DALLAS – Retired Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater, who covered the rise of Texas governors Ann Richards and George W. Bush, has died in a car crash. He was 74.
Slater died Monday after his vehicle collided with a pickup, Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Deon Cockrell said Tuesday. It happened near Florence, the city north of Austin where Slater lived.
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Robert Mong, a former editor-in-chief at the Dallas Morning News, told the newspaper that Slater “was relentless in going after a story.”
“He broke a lot of stories because people trusted him and liked talking to him,” Mong said.
In a statement to the newspaper Monday, former president Bush called Slater “a hard-working and insightful reporter.”
Slater was born in Lubbock, Texas, and grew up in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He graduated from West Virginia University. From the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, Slater worked for The Associated Press in Charleston, West Virginia; Topeka, Kansas; Peoria, Illinois; and Denver.
But he is best remembered for his next stop: three decades in the Morning News' Austin bureau, including as bureau chief. The newspaper reports that Slater retired in December 2014.
Slater also co-wrote two books about Bush adviser Karl Rove: “Bush’s Brain” and “The Architect.”