Newton N. Minow

Newton N. Minow, who as President John F. Kennedy’s new F.C.C. chairman in 1961 sent shock waves through an industry and touched a nerve in a nation addicted to banality and mayhem by calling American television “a vast wasteland,” died on Saturday May 6 2023 at his home in Chicago. He was 97. Mr. Minow resigned from the F.C.C. in 1963 to become an executive with Encyclopaedia Britannica. Two years later, he joined a Chicago law firm that merged in 1972 with Sidley Austin, one of the world’s largest practices. Mr. Minow was a partner until 1991 and then became senior counsel. In 1988, he recruited Barack Obama to work as a summer associate at the firm, where Mr. Obama met his future wife, Michelle Robinson. In 1949, he married Josephine Baskin. The couple had three daughters. Besides his daughter Nell, Mr. Minow is survived by two other daughters, Martha and Mary Minow, and three grandchildren. His wife died last year. Minow graduated from Northwestern University in 1949 with a bachelor’s degree in speech and political science, and a year later he received a law degree at Northwestern.