Columnist Robert Novak RIP

Robert Novak was one of Washington’s most insistent, influential, and indispensable journalists covering politics in America. But today his pen is silent, felled by cancer at age 78. A long-time conservative and fixture in print and on TV both, Novak is one of the last “shoe-leather” reporters that worked sources helping him to constantly break high profile stories.

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We all remember that one of his last big scoops got him in a bit of turmoil when he was privy to the Valerie Plame story. That one became such a hot potato story for several years that at one point Novak stormed off a set of a news roundtable being broadcast on CNN in 2005. Here is a short bio of his early life from the Chicago Sun-Times:

Novak was born Feb. 26, 1931, in Joliet, Ill., and worked at the Joliet Herald-News and the Champaign-Urbana Courier while a student at the University of Illinois. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War before going to work for the Associated Press, which ultimately led him to Washington in 1957. He moved to the Wall Street Journal in 1958 and began his column with Evans five months before John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

We here at Publius simply want to say thanks for all the hard work, Mr. Novak and God’s speed.

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