Shapiro has been in journalism for half a century and has long adapted to the needs and demographics of daily newspapers, weeklies and online outlets aimed at political enthusiasts.
He was a reporter for The Washington Post in the early 1980s, then moved to Newsweek and Time magazine, and wrote columns for Esquire and USA Today, as well as websites such as Politics Daily. At the time of his death, he was a reporter for The New Republic and a columnist for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill publication.
Wherever his petition appeared, it demonstrated a respect for reporting on the ground and a disdain for big words, whether from politicians or the journalists who record their actions.
Last month, in one of his final columns for Roll Call, he drew on his years of experience to offer some guidelines for reporters covering the 2024 presidential election: “Pay attention to the polls,” he wrote, “don’t overreact” to what experts say, and “always check your deodorant.”
Apparently that last bit of advice was aimed especially at the journalists packed onto campaign buses and humid summer rallies that Mr. Shapiro has attended every four years since Republican Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980. (The deodorant reference was also a nod to a hobby Mr. Shapiro cultivated as a stand-up comedian.)
He was an old-school reporter who took pride in making appearances, whether at caucuses or at candidates’ homes. In his Substack obituary, Joe Klein, journalist and author of the anonymous political novel “Primary Colors” (1996), wrote that he and Shapiro “spent years in Iowa assessing heroes running for president, many years in all, almost always in winter.”
In 2003, before reporters parachuted in, Mr. Shapiro wrote a book about the early stages of that year’s presidential nomination race called “One Car Caravan: Traveling with the 2004 Democrats Before America Takes Notice.”
His early visit to the campaign allowed him to get to know the candidates more intimately than is usually possible in a drawn-out, tense campaign. Sen. John F. Kerry (R-Mass.), who won the nomination but lost the general election, played classical guitar for Shapiro and spoke emotionally about the peace he found in middle age.
Shapiro freely acknowledged that his reporting was sometimes wrong: In a 2016 column for Roll Call, he wrote that he made “the worst mistake” of his career when, during the 1984 New Hampshire Democratic primary, he wrote a lead story for Newsweek magazine the week of the primary.
The magazine was printed over the weekend but was not delivered to many subscribers until the following Wednesday, the day after the election. In the article, Shapiro wrote that former Vice President Walter Mondale’s “lead in New Hampshire appears solid,” a prediction that Shapiro confessed to being “unshakeably confident about.” In the end, Senator Gary Hart of Colorado defeated Mondale in a major upset.
“You screwed up,” a friend told Mr. Shapiro as the exit poll results began to come in.
“Thirty years later, those three words come to mind whenever I’m tempted to make a naive prediction about a primary election,” Shapiro wrote in 2016. “That huge mistake so long ago has instilled in me a quality that is sadly all too rare in political journalism today: humility.”
When he wasn’t on the campaign trail, Mr. Shapiro often reported from Washington or split his time between his home in Manhattan, where he once joked that Manhattan was a fun place to spend a weekend because “I never once heard the word subcommittee” there.
Walter Elliot Shapiro was born in Manhattan on February 16, 1947, and grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut, where his father was a city planner and his mother ran the family business.
After graduating from high school, Shapiro attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1970 and served as editor of the campus daily newspaper.
His first job in journalism was as a reporter for Congress Quarterly, and in 1972, after returning to Michigan to attend graduate school, he sought the Democratic nomination for the Ann Arbor-based U.S. House of Representatives.
“His only vehicle was a three-speed bicycle,” Shapiro wrote in Roll Call magazine years later, and for much of the campaign his wardrobe consisted of a single, double-knit suit with a wide lapel.
He described his campaign as “Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland doing a backyard musical”, but it was driven by his passionate opposition to the Vietnam War and his support for busing to accelerate school desegregation, the former of which helped him win in Ann Arbor in what he described as a “landslide”, but the latter of which cost him the suburban vote.
Shapiro finished second out of six candidates, earning him enduring respect for a candidate who is dedicated to his constituents.
“My long-ago political career has given me empathy for the candidates,” he wrote, “especially the unlikely dreamers who are there with their shoeshine and their smiles, driven by an unshakeable belief in American democracy.”
Shapiro returned to journalism, working as an editor at Washington Monthly magazine, before joining the Carter administration as press secretary to Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall and later as a speechwriter for the president, his final period away from journalism.
Shapiro dug into his family history in his 2016 book, “Hustling Hitler! The Jewish vaudevilian Who Fooled the Führer.” The book focuses on his great-uncle Freeman Bernstein, a serial conman who in the mid-1930s duped the Nazi government into buying nearly $150,000 in nickels that were actually scrap. The book was recently adapted into a Broadway play, according to Shapiro’s wife.
Mr. Shapiro’s marriage to Barbara McGowan ended in divorce.
Mr. Gordon, who lives in Manhattan, is survived by his wife of 43 years, a magazine writer and the author of several books, as well as one sister.
Shapiro, who lectured on presidential politics and the media at Yale University and continued to write until shortly before his death, was among several commentators who in recent weeks called on President Biden to end his struggling reelection campaign and step aside in support of a new candidate, which Biden ultimately did on the day of his death.
Throughout his career, Mr. Shapiro has warned his colleagues to beware of a common journalistic quality that is valuable in moderation but harmful in excess: “Excessive cynicism in political reporting is a deadly disease for reporters and commentators,” he has written.
