Karl E. Meyer was born on May 22, 1928, in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Ernest L. and Dorothy (Narefsky) Meyer. In becoming a journalist Meyer continued a family tradition, for Ernest Meyer was a noted columnist with the Madison Capital Times and his grandfather George Meyer had been the editor of a Milwaukee German-language newspaper.
Meyer received his bachelors degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1951. While in school he was the editor of both the campus literary magazine, the Wisconsin Athenaean, and the campus newspaper, the Daily Cardinal. Meyer received a Master of Public Affairs degree and a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 1956.
In 1956 the Washington Post hired Meyer as a general assignment reporter, thus beginning what was to become a fifteen-year stint. In 1957, he became an editorial writer for the Washington, D.C. office, a position he held until 1965. In 1965, Meyer was named chief of the London bureau. In 1970 he returned from London to become an editorial writer for the Post's New York office. In 1971 Meyer left the Washington Post to concentrate on other writing projects. At this time he accepted a senior editorial position on the Saturday Review. In 1979, Meyer was named to the editorial board of the New York Times.
In addition to editorial writing and freelance articles that appeared in a host of prominent periodicals, Meyer published the following books: The New America: Politics of the Smooth Deal (1961); The Cuban Invasion: The Chronicle of Disaster with Tad Szulc (1962); Fulbright of Arkansas (1963); The Pleasures of Archaeology: A Visa to Yesterday (1971); The Plundered Past (1973); Teotihuacan (1973); The Art Museum: Power, Money & Ethics (1979); and Pundits, Poets & Wits: An Omnibus of American Newspaper Collections (1990).
Highlights of Meyer's newspaper career include an extended interview with Fidel Castro in 1958 for which he received the award for excellence from the Overseas Press Club and the Sigma Delta Chi national achievement award for his editorials on congressional reform in 1963.
Karl E. Meyer's first wife was Iris Hill. Meyer married Sarah Neilson Peck in 1959 and they had three children: Ernest, Heather and Jonathan. Meyer's third wife was Shareen Blair Brysac. Karl Meyer died on December 22, 2019 in New York, New York.
