Obituaries

Michael GurevitchJournalism Professor

Michael Gurevitch, 77, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism who specialized in the study of mass communication, died March 29 at Royal Brompton Hospital in London. He had complications from pneumonia.

Dr. Gurevitch, a Washington resident, taught at the Maryland journalism school from 1983 to 2007. His best-known books were "Mass Media and Society" (1991), an anthology by academics worldwide that he edited with James Curran, and "The Crisis of Public Communication" (1995), a collection of essays about television news he co-wrote with Jay G. Blumler.

He was well-regarded among peers for his research into newsroom operations and media companies' influence on elections.

In 2005, he and Blumler received the American Political Science Association's Murray Edelman Distinguished Career Award.

Dr. Gurevitch was born in 1930 in Poland and raised in what was then the British mandate of Palestine. He served in the Israeli army during its 1948 war for independence and served in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

He was a sociology graduate of Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received a master's degree in communications from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in political science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Early in his career, he was night editor for a now-defunct newspaper in Tel Aviv. After his graduate work, he taught at Hebrew University and the Open University in England and remained active as a visiting lecturer at educational centers worldwide while on the Maryland faculty.

His marriage to Ahuva Heller Gurevitch ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife, Patricia Coughlin Gurevitch, whom he married in 1963, of Washington; a daughter from the first marriage, Yael Nathanson of Haifa, Israel; two daughters from the second marriage, Abigail Clancy and Ruth Gurevitch, both of London; a brother; a sister; and nine grandchildren.

-- Adam Bernstein