NEW YORK, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Former Newsweek editor Osborn Elliott has died in New York of complications from cancer, his family said. He was 83.
The New York native and Harvard University graduate known as "Oz" started working at Time magazine in 1949 as a contributing business editor. He became associate editor there three years later, then moved to Newsweek in 1955 when he was offered the job of senior business editor. He held the titles of managing editor, executive editor, president, chief executive and board chairman of Newsweek before leaving in 1976, then served as deputy mayor of New York City under Mayor Abraham D. Beame and later as dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, The Washington Post said.
"I had a front row seat for that wonderful, awful period -- for the space age, the Kennedy years, the assassinations, civil rights, the war in Vietnam, the campus revolt, the sexual revolution, the women's movement," the Post said Elliott wrote in a 1977 issue of the New York Times Magazine. "But while the job was fun, it was also grueling and in the mid-60s, being something of a space nut, I secretly resolved to extricate myself as editor as soon as man had landed on the moon. I figured that eight or 10 years of editing were enough for any man -- and more than enough for any magazine."
Elliott is survived by his wife of 35 years, Inger Abrahamsen Elliott; three daughters from his first marriage and three stepchildren from his second marriage.
