[2] He earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1952 and then served in the U.S. Army as a first lieutenant in artillery during the Korean War.

Johnson had begun his newspaper career earlier in Manhattan as a copy boy for The New York Sun, where his father worked.

Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1966, for his coverage of the civil rights crisis in Selma, Alabama.

[1] He was the author or editor of sixteen books, five of them best-sellers, including his most recent work, co-authored with Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz, The Battle for America: 2008.

Johnson's survivors include his wife, Kathryn A. Oberly, a former associate judge on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and three daughters and two sons from his previous marriage, to Julia Erwin.