Tom Shales Dies: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Washington Post TV Critic And Author Was 79

Bruce Haring
·1-min read

Tom Shales, a Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic for The Washington Post, died Jan. 13 at a hospital in Fairfax County, Va. He was 79.

The cause was complications from covid and renal failure, said his caretaker, Victor Herfurth.

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As The Post’s chief TV critic starting in 1977, his column was widely syndicated, bringing him national attention and influence.

Shales covered of all forms of the medium, from nature documentaries to late-night talk shows, network sitcoms to cable dramas.

In 1988, he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, the fourth TV reviewer to earn the top prize in journalism. He was an early advocate for cable TV.

In addition to his work for The Post, he wrote for TelevisionWeek, Huffington Post (now the HuffPost) and Roger Ebert’s website about film and television. His books included Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (2002) and Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN (2011), both oral histories written with journalist James Andrew Miller.

Shales has no immediate survivors.

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