Gordon Joseloff, former UPI editor and CBS News producer, dies at 75

Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Gordon F. Joseloff, 75, a former UPI and CBS News award-winning journalist who reported from London, Moscow and Tokyo, died Monday after being diagnosed with a rare blood cancer three years ago.

Joseloff also served as publisher and editor of an all-digital community news site that he founded in 2003. He temporarily stepped down as editor in 2005 to serve two terms as first selectman of Westport, and then returned to local news eight years later.

His successor in the town position, Jim Marpe, said Monday that at his request, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont gave permission for Westport to lower its flags to half-staff for the remainder of the week to honor Joseloff.

"It was an honor to work with Gordon Joseloff all the years in the forefront of online community," said James Lomuscio, associate editor of WestportNow.com. "He aimed to create a digital history of Westport, his hometown. He did it spectacularly."

Joseloff died at home under hospice care with daughter Anna-Liisa and son Ben at his side.

He was born May 13, 1945, in New York, the twin son of Hollywood radio producer Stanley Joseloff and his wife, Barbara, an interior decorator.

While attending Syracuse University in 1964, Joseloff began in UPI's Albany, N.Y., bureau. He later became a correspondent and editor in New York, London and Moscow.

Former UPI radio manager Tom Foty recalled that while Joseloff was vacationing in San Francisco in 1975, he became an accidental eyewitness to Sara Jane Moore's attempted assassination of then-President Gerald Ford.

His description of what he saw appeared worldwide on UPI's wires and radio network.

At CBS News, Joseloff served as a correspondent, senior producer and bureau chief in New York, Moscow and Tokyo.

He began at CBS as a writer for Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather and ended up reporting from the hotspots of the world, including covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 and the Polish Solidarity trade union movement led by Lech Walesa.

Joseloff won an Emmy Award for coverage of the 1983 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India. He coordinated CBS' coverage of the first U.S. Gulf War in 1991.

He met his former wife, Suzy Joseloff Stark, a governess for a U.S. diplomat, in Moscow. The couple's daughter was born in Helsinki and their son was born in Tokyo. The couple divorced in 1998.

Other survivors include six grandchildren, two sisters and a brother.