In 1977, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his coverage of the 1976 United States presidential election.
[3] In the 1970s, he was one of the subjects of Timothy Crouse's book The Boys on the Bus about reporters covering the 1972 presidential election between Richard Nixon and George McGovern.
Even after retiring, he continued to encourage transparent campaign coverage and spoke about the need for good background and fact checking, especially in the digital age of reporting.
"[12] In 2004, two questions were directed to Mears during the first session of a bloggers conference sponsored by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
[14] Mears responded to the second question in his AP blog by speaking to the importance of transparency and ethics in campaign reporting.
He wrote about the need to "get the facts straight," and, while he acknowledged the difference and difficulties in reporting between his days and now, he implicitly responded to the question asked by Weinberger by explaining how to earn trust.
[15] Mears' point in the blog was emphasized by Bill Mitchell and Bob Steel in a report for the Poynter Institute after the conference.
Earlier in 2004, speaking at Montgomery College's Lycem series, he called the political conventions "all show and no decision."
During a question-and-answer session, he said the word media "had become convoluted in the context of 24-hour cable news and the 'echo chamber' it [had] created.
[2][19] He and Carroll Ann Rambo Mears, a producer for NBC News, married in 1986;[20] that marriage also ended in divorce.
After his book Deadlines Past was published, they left the Washington area in 2005 and moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they lived in Governors Club, a private community.