WASHINGTON – Joan Lowy, a veteran Washington journalist who spent the overall decade of her profession overlaying transportation problems for The Associated Press, has died. She was once 66.
Lowy died early Wednesday at her house in Vienna, Virginia, after a 10-year combat with belly most cancers, mentioned her husband, Michael Christensen.
“She was a heck of a reporter,” Christensen, additionally a journalist, mentioned Thursday about his spouse of 33 years. “She loved journalism. She loved the give-and-take and everything.”
Lowy was once a wise and dogged reporter, mentioned Ken Guggenheim, who was once Lowy’s editor at AP ahead of she went on go away in 2018 to concentrate on her sickness.
Lowy joined the AP’s Washington bureau in 2006. She was once recognized with most cancers in 2012.
“She was passionate about transportation issues, recognizing how the fine print in dense bureaucratic documents could have life-or-death implications for American drivers, passengers and pedestrians,” Guggenheim mentioned. “She developed a vast network of sources because all sides in the world of transportation recognized that she was fair and meticulous -– and impossible to spin or deceive.”
Her protection of the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board went past the dry stuff of federal budgets and regulations. Among different problems, Lowy reported at the pitfalls of self-driving cars and each and every commuter’s dream of cars that could fly above traffic-clogged roadways.
“She brought the transportation beat to life,” added Carole Feldman, any other AP Washington news editor who labored with Lowy.
Merrill Hartson, a now-retired AP colleague, mentioned Lowy was once proficient and flexible, but in addition competitive and intense about her reporting.
“She was a collegial presence even in deadline-pressure situations and was supportive of fellow employees” Hartson mentioned in an e mail.
Justin Harclerode, communications director for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, added that he discovered Lowy to be a professional and open-minded.
“She knew the issues, and she was always willing to hear and consider the viewpoints of the lawmakers that I’ve worked for over the years,” mentioned Harclerode, who has labored for the committee’s Republican chairmen or senior GOP member since 1997.
A New Jersey local and graduate of George Washington University, Lowy have been a reporter for now-closed The Rocky Mountain News in Denver and a Washington correspondent for the now-defunct Scripps Howard News Service, for whom she lined the 1991 Gulf War, amongst different assignments.
Her biography of Democratic Rep. Pat Schroeder of Colorado was once printed in 2003.
Christensen mentioned he and Lowy met all the way through the 1988 presidential marketing campaign at a watering hollow in New Hampshire that was once well-liked by political reporters, applicants, and specialists. While chatting, they discovered they’d each grown up at the Jersey Shore.
“We both knew Jersey,” he mentioned.
(*66*) in her profession, Lowy was once a regional reporter in Washington for The Rocky Mountain News and Scripps Howard, overlaying news within the country’s capital that affected the states she reported for.
“She was one of the good people down here,” mentioned Jonathan Salant, assistant managing editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who first met Lowy many years in the past as a tender regional reporter himself.
“There are people you get to know and you’re glad you know them, and she’s one of those people,” Salant added.
Joan Andrea Lowy was once born Dec. 16, 1956, in New Jersey. Survivors come with her her husband and two kids, Tessa Nyx and Ross Christensen, either one of Richmond, Virginia.
Funeral preparations had been pending.