William Martin Schulz

William Schulz served as Executive Editor and head of the Washington office of Reader’s Digest for more than three decades, helping lead the magazine during a period when monthly U.S. readership exceeded 50 million. Schulz shaped the magazine’s focus on defending basic American values and shining a light on the evils of communism.

Mr. Schulz was born in New York City in 1939 and attended Bronx High School of Science. His conservative political views began to form during this period when he would attend lectures on political economy at NYU given by the prominent Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. He attended Antioch College in Ohio – an unusual choice given his political leanings – but dropped out near the end of his final year to move to Washington to work fulltime for nationally syndicated columnist and radio commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr.

During this period – and under the mentorship of William F. Buckley, Jr. and M. Stanton Evans – he helped shape the nation’s nascent conservative movement as it began to coalesce into a political force. He collaborated with the editors of Human Events to articulate and advance conservative political causes, and was active in Young Americans for Freedom as well.

In 1960, Schulz attended the seminal political gathering of young conservatives at Buckley’s Connecticut home that produced the Sharon Statement. That document, an early articulation of conservative political principles, helped pave the way for the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

In the late 1960s, Schulz joined the Washington office of Reader’s Digest, which, except for a one-year stint at the magazine’s headquarters in the early 1970s, would be his professional home for the next several decades. He mentored hundreds of writers and journalists during his Digest career, all while producing a magazine that had no equal in terms of readership, paid circulation, or reach and influence.

He oversaw a talented collection of writers at the Digest, including Ralph Bennett, Trevor Armbrister, Malcolm McConnell, and others, and also regularly published the likes of Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, and Fred Barnes during the magazine’s heyday. In his legendary career as an editor, he helped a number of authors write and publish bestselling books, including those from former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon.

After retiring from the Reader’s Digest in 2003, he joined NBC newsman Ken Bode in 2005 as the first ombudsmen for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the organization that oversees public radio and television.

Mr. Schulz married Lynne Canwell of Spokane, WA, in 1965. She survives him, along with the four sons they produced – William, Max, Nick, and Ken – and 17 grandchildren