Editor, teacher Richard J. Blood dies at 83

Richard J. Blood, a former city editor at the New York Daily News who nurtured a generation of young journalists while teaching for more than two decades at the Columbia University School of Journalism and New York University, has died. He was 83.

Blood died of respiratory failure in Manhattan on Friday, according to his eldest son, Associated Press political writer Michael R. Blood of Los Angeles.

"I never knew anyone to get more excited about a good story," Michael said of his father, who taught until he was 79.

Blood was born in the Boston suburb of Lynn on Nov. 12, 1928. He joined the Navy as a teenager and later served in the Merchant Marine before attending Boston University and, later, Columbia's journalism school, where he graduated with a master's degree in 1958.

He began his career at newspapers in New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey before joining the now-defunct Newark (N.J.) Evening News and, later, the Daily News in New York in 1970.

"He cared passionately about the story, whatever the story was, and he loved nothing more than when one of his reporters came back with a scoop," said Mike Oreskes, AP's senior managing editor who reported for the Daily News from 1975 to 1981.

In addition to his son Michael, he is survived by his wife, Dr. Carol Joyce Blood of Manhattan, another son, Christopher R. Blood of Denville, N.J., and a daughter, Kathleen Blood Stokas of Tucson, Ariz.