Frank Daniels Jr., the blunt, coarse and candidly liberal publisher of The News & Observer, who led his grandfather’s newspaper to a modern age and progressive voice, then stood as the last of his Raleigh family to hold its reins, died Thursday. He was 90.
Daniels served as president and publisher from 1971 to 1996, shortly after his family sold the paper to McClatchy and ended more than a century of local ownership.
But newspaper life consumed him from age 15, when he worked as an N&O office boy and developed what his longtime wife, Julia, described as “ink in his veins.”