Michael Days, editor and advocate for diversity in journalism, dies at 72

By Ovetta Wiggins | URL Media 

* Photo Courtesy of YouTube

Michael Days, a pioneering editor and tireless advocate for diversity in America’s newsrooms who shepherded the Philadelphia Daily News to a 2010 Pulitzer Prize win for investigative journalism, died Saturday after suffering a heart attack in Trenton, New Jersey. He was 72.

As executive editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, known as the “People’s Paper,” and a lifelong member of the National Association of Black Journalists, Days challenged the industry’s white-male-dominated newsrooms to not only reflect the Black communities they served but to tell their stories.

Before retiring in 2020, he served as a senior manager and executive at the Philadelphia Inquirer. At the time of his death, he was president of the National Association of Black Journalists Philadelphia.

“It is with a very heavy heart that NABJ Philadelphia mourns the sudden passing of our President Michael I. Days, a respected journalist, mentor and cherished friend whose legendary career and commitment to excellence inspired us all,” wrote NABJ-Philadelphia Vice President Melanie Burney, an education reporter at The Inquirer.

Tributes flooded social media during the weekend as friends, mentees, and former colleagues from across the country spoke of Days’ impact on their lives and careers, and on the news coverage in his native Philadelphia.