind an "extraordinary legacy of journalistic excellence."
Jon Carroll during the last of his MANY Pulitzer celebrations @ @latimes (w/ @kimmurphy) 2005 http://t.co/rQwcaRDpht pic.twitter.com/ZUZt7xYqhO— Shelby Grad (@shelbygrad) June 14, 2015
Born in New York and raised in North Carolina and Washington D.C., Carroll graduated from Haverford College in Pennsylvania in 1963, and took his first job as a reporter for the Providence Journal in Rhode Island.
He then served two years in the U.S. Army, and in 1966, went to work as a reporter for the Sun, where he covered the Vietnam War and former President Richard Nixon's administration.
Carroll shifted to the role of editor with a move to the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1973. He was hired by editor Gene Roberts, who successfully sought to transform that paper into a major force in journalism in the 1970s.
Carroll moved to Lexington in 1979, becoming editor at the Lexington Herald, which later became the Lexington Herald-Leader.
While there, he oversaw an investigative series titled "Cheating Our Children," which focused on the flaws in Kentucky's public education system, and helped lead to a major series of legislative reforms in 1990.
Additional reporting by Mashable