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Raymond E. Douglas

American journalist

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ7298738 ↗
Source-derived summary

Raymond Edward "Ray" Douglas (April 5, 1949 – 29 June 2007), a graduate of Michigan State University, was an executive for the New York Times and is credited with helping to introduce color to its news pages and to adding new sections in the 1990s.

Biography

Douglas was a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and received a Purple Heart during his service in Vietnam. He was a founding staff member of USA Today and was involved in the design and color systems for the Gannett Company when USA Today was launched in 1981.

He was the vice president for systems and technology for The New York Times Company, of which the newspaper is a part. He later became the corporate chief information officer. Douglas spent most of his career working with the computer systems that helped design and publish newspapers and was deeply involved in 1997 when the paper, making the broadest changes in its format since the 1970s, introduced a wide use of color in advertisements and photographs and added new sections, including separate weekday sports and arts sections. He died on June 29, 2007, in St. Augustine, Florida, from a pulmonary embolism.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Raymond E. Douglas” as american journalist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1949, 2007, 1981, 1997—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1948. The account is most persuasive where Raymond, Douglas and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american journalist. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7298738. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1949, 2007, 1981 and 1997.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Raymond E. Douglas”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Raymond E. Douglas primary sources, Raymond E. Douglas archive and Raymond research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Raymond E. Douglas”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Raymond E. Douglas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.