Richard “Dick” McCord, who in the mid-1990s had a brief tenure as editor of the Door County Advocate, died Wednesday, Oct. 7, in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 79.
McCord grew up in a small town near Atlanta before earning his college degree from Vanderbilt University. He returned to the Atlanta area after college, during which time he met his former wife, Laurie Knowles, who worked for Sports Illustrated.
His first professional journalism job was at Newsday, the daily newspaper on Long Island, N.Y. But McCord grew restless after four years there, and in 1971, he and Knowles moved west, settling in Santa Fe.
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In 1974, they founded the Santa Fe Reporter, an alternative weekly newspaper. McCord served 15 years as editor and co-publisher of the newspaper, and nearly won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982. He sold the newspaper in 1988.
Seven years later, McCord was hired by then-Advocate owner Frank Wood to serve as editor of the Sturgeon Bay weekly newspaper. Door County journalist Heidi Hodges wrote this week about her memories of McCord’s year-long stint with the Advocate.
After retiring, McCord wrote several books, including “The Chain Gang: One Newspaper versus the Gannett Empire,” which detailed Wood’s efforts to continue publishing the Green Bay News-Chronicle after Gannett had purchased the city’s other daily newspaper, the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
