Legendary Inquirer editor Jim Naughton dies

An impish man with a disarming smile, Naughton was irrepressably mischievous. As the chief of newsgathering operations when the Inquirer won more than a dozen Pulitzers, he injected the newsroom with a puckish spirit that he believed stimulated creativity and cohesion.

"He was an extraordinarily important player at the Inquirer," said Eugene L. Roberts Jr., the editor who recruited Naughton from the New York Times in 1977 and whose corner office was occupied once by a camel and another time by 46 frogs, thanks to Naughton. "I thought he would be good for newsroom morale, and he exceeded my expectations."

For all the frivolity, Naughton was a serious journalist, admired as a fierce interviewer, an engaging writer and a speedy editor.

In his early 30s, Naughton covered the White House for the Times during the tumultuous Watergate years. In The Boys on the Bus, a book about the 1972 presidential campaign, author Timothy Crouse portrayed Naughton as one of the more endearing journalists in the pack. He described Naughton as badly dressed and "meticulously polite" whose "greatest ambition was to someday to take over Russell Baker's humor column in the Times."

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