Michael Days, pioneering journalist who led the Philadelphia Daily News during its 2010 Pulitzer Prize win for investigative reporting, has died at 72

Michael Days, a pillar of Philadelphia journalism who championed young Black journalists and was beloved among reporters who worked for him at the Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer, died suddenly on Saturday at 72 in Trenton.

A devout Catholic who grew up in North Philadelphia, Mr. Days was instrumental in developing talent among Philadelphia’s journalism community, leading with a kind but direct approach that nurtured journalists and caused reporters to break out in spontaneous applause when he returned to the Daily News in 2011 after an interim stint at the then-rival Inquirer.

Mr. Days was also respected beyond Philadelphia, receiving Hall of Fame honors from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Pennsylvania News Media Association. He was a past president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists (PABJ) and at the time of his death was president of NABJ-Philadelphia, which formed as an alternative to PABJ.

Mr. Days’ wife, Angela Dodson, said Sunday afternoon she was comforted by the outpouring of support and love from journalists who knew him.

“He was the kind of person who wanted to serve,” Dodson said. “People could talk to him, and he had something wise to say.”

Dodson, a journalist and author, said she and her husband had a long-running disagreement over where they had first met. She believes it was in Rochester, N.Y., when they were working for rival newspapers. But Mr. Days believed he’d met her a year earlier, at an NABJ convention.

“People loved him,” Dodson said. “He commanded such respect that I used to say, people would elect him president of anything.”

In recent years, Dodson enjoyed listening as her husband took long phone calls from journalists seeking advice. “What we all need is somebody who listens to us, and he was a master at that,” Dodson said.

Former Daily News reporter and current Inquirer journalist Stephanie Farr recounted Mr. Days’ infectious laugh and his habit of adding Post-it notes to clips of reporters’ articles to tell them they had done a good job, sometimes with simple messages like “amazing quote!” that gave reporters a little extra pride in their work.

“You didn’t get one every day, but when you got one, you were on top of the world,” Farr said.

She still has a box full of these “Mike-O-Grams,” as they became known, and many others do, as well. “The small gestures, in the end, are really the big ones,” Farr said.

Tributes and condolences poured in Sunday from journalists who were shaped by Mr. Days’ leadership.

“It is with a very heavy heart that NABJ Philadelphia mourns the sudden passing of our President Michael I. Days, a respected journalist, mentor and cherished friend whose legendary career and commitment to excellence inspired us all,” wrote Inquirer education reporter and NABJ-Philadelphia Vice President Melanie Burney.

NABJ President Errin Haines said she first met Mr. Days when she moved to Philadelphia in 2015 to work for the Associated Press. Haines said she was struck by his seemingly boundless energy for helping younger reporters. She remembered him as a universally respected leader, and someone who had shown other Black journalists a path to success.

“It was seismic in the industry, and a huge point of pride for NABJ,” said Haines.

As editor of the Daily News, Mr. Days played an essential role in the decisions that would lead to its 2010 Pulitzer Prize win for investigative reporting, said Inquirer senior health reporter Wendy Ruderman. She and her colleague Barbara Laker won the prize.

“You could walk into his office anytime and talk to him,” Ruderman said. “He just was very approachable — but also, you respected him.”

Ruderman recounted sitting in Mr. Days’ office late one evening, alongside Laker and a company lawyer, as they discussed whether to move forward with a story about a Philadelphia Police Department narcotics officer. The story, the lawyer said, stood a good chance of getting them sued.

With a “directness and sincerity” that were his hallmark, Mr. Days turned to the reporters.

“He said, ‘I trust my reporters, I believe in my reporters, and we’re running with it,’” Ruderman said. That story revealed a deep dysfunction within the police department, Ruderman said, and led to the newspaper’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize win.

Retired Daily News managing editor Pat McLoone remembered Mr. Days as a quietly authoritative presence, and a leader who brought elegance and class to everything he did — even as he had to preside over the early days of the news industry’s difficult shift from print to digital media.

“He was the best possible boss to work for,” McLoone said. “He was in the 100th percentile as a human being.”

After graduating from Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia, Mr. Days earned degrees from College of the Holy Cross and the University of Missouri. He worked at the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers before joining the Daily News as a reporter in 1986.

In 2011, Mr. Days was named managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he held several management roles until he retired in October 2020. Inquirer Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar said Sunday that Mr. Days was a “leading light in Philadelphia journalism.”

“Mike was a son of Philadelphia, a believer in the power of journalism to do right, and a mentor to scores of young journalists who benefited over many decades from his attentive guidance,” Escobar wrote in an email to Inquirer staff. “He spent his life fighting for better journalism because he understood its limitations and, when it came to diversity, its flaws.”

After his own retirement, Mr. Days’ work mentoring Black journalists didn’t stop, said retired journalist Linda Wright Moore.

“He had all the things you need,” Wright Moore said. “He was steady. Principled. He could do tough. He balanced what the craft demands of all of us with the fact that we’re humans, and not perfect.”

Wright Moore had known Mr. Days when she was a columnist at the Daily News from 1985 to 2000. But they stayed in touch over the years and saw one another every year at the annual NABJ convention.

In August, the NABJ celebrated its 50th anniversary — a historic moment for the organization and for Wright Moore, whose late husband, Acel Moore, was one of the group’s founding members.

For her and Mr. Days, it demonstrated the significance of the group’s survival, a half century later, despite the ongoing dismantling of DEI programs at many organizations.

“I could just feel how proud he was to be there, to have made it to this point,” Wright Moore said.

Mr. Days is survived by Dodson, three adopted sons, Edward, Andrew, and Umi, and three grandchildren. Mr. Days is predeceased by his adopted son Adrian.

Services for Mr. Days will be held Oct. 25, at Sacred Heart Church, 343 S. Broad Street, Trenton, N.J. The Viewing will be held from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. followed by Mass at noon.

Donations in his memory may be made to the following: College of the Holy Cross; St. Rosa of Lima school; Dodson, Dotson and Hairston Family Scholarship through the Marshall University Foundation.