Darrell L. Christian, a former managing editor and sports editor of The Associated Press known for a demanding demeanor and insistence on excellence during more than four decades with the news agency, died Monday. He was 75.
Christian died of Parkinson's disease at Elegant Senior Living in Encino, California, according to his wife, Lissa Morrow Christian. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease around 2015, his wife said.
''Darrell was the finest story editor I ever saw, with an unerring instinct for the lead and shape of copy and zero tolerance for anything but the best,'' said Mike Silverman, the AP's managing editor from 2000 to 2007 and senior managing editor through 2009. ''I had the great good fortune to be his deputy for several years when he was managing editor and much of what I later brought to the job I owed to him.''
A no-nonsense editor known for directness and rigor, Christian modernized AP's sports coverage during seven years in charge, emphasizing breaking news and in-depth reporting on such issues as the sports business, academics and high school safety standards. That coverage earned him a promotion to managing editor under William E. Ahearn, then the executive editor.
''Sports is just an extension of hard news with a slightly different flavor,'' Christian told the National Press Club in 2007.
Born on Dec. 26, 1948, Christian was a native of Henderson, Kentucky. He began his newspaper career as a sports writer and sports editor at the Henderson Gleaner in 1964, worked two summers in the AP's bureau at Charleston, West Virginia, and received a bachelor's degree from the University of Kentucky in 1969. After serving in the Navy from 1969-1972, Christian joined the AP in Indianapolis in 1972. He became news editor in 1975, moved to the Washington bureau in 1980 and became deputy sports editor in New York the following year.
Christian was promoted to sports editor in 1985, coordinating coverage of the 1988 and 1992 Winter and Summer Olympics and overseeing the addition of featurized approaches to game stories on all major sports events — something he brought to news stories as managing editor.
''When Jackie Robinson came along, sports began to develop a social consciousness,'' Christian said at the National Press Club. ''It really exploded in the 1970 and early '80s with television coverage, which brought sports events into the living room and the proliferation of money in sports, the free agency where you suddenly created a whole generation of instant millionaires. And what happened between the lines was no longer enough. That created a public appetite for everything you could possibly want to know about these athletes.''