Russell Wayne Baker (August 14, 1925 – January 21, 2019) was an American journalist, narrator, writer of Pulitzer Prize-winning satirical commentary and self-critical prose, and author of Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Growing Up (1983).^[1] He was a columnist for The New York Times from 1962 to 1998, and hosted the PBS show Masterpiece Theatre from 1993 to 2004. The Forbes Media Guide Five Hundred, 1994 stated: "Baker, thanks to his singular gift of treating serious, even tragic events and trends with gentle humor, has become an American institution."^[2]

Born in Loudoun County, Virginia,^[3] Baker was the son of Benjamin Rex Baker and Lucy Elizabeth (née Robinson).^[4] At the age of eleven, as a self-professed "bump on a log", Baker decided to become a writer at such an early age since he figured "what writers did couldn't even be classified as work".^[5]

He attended and graduated from Baltimore City College in 1943 (a "magnet" secondary school with selective admissions. The school has a big influence on the young Baker, and he wrote extensively about his youth in Baltimore and his experiences there at the nicknamed "Castle on the Hill" four decades later in his best-selling 1982 first memoir Growing Up, one of seventeen books he was to later write.

Leaving high school at "City" in 1943, he took a scholarship nearby to Johns Hopkins University also in Baltimore, studying for one year before leaving to join the United States Navy in the middle of World War II (1939/1941-1945) as a pilot in naval aviation. He left the service in 1945 and continued his coursework for two more years for a degree in English at Johns Hopkins ], graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1947.

In 1947, Baker took a job at The Evening Sun, (one of the three "Baltimore Sunpapers"). Baker started out as a night police reporter. Baker described in his first memoirs learning his way around and working his way up experiencing the journalism trade among the many legendary old-timers. He soon improved enough to be sent overseas to Britain as The Sun's London correspondent in 1952. In 1953 he returned home to be assigned to Washington DC as White House Correspondent .^[3]

After covering the White House, United States Congress, and the United States Department of State for The New York Times for eight years, Baker wrote the nationally syndicated Observer column for the newspaper from 1962 to 1998; initially oriented toward politics, the column began to encompass other subjects after he relocated to New York City in 1974. During his long career as an essayist, journalist, and biographer, he was a regular contributor to national periodicals such as The New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, The Saturday Evening Post, and McCalls. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993.^[6]

Baker wrote or edited seventeen books. Baker's first Pulitzer Prize was awarded to him for distinguished commentary for his Observer columns (1979) and the second one was for his autobiography, Growing Up (1982); he is one of only six people to have been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for both Arts & Letters (for his autobiography) and Journalism (for his column). He wrote a sequel to his autobiography in 1989, called The Good Times. His other works include An American in Washington (1961), No Cause for Panic (1964), Poor Russell's Almanac (1972), Looking Back: Heroes, Rascals, and Other Icons of the American Imagination (2002), and various anthologies of his columns.^[7] He edited the anthologies The Norton Book of Light Verse (1986) and Russell Baker's Book of American Humor (1993).

Baker wrote the libretto for the 1979 musical play Home Again, Home Again, starring Ronny Cox, with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Barbara Fried, choreography by Onna White, and direction by Gene Saks.^[8][9] After an unsuccessful tryout at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut, the show closed in Toronto and never made it to Broadway. "That was a great experience," Baker said in a 1994 interview with the Hartford Courant. "Truly dreadful, but fun. I was sorry [the show] folded because I was having such a good time. But once is enough."^[10]

In 1993, Baker replaced Alistair Cooke as the regular host and commentator of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS-TV) long-running drama television series Masterpiece Theatre, continuing until 2004. "That's talking-head stuff," he said. "Television is harder than I thought it was. I can't bear to look at myself. I fancied that I was an exceedingly charming, witty and handsome young man, and here's this fidgeting old fellow whose hair is parted on the wrong side."^[11]

In 1995, he narrated the Ric Burns documentary The Way West about American western expansion for The American Experience long-running documentary series (then in its ninth season) on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS-TV).^[12][13]

In 1950, Baker married Miriam Nash, who died four years before him in 2015. The couple had four children, Allen, Kasia, Michael, and Phyllis.^[1][3]

Baker died at his longtime home in Leesburg, Virginia (Loudoun County), on January 21, 2019, after complications following a fall.^[3] He was age 93.

Neil Postman, in the preface to Conscientious Objections, described Baker as "like some fourth century citizen of Rome who is amused and intrigued by the Empire's collapse but who still cares enough to mock the stupidities that are hastening its end. He is, in my opinion, a precious national resource, and as long as he does not get his own television show, America will remain stronger than Russia." (1991, xii)

• 1978 – George Polk Award for Commentary
• 1979 – Pulitzer Prize Winner in Commentary
• 1983 – Pulitzer Prize Winner in Biography
• 1993 – Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement^[14]
• 1998 – George Polk Award for Career Achievements
• Baltimore City College Hall of Fame^[15]

• Baker author page from New York Review Books
• Baker article archive from New York Review of Books
• Appearances on C-SPAN