Obituary: David Wiessler

Self-effacing, amusing and hugely knowledgeable about current and past American political events, trends and shenanigans, Wiessler was a fixture on the journalistic scene and a prominent member of the Gridiron Club, an elite group of Washington journalists, said David Storey. 

“He had a laid-back, no-nonsense style of writing and brought a cool head and long perspective in the often-heated rhetoric of political reporting. In a town known for tall tales, he was a stickler for accuracy and fairness.

“A rumpled, glasses-askew, wry presence in the newsroom, he was in many ways a figure from the Great Age of Newspapers, an ink-stained purveyor of simple, unvarnished stories. If it happened inside the Beltway, he understood it and could explain it to those outside the Beltway.”

Wiessler moved to Washington with his wife Judy in the early 1970s to work as an editor in the UPI bureau. He also had a stint with U.S. News and World Report and in the mid-1990s moved to Reuters, where he worked both as an editor on the Americas Desk and as a political editor/writer in the Washington bureau.

Judy, also a veteran journalist latterly with the Houston Chronicle, suffered from multiple sclerosis and died in 2013 aged 68. ■