Longtime AP Alaska bureau chief Dean Fosdick dies at age 80

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Dean Fosdick, the journalist with The Associated Press who filed the news alert informing the world of the Exxon Valdez grounding and who directed AP’s coverage of what was then the nation’s worst oil spill, died April 27 in Florida. He was 80.

His longtime career with the news service included 15 years as the bureau chief in Alaska.

It was in that role that he was awakened at about 5:30 a.m. on March 24, 1989, by a caller with a tip that an oil tanker had run aground outside Valdez, Alaska.

He quickly confirmed with the U.S. Coast Guard that the tanker Exxon Valdez had struck a reef and was leaking oil into Prince William Sound.

He then directed coverage of the spill that included more than a dozen AP reporters, photographers and editors, reporting on the spill that marred coast lines and covered seabirds and otters in thick crude.

Fosdick was born Aug. 26, 1941, in Owtonna, Minnesota. At age 17, he joined the U.S. Army to see the world. He became a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division and spent two years in the Far East.

After his service, he earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota School of Journalism.

After working for the Minneapolis Star newspaper and briefly in politics, he began his long career with the AP in the Nashville, Tennessee, bureau in 1978.

In 1982, he transferred to the AP’s General Desk in New York and became the correspondent in Juneau, Alaska, a year later.

In 1985, he was named Alaska bureau chief, where he helped mold young journalists.

“Dean was one of the finest AP colleagues I’ve ever worked for, and he was a steady force in Alaska journalism for more than a decade,” said Jim Clarke, whom Fosdick hired in 1993.

“He was...