Ned Warwick, former TV news director and Inquirer reporter and editor, has died at 81

Ned Warwick, 81, of Philadelphia, former foreign correspondent and foreign, national, and Pennsylvania editor for The Inquirer, former news director for WPVI-TV Channel 6 and international news director for ABC-TV, former reporter at the Bulletin, mentor, sailor, pilot, and die-hard Phillies fan, died Monday, Sept. 14, of complications from Parkinson’s disease at his home near the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Born in Philadelphia and reared in Germantown and Mount Airy, Mr. Warwick graduated from Chestnut Hill Academy and attended Temple University. He knew he wanted to be a newsman when he was 16, his wife, Joan, said, and he spent much of his free time reading newspapers in the high school library.

He went on to work as a young city-side reporter for the Bulletin from 1969 to 1974 and a veteran editor and reporter for The Inquirer from 2001 to 2008. For TV, he was a news writer and assignment editor at WPVI from 1975 to 1981, news director at WTVD in Durham, N.C., from 1981 to 1986, and back as news director at WPVI from 1986 to 1990.

Regarding his several transitions from print to TV work, he told Inquirer TV columnist Gail Shister in 1977: “The TV reporter’s job is more difficult because they have to be journalists and performers. It is in fact easier for a TV reporter to move over to print than vice versa.”

From 1990 to 1995, Mr. Warwick was based in London as ABC’s director of news operations for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He worked with celebrated anchorman Peter Jennings, supervised dozens of other international TV types, and directed coverage of many of the world’s top stories.

Actually, he told The Inquirer as he left for London, he didn’t expect the job to be much different from covering news in Philadelphia. “You can gather news around the corner or across the border,” he said. “But the essential business of newsgathering still remains the same. You’ve still got to get the story.”

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He nearly became the story in 1992 when he got pinned down in a gunbattle while traveling in Somalia. “He always wanted to be a newsman and travel the world,” his wife said, “and he did. He loved the news. He loved ABC.”

At The Inquirer, Mr. Warwick was the foreign and national editor for five years and a foreign correspondent in Jerusalem during and after the 2006 Lebanon War. He returned to Philadelphia in 2007 to be deputy business editor and Pennsylvania editor for a year.

“He was a good listener and could manage a reporter’s needs,” former Inquirer staff writer Miriam Hill said. Former Inquirer staff writer Sally Downey said: “He was a very classy guy.”

In 2006, his byline appeared in The Inquirer over dozens of war zone stories from Gaza City, Bethlehem, Acre, Ramallah, Huwwara, Turmus Aya, and elsewhere in the Middle East. On Oct. 17, 2006, he opened his story from Kafr Qalil with: “The sharp heat of summer lingers on the stony hills of the West Bank, and the pale olives are still ripening on the trees, thirsting for just a little of the fall rains that won’t come for a few more weeks.”

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“He was a lyrical writer,” Hill said. Former Inquirer editor William K. Marimow called his style “fluid” and “very solid.”

Mr. Warwick also reported on the Royal Family from London and reviewed books for The Inquirer. He worked briefly as an editor at large with Bloomberg News after leaving the paper in 2008 and retired in 2010.

He mentored others wherever he worked and with the Rittenhouse Writers’ Group, and completed a first draft of his own book. “His mind was always crafting a story, seeing a story, or preparing to tell one in a way that made everyone near him want to listen,” said his daughter Katie Bishop.

“No matter what was going on,” said Nathan Gorenstein, a former colleague at The Inquirer, “he was a good human.”

Out of the office, Mr. Warwick was a sailor and a pilot. In 1986, when he was news director at WPVI, Shister asked him whether flying an airplane or directing a newsroom was more challenging. “Clearly,” he said, “if you don’t pay attention in either business, you’re going to crash.”

He cheered openly for the Phillies even during the lean years and continued to follow them closely after becoming ill. “One of the first things he would ask in the morning,” his wife said, “is who won the game.”

Edward Ramsey Warwick was born May 19, 1945. The oldest of three children, he was the great-grandson of former Mayor Charles Warwick. He left Temple and earned a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. in 1969.

He married Polly Price, and they had a daughter, Katie. After a divorce, he married Gayle Roth, and they had daughters Megan and Eliza.

“He always made us feel like having three daughters was his greatest joy in life,” his daughter Megan Osborne said. “He taught us to throw a ball and let us braid his hair.”

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After a divorce, he married Joan Hunter, and they enjoyed museums, the theater, and the orchestra. They traveled the world together. He was a longtime runner and a fashionista, and studied Buddhism.

He lived with Parkinson’s disease for eight years. But he refused to quit city living for the suburbs, his wife said, and he never lost his sense of humor and zest for life.

“Dad was a giant of a man in every sense of the word,” his daughter Eliza said. His wife said: “He never, ever complained. He made me a better person.”

In addition to wife, daughters, and former wives, Mr. Warwick is survived by four grandchildren, a sister, a brother, and other relatives.

A memorial service is to be from noon to 4 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 14, at the Germantown Cricket Club, 411 Manheim St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19144.

Donations in his name may be made to Penn Medicine Neurology, 3535 Market St., Suite 750, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104; and the Katz JCC Parkinson’s Connection, 1301 Springdale Rd., Cherry Hill, N.J. 08003.