Stephen D. Isaacs, Washington Post journalist and Columbia professor, dies at age 76

Stephen D. Isaacs, who became The Washington Post's city editor at 26, experimented with long-form journalism in a bid to save the old Minneapolis Star as its top editor, and was a demanding journalism professor at Columbia University, where he challenged students to develop 100 story ideas from a soda can of Tab, died Aug. 28 in Austin, Texas. He was 76.

The cause was complications from a fall, said a son, David Isaacs.

Isaacs was groomed for the newspaper business from a young age. His father, Norman, was top editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal and Louisville Times and a prominent voice on journalism ethics and prize committees. His mother, syndicated domestic-advice columnist Dorothy Ritz, was reputedly a first cousin of Bob Dylan.

The younger Isaacs had been a reporter since his teens and joined The Post two years after graduating from Harvard in 1959. In the newsroom, he built a reputation for unbridled confidence and a bulldozing physical presence. A former college football player, he used his height, bulk and palette of off-color language to convey his thoughts on coverage and personnel issues with unmistakable clarity.

He liked, foremost, to shake things up, which was intrinsic to his personality and his sense of what a newspaper was for. (Later, on the Columbia faculty, he would often be the sole dissenting vote as a matter of principle, his son said.)

Stephen David Isaacs was born in Indianapolis Dec. 8, 1937, and grew up in Indianapolis, St. Louis and Louisville, where he was financial editor of the Times by age 21. Isaacs's books included "Jews and American Politics" (1974).

His marriage to Diane Scharfeld ended in divorce. Survivors include longtime partner Suzanne Freeman of Austin; three children from his marriage, Deborah Jacobson of Houston, David Isaacs of Santa Monica, California, and Sharon Isaacs of Manhattan; and five grandchildren.

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Isaacs joined Columbia's journalism school in 1988 and for years was the associate dean of academic affairs. He co-taught a mandatory ethics seminar with James W. Carey, a communications theorist. He formally retired in 2012.