Robert E. Webb

Robert E. (Bob) Webb

Arlington, VA - Robert E. (Bob) Webb, a newsman known to many around the world for his vision for journalism as a force that could help heal the deepest hurts and bridge the most bitter divides, died on Aug. 23 of natural causes at Cherrydale Health and Rehabilitation Center in Arlington, Va. He was 89.

"A great and mighty task of mass media, in my judgment, is to help reconcile disputants—whether individuals or countries," Webb said in 2007, speaking at Washington Street United Methodist Church in Alexandria, Va. "Mass media cannot solve our problems, but it can do much to create the atmosphere in which they can be solved."

Webb's life took him from the sleepy South Mississippi town of Columbia, where he was raised, to the District of Columbia, where he was The Cincinnati Enquirer's Washington bureau chief during the Nixon-Ford years.

Webb, who worked for the Enquirer for more than 30 years, including stints as news editor and night city editor, followed his stories around the world, from Capetown to Taipei and Seoul to Moscow.

After returning to Cincinnati from Washington in 1975, he worked at the Enquirer as an editorial writer and columnist until he retired in 1993. But he never forgot the friends he made covering the nation's capital and soon relocated to the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Va.

"Everywhere Bob acted with passion, the dedication to help enhance the credibility and the dignity of our trade, to promote media devoted to serving the people and the community," said Bernard Margueritte, former Eastern European correspondent for Le Figaro and Le Monde and president of the International Communications Forum (ICF), a network of media professionals from 116 countries. "His enthusiasm was able to uplift the spirit of the most disillusioned, jaded and frustrated colleague."

As a former vice president of the ICF, Webb was an original signatory to "The Sarajevo Commitment," launched in that city by a world congress of journalists in 2000. The document, published in 30 languages, was a pledge to combine "freedom with responsibility, talent with humility, privilege with service, comfort with sacrifice and concern with courage."

"Bob was a topnotch media professional who knew the difference between real news and excitement and understood journalism's role to inform, clarify and where possible inspire," said Rajmohan Gandhi, a biographer of his grandfather Mahatma Gandhi. "Like others I was touched by Bob's tireless part in the ongoing struggle for seeing all of America's races and all of humanity as one people."

Central to Webb's larger message was his personal transformation on race.

Reflecting on his early career, Webb wrote in an unfinished memoir, "As a journalist in Jackson, Mississippi, I had for a long time defended racial segregation." But then he saw a film that prompted him "to apologize to the first black man he saw." That man happened to be an African, who responded, "after the apology, what?"

Webb, who in the tumult of early '60s Mississippi was an associate editor of the Jackson State Times, said he spent the rest of his life trying to answer that question. "But an immediate result was that I began reaching out to African-Americans in a different way," Webb said, adding that he also "stopped being a voice of the White Citizens Councils."

Webb subsequently wrote in the book Media Values (2010): "While I had known and liked many blacks—picked cotton with some—segregation was all I knew. I can only imagine and deeply regret how I must have hurt many people of color with what I wrote…. One of the first things I did was to write to Dr. [Martin Luther] King about my experience. He replied quickly with a beautiful letter." Webb joined Cincinnati's delegation to the 1963 March on Washington where King made his "I have a dream" speech.

William Winter, former governor of Mississippi, said in a 1993 letter that he was "especially indebted" to Webb for his "contributions to the State of Mississippi when [he was] one of the few sane voices to be heard from."

But while Webb was a native of Mississippi, he was perhaps most comfortable in the cosmopolitan bustle of the National Press Club in Washington, in the same building where he had worked in the 1970s.

"In many ways, the National Press Club was his real home," said Webb's close friend Richard Ruffin, past executive vice-president of Initiatives of Change (formerly Moral Re-Armament), a global conflict-resolution network with which Webb was associated for most of his life.

"He enjoyed nothing more than introducing people to the club. One of his favorite events was what he called 'Taco Nights,' when on a Friday evening he would host a rich variety of friends of all ages and backgrounds and countries."

"Without Taco Nights at the Press Club, Fridays wouldn't have been as fun," said Elizabeth Jia, an Emmy-nominated broadcast journalist in the D.C. area. "Because of Bob, I got to meet Helen Thomas."

Webb was a founding father of the Cincinnati chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and served as its first president. He was founding editor of World Front, a publication of the World Affairs Association of Greater Cincinnati, was inducted into the Cincinnati Journalism Hall of Fame by the SPJ and received the George Washington Honor Medal for excellence in editorial writing from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. He was also the subject of a 1951 Editor & Publisher magazine feature about his reporting on a New Orleans murder mystery.

A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Webb often spoke of his abiding affection for the profession, from its loftiest mission down to the smell of ink and newsprint.

"Even in recent times he could be seen shuffling along the corridors of Cherrydale, with a Washington Post tucked under his arm," his friend Ruffin said.

Known to be outgoing to almost everyone he met, from any corner of the globe and from the dry cleaner in his building to those in the highest positions of government, Webb was all about building bridges.

"One thing is clear," Webb said in his memoir. "Today I write to heal rather than hurt, to unite rather than divide, to bring people together rather than tear them apart."

The only child of O.B. Webb and Ola Reagan Webb, Robert Webb is survived by his son, John Robert Webb, and daughter, Mary Virginia (Ginny) Gibson, both of Jackson, Miss. Services will be held at 11 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 13, at the Washington Street United Methodist Church in Alexandria, Va. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the church or to Initiatives of Change (2201 W. Broad St., Richmond, VA 23220).