Daniels, Derick (January) 1929(?)-2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born December 6, c. 1929, in Washington, DC; died of cancer February 5, 2005, in Miami, FL. Journalist, newspaper executive, and author. A former president of what is now the Knight-Ridder news agency, Daniels was best known for his tenure at Playboy, where he successfully saved the company from financial ruin. The son of the family that owned the Raleigh News & Observer until the 1990s, he was a 1950 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Daniels began his career as a reporter for the Durham Herald. During the early 1950s, he also worked for the St. Petersburg Times and the Atlanta Constitution. In 1955, he became an editor at the Miami Herald, rising to the post of city editor. Next, he moved to a newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, where he was city editor until 1967 and vice president and executive editor from 1967 until 1973. During the mid-1970s, Daniels headed Knight News Services (now Knight-Ridder), and it was while there that Playboy founder Hugh Hefner selected him to rescue the struggling magazine. Playboy Enterprises had overextended itself, and Daniels reigned in its expenditures by selling off some of its interests while investing more efficiently in core businesses, such as the magazine and the Playboy clubs. He also helped train Hefner's daughter to take over editorship of the magazine. Daniels left Playboy in 1982, working on such magazines as One Woman, Vegas, Ocean Drive, and Ocean Drive Español. In 2001 he became a partner in TerraTran L.L.C., a real estate development company in Ormond Beach, Florida.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, February 10, 2005, section 3, p. 11.

Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2005, p. B11.

New York Times, February 9, 2005, p. C19.