Author Joe McGinniss has died.
McGinniss wrote the New York Times bestseller, “The Selling of the President,” an inside look at the 1968 presidential campaign of Richard Nixon and the team Nixon assembled to improve his image. On that team, a young Roger Ailes, now chairman of Fox News.
Ailes, who knew McGinniss for almost 50 years, said in a statement today: “Joe McGinniss will be remembered as a talented man. He changed political writing forever in 1968. We differed on many things, but he had a good heart. My prayers are with his family.”
Later, McGinniss wrote the true crime thriller “Fatal Vision.” The 1983 book was developed into a 1984 NBC mini-series. In 2011, he published “The Rogue,” a biography of Sarah Palin. During the writing of the book, McGinnis, in an effort to get a closer look at the 2008 GOP VP nominee, rented a house next door to Palin’s in Wasilla, Alaska.
McGinniss, 71, died Monday following complications related to prostate cancer.