Carol Horner; Ran Journalism Center

Carol Horner, 63, the director of the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland and a former journalist with the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Wall Street Journal, was found dead Oct. 24 at her home in the District. Her sister, Vivian J. "Vee" Davis, said that the cause of death had not been determined, although she added that Ms. Horner had a chronic lung condition that caused breathing difficulties.

As director of the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, Ms. Horner brought journalists from across the country to College Park for week-long programs led by experts on such specialized topics as public policy in the information age and the politics of race and gender.

"Under Carol Horner's leadership, the Knight Center in Specialized Journalism became the gold standard for training journalists to cover complex topics," said Eric Newton, vice president of the journalism program at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. "Because of Carol's work, journalists all over America know how to cover difficult-to-handle topics -- everything from nuclear power to the military to the economy."

Among friends and colleagues, Ms. Horner was known as much for her lively, outgoing personality as for her writing flair and tenacious reporting. Former Inquirer colleague Marc Kaufman, now at The Washington Post, recalled that she was the lead organizer for an Inquirer alumni reunion this past summer that attracted more than 300 current and former staff employees. It was the last of a long line of events that Ms. Horner inspired or organized.

She also was known for her elaborate practical jokes, which included arranging the arrival of a camel in the office of then-Inquirer Executive Editor Eugene L. Roberts, now a journalism professor at the University of Maryland.

"She was the most alive person on the Inquirer," Roberts told the newspaper he once led. "She was a good writer, and her enthusiasm for reporting came through in everything she did."

Ms. Horner was born in Richmond. After receiving her undergraduate degree in English from the College of William & Mary in 1967, she taught high school English in Hillsborough, N.C., and Richmond and also worked as a child welfare caseworker in Richmond.

She received her master's degree in journalism from American University in 1973 and got her first reporting job at the Bergen County Record in Hackensack, N.J. She also wrote editorials for the old Philadelphia Bulletin before becoming a reporter at the Inquirer in 1979.

During her 15 years at the Inquirer, Ms. Horner was a features writer, a city hall reporter, a national correspondent based in Boston and an editorial writer. Her many articles included profiles of country music star Randy Travis and Virginia's first black governor, L. Douglas Wilder. She covered the political comeback of former Philadelphia mayor Frank L. Rizzo, who ran against W. Wilson Goode in 1983, and wrote a 1994 story that explored the generational effects of domestic violence.

Her father, longtime Richmond Times-Dispatch journalist Overton Jones, told the Associated Press that for a time he and his daughter wrote editorials that in effect canceled each other out. He wrote conservative pieces for the Times-Dispatch; she wrote from a liberal perspective for the Inquirer and other newspapers.

She left the Inquirer in 1994 to become a features editor in the Wall Street Journal's Washington office. She joined the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism in 2000.

Her marriage to John Horner ended in divorce.

In addition to her sister, survivors include her father and her stepmother, Kathryn H. Jones, and two stepbrothers, Bryan Jones and Gary Jones, all of Richmond.