One year ago: Herbert G. Klein

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Herbert G. Klein made his career in two often competing worlds: journalism and politics. The longtime San Diego resident and USC graduate started out as a political reporter but went on to become press secretary for President Richard Nixon and the first White House director of communications. He died one year ago Friday.

‘Journalism has been my profession, and politics have been an avocation,’ Klein said on the occasion of his retirement in 2003.

It was as a special correspondent for Copley that Klein covered Nixon’s 1946 run for Congress, getting a taste for the interaction between politicians and the press. He quit his newspaper positions to serve as press secretary for Nixon’s failed campaigns for the White House against John F. Kennedy in 1960 and for the California governorship in 1962. Klein was still there when Nixon finally won the presidency six years later.

Klein parted ways with the president he had supported for three decades a year before Nixon’s 1974 resignation, settling into his longtime role as editor of Copley Newspapers.

For more, read Herbert Klein’s obituary by The Times.

-- Michael Farr