Walter R. Mears, ‘Boys on the Bus’ Campaign Reporter, Dies at 87

Walter R. Mears, a longtime reporter at The Associated Press whose on-the-spot analyses of American politics won him a Pulitzer Prize and a role in “The Boys on the Bus,” an enduring 1973 book about presidential campaign correspondents, died on Thursday at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 87.

The cause was cancer, his daughter Susan Mears said.

Mr. Mears joined The A.P. the week after he graduated from college in 1956, and he remained there for the rest of his career, except for a brief stint at The Detroit News. At The A.P., he rose to Washington bureau chief and executive editor, yet always returned to his chief passion — deadline writing.

“I made my reputation as a man who could write and deliver copy almost instantly,” he wrote in his memoir, “Deadlines Past” (2003).

He won his Pulitzer for national reporting in 1977 for his work on the previous year’s presidential race between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Mr. Mears’s writing was distinguished by his ability to judge the historical meaning of events he was witnessing in real time.

“It has been a campaign without compelling issues, a campaign structured around three nationally televised debates which are in retrospect more important for the fact that they were held than for anything that was said,” he wrote in an article published soon after the third and final Ford-Carter debate.

At the time, there had not been a televised presidential debate since 1960. In the years to come, there would be at least one in every general election.

Mr. Mears became “moderately famous,” as he put it, thanks to “The Boys on the Bus,” written by the journalist Timothy Crouse. For an American public that had largely accepted the omniscient posture of mainstream political reporters, the book provided a messy but savory view of journalistic sausage making.

Mr. Crouse quoted Mr. Mears, then only 37, calling himself an “old fart” and fretting that practitioners of the ascendant style of New Journalism had skipped over essentials of reportorial training, like “how to write an eight-car fatal on Route 128.”

Yet Mr. Crouse’s description of reporters covering a debate between George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey during the Democratic primary race showed how much Mr. Mears’s colleagues respected him.

As other journalists treated the occasion like a social event, Mr. Crouse wrote, Mr. Mears typed “like a madman,” writing for as long as an hour without pause, transcribing each politician’s statements while inserting a descriptive phrase every four or five lines. Then the debate ended, and Mr. Mears’s fellow reporters began crowding around him, shouting “Lead? Lead?” and “Walter, Walter, what’s our lead?”

The “lead” — in a straight news article, the opening line that distills its significance — was Mr. Mears’s specialty. Half the men in the press room wound up copying his approach to the debate.

It was a memorable scene, and, in several “Doonesbury” comics that named Mr. Mears in the years after “The Boys on the Bus,” he was presented in the same light — as an archetypal just-the-facts-ma’am reporter.

In his memoir, Mr. Mears formulated his own description of his job: “to get past the managers and spinners to assess the strengths the candidates claim as well as the failures and flaws they try to conceal.”

Walter Robert Mears was born on Jan. 11, 1935, in Lynn, Mass., and he grew up in nearby Lexington. His father, Edward, was an executive at a chemical company, and his mother, Edythe (Campbell) Mears, was a homemaker.

He worked on the student newspaper at Middlebury College, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1956. He first job at The A.P. was covering the Vermont State House.

In 1962, Mr. Mears’s house caught fire, killing his two children, Pamela and Walter Jr., and his wife, Sally (Danton) Mears. Two subsequent marriages, to Joyce (Lund) Mears and Carroll Ann (Imle) Mears, ended in divorce. His fourth wife, Frances (Rioux) Mears, also a journalist at The A.P., died of cancer in 2019.

After retiring in 2001, Mr. Mears taught journalism at the University of North Carolina and lived in Chapel Hill.

In addition to his daughter Susan, from his marriage to Joyce Mears, Mr. Mears is survived by another daughter from that marriage, Stephanie Stich; a brother, William; and five grandchildren.

The afternoon before he died, Susan Mears said, his daughters were keeping him company, along with a Methodist pastor who had long known him. The pastor, describing Mr. Mears’s expertise in American politics, recalled a conversation many years earlier during which he had been amazed at how much Mr. Mears knew about the 1936 presidential election, which took place when he was 1 year old.

As Mr. Mears appeared to sleep, the pastor tried to remember the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Republican challenger.

Before either of the Mears daughters had a chance to reply, they heard a familiar voice — softer and slower than they were accustomed to, but with the speed, authoritative tone and factual command that had for decades guided America’s leading political reporters.

“Alf Landon,” Mr. Mears said.