Austin Kiplinger, journalist and editor emeritus of one of the nation’s premier publishers of business forecasts and personal finance advice, Kiplinger Washington Editors, died Nov. 20 in Rockville, Md. He was 97.
His son Knight, the editor in chief and president of Kiplinger Washington Editors, told the New York Times the cause was brain cancer.
Austin Kiplinger was a member of the Society of Professional Journalists for almost 79 years, having joined in 1936 while he was a student at Cornell University. SPJ was called Sigma Delta Chi (SDX) in those years.
He was one of the stalwarts of the national SPJ organization and the local SPJ D.C. pro chapter, which honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in June 2014 during the annual Dateline Awards dinner.
In 2011, Austin Kiplinger marked his own 75th anniversary in SPJ along with the 75th anniversary of the SPJ-DC pro chapter (watch his interview then with SPJer Dan Kubiske).
At a special event at what was then the headquarters of Kiplinger Washington Editors, Kiplinger had some advice for the crowd of about 60 journalists and their guests. Also during the evening, several chapter members were honored with 30, 40 and 50 year pins.
In the midst of “this turmoil, this revolution” in information technology today, Kiplinger said, journalists just need to respond “by doing the job that we do—and we’ve done it now for these many centuries. It consists of producing the content and that is going to be essential regardless of how it’s delivered.”
He acknowledged the challenges facing the profession such as “how we cope with the variety of sources, the variety of people who sometimes call themselves journalists.”
“I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but we’re going to shake it out,” he said. “The more important thing is how the public, whether we call them readers, viewers or listeners,” figures out “some kind of common-sense way of separating the wheat from the chaff and believe it or not, people eventually do.”
He hosted the chapter’s anniversary celebration in the main floor museum at the Kiplinger headquarters on H Street downtown. The museum exhibits a broad collection of Washingtonian and journalism artifacts.
The evening included a welcome from then-SPJ national President Hagit Limor, an investigative reporter with WCPO-TV in Cincinnati, who introduced Kiplinger.
“We don’t necessarily control the attitudes and opinions of the people who read us or listen to us,” Kiplinger said, noting that when Franklin D. Roosevelt was running for re-election “about 90 percent of newspapers were opposed” to him and lambasted his New Deal. But he “was re-elected by the largest majority in the history of the United States.”
Kiplinger opened his comments by saying it was a happy accident his 75th anniversary in SPJ coincided with the chapter’s celebration. He quoted an old colleague in joking about his many years in the profession—Dick Strout, who received the National Press Club’s Fourth Estate Award in 1975.
“After he received it,” Kiplinger said, “he was asked if he had any advice for us younger fellows, and he said, ‘Yes, just hang in there and sooner or later somebody will mistake longevity for merit.’”
Kiplinger told the crowd: “Congratulations on your picking the best profession in the world.”
Click here to read SPJ Region 2 Director Andy Schotz’s take on Kiplinger’s passing.