Washington Post Obituary for Mal

I was saddened to see this fairly grudging little obituary from Friday November 9, 2007, in the Washington Post - and the same one linked to the TV Newsday site. Nothing at all about all the Presidents she covered as a White House Correspondent, which I'd have thought would interest them. And are they still requiring the term "Mrs." in women's obituaries? I'm sure she would have preferred Ms.! - FW

Mal JohnsonCox Employee, Society Founder

Mal Johnson, 84, who spent 20 years working for Cox Broadcasting in Washington and was a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists, died Oct. 27 at Inova Fairfax Hospital. She had diabetes.

Mrs. Johnson retired from Cox in 1990, having covered the White House, Capitol Hill and other parts of the federal government. She anchored and produced a public affairs show for Cox in the late 1970s and afterward became the broadcasting company's national director of community affairs.

After retiring from Cox, she created a media consulting firm, Medialinx International.

Malvyn Hooser was born in West Virginia and raised in Philadelphia. She married an Air Force officer, Frank B. Johnson, and taught school while accompanying him on assignments to Europe and the Pacific.

After his death about 1960, she returned to Philadelphia and worked for a civil rights group. She also did public affairs work and news anchoring for a television station in Philadelphia before joining Cox.

She once said she was hired at Cox after impressing the company's chief executive with a speech to a group of female broadcasters. She had criticized their refusal of a federal loan to train minority women for broadcast jobs.

Mrs. Johnson helped form the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists and was among the 44 founding members of the NABJ, organized in 1975. She served as treasurer of the national organization for eight years.

Wayne Dawkins wrote in his 1997 history of the group that Mrs. Johnson was "a curmudgeon who guarded NABJ's meager funds like a hen, often to the point of insulting members who became upset if their registration payment was misplaced or membership was not recorded."

Mrs. Johnson, an Alexandria resident, was a former national chairwoman of the American Women in Radio and Television Foundation and was a board member of the National Council of Women's Organizations, the Communications Consortium Media Center and the United Nations Development Fund for Women. She was inducted in the NABJ Journalists Hall of Fame in 1990.

Survivors include a sister.


-- Adam Bernstein