BOSTON -- Author and journalist I.F. Stone, the political gadfly once dubbed the 'godfather of New Left Journalism,' died Sunday in a Boston hospital. He was 81.
Stone died at 6:10 a.m. of 'cardiac complications' at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a spokeswoman said. The hospital said Stone had been a patient for some time and a friend said he had had a history of heart problems and angina.
For many years, Stone wrote and edited the Washington-based liberal newspaper I.F. Stone's Weekly and was the author of many books, including 'The Trial of Socrates' in 1988.
Isidor Feinstein Stone was born in Philadelphia on Dec. 24, 1907, and worked on newspapers while still a high school student. After briefly attending the University of Pennsylvania, he worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1923 to 1933.
Stone moved to New York City and worked for the the New York Post from 1933 to 1939. In 1938, he became an associate editor of the liberal weekly The Nation, and eventually became editor, serving from 1940 to 1946.
During that period he also worked for P.M., an experimental liberal daily. It folded in 1948, and Stone went to work for the New York Star, then returned to the Post. He later went to the New York Daily Compass. When it folded in 1952, Stone decided to form his own weekly.
I.F. Stone's Weekly lasted from 1953 to 1967, and continued as I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly until 1971. Among some of its subscribers were Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Stone did the research, writing and editing for the newsletter. His reporting confirmed his status as a political gadfly. He was an early supporter of civil rights and an early opponent President Harry Truman's Cold War policies, McCarthyism and U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
The newspaper grossed $100,000 annually at its peak and had 60,000 subscribers.
Once asked how he saw his role as a journalist, Stone said: 'To write the truth as I see it; to defend the weak against the strong; to fight for justice; and to seek, as best I can, to bring healing perspectives to bear on the terrible hates and fears of mankind, in the hope of some day bringing about one world, in which men will enjoy the differences of the human garden instead of killing each other over them.'
Newsweek magazine dubbed him 'the godfather of New left Journalism.'
'He was, even in those years, a legend among newspaper reporters because he was the fellow who invented investigative reporting,' said Penn Kimball, a collegue of Stone's at P.M.
'He was like a dog digging for a bone in a garden. He would dig and dig and dig and nothing would ever stop him,' said Kimball, now a professor emeritus of journalism at Columbia University in New York.
When Stone decided to end the Bi-Weekly he became a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.
'I think people thought of him as America's leading radical journalist,' said Robert Silvers, editor of The New York Review of Books who was a personal friend of Stone.
'He was famous in Washington for doing the research for I.F. Stone's Weekly from documents, particularly from committee hearings, government reports, and obscure published sources. He was not a man who frequented parties or did his work by interviewing, but did his most intensive work by studying the work of the government,' Silvers said.
'He was able to develop his own fresh and original analysis, and many journalists admired this,' Silvers said. He said I.F. Stone's Weekly was 'for many people an independent guide to what was happening in Washington.'
A nearly lifelong passion with Stone was the development of freedom of expression in ancient Greece. He taught himself Greek and reviewed every possible account of the trial of Socrates in the original Greek.
In 1983, he began a lecture tour of American campuses, speaking on the subject of how a free city like Athens could condemn a philosopher to death. This led to the publication of his last book.
Conservative columnist William Buckley said, 'I.F. Stone was admirable, primarily as a highly productive example of the illectual-journalist-polemicist in confrontation with whom the establishment always needed to keep in fighting trim.
'He made awful mistakes -- he defended Stalin, he backed Henry Wallace, and, for all intents and purposes, Ho Chi Min,' Buckley said. 'But he ended his life wondering whether Socrates hadn't overprovoked his countrymen -- perhaps this was a meditation on his own career. I should add that he was a fine companion.'
Stone wrote many books, including 'The Court Disposes' (1937); 'Business as Usual' (1941); 'The First Year of Defense' (1941); 'Underground to Palestine' (1946); 'This is Israel' (1948); 'The Hidden History of the Korean War' (1952); 'The Truman Era' (1953); 'The Haunted Fifties' (1964); 'In a Time of Torment' (1967); 'The Killings at Kent State' (1970); 'Polemics and Prophecies' (1971); 'The Best of I.F. Stone's Weekly' (1973), and 'The Trial of Socrates' (1988).
His last project, Silvers said, was an article in the February edition of the New York Review, 'Gorbachev Zigzags on Human Rights,' challenging the Soviet leader's position on the subject.
He was the recipient of many journalism awards including the Columbia University Journalism Award in 1971 and the George Polk Memorial Award from Long Island University in 1970. He was the subject of a documentary film, 'I.F. Stone's Weekly.'
Stone was married to Esther S. Roisman in 1929. They had three children, Clelia Stone Gilbert, Jeremy J. Stone, and Christopher D. Stone.
