The bad news is that, after 54 years in the business, George Melloan is retiring from the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The good news is that he’s writing a book about Journal and its role in shaping the last three decades. In an e-mail to the staff today, editorial page editor Paul Gigot wrote:

In August of 1970, George returned to New York and joined the editorial page, when that staff was undergoing its transition from Vermont Royster to Joe Evans, who died unexpectedly at age 52, to Bob Bartley, who took charge of the page in 1971. Bob asked George to become his deputy in 1973, and thus began one of the most consequential collaborations in Journal, and American journalistic, history. Together they helped to change the world, battling the many bad policy ideas that dominated the 1970s, and paving the way for the Reagan reforms of the 1980s in economics and American foreign policy. George’s achievements included an early warning about the Communist attempts to subvert Nicaragua and the rest of the Central America, as well as encouraging the U.S. military and diplomatic resistance to Soviet expansionism. For a brief period, he also did theater, dance and opera reviews.
George launched the Business World column in 1987, and in 1989 moved to Brussels to oversee the Journal’s expanding international editorial operations. Some of us suspect the fall of the Berlin Wall that year was no coincidence. He began a new column titled Global View, which has continued every Tuesday and has been marked by its civil tone and deep sense of history. In late 1994, he returned to New York and has continued to supervise the overseas editorial pages, among other invaluable contributions.

We’ll miss those contributions and look forward to reading Melloan’s account of such a consequential era for conservatives.