Edward A. “Nick” Nickerson, emeritus professor of English who helped to create UD’s journalism program, passed away on Jan. 1, 2026. He was 100 years old.

Nickerson joined the UD faculty as a lecturer in 1970 after a successful career with the Associated Press. Three years later he became the driving force behind the development of a journalism concentration. The program became a minor in 2007. He hired working professionals and professors to bring real-world experience into the classroom, including the late Chuck Stone, the Pulitzer Prize winning Philadelphia Daily News columnist and co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists.  

Nickerson had an interest in journalism from an early age and joined the student newspaper at Dartmouth College as a first-year student. World War II soon put his journalism plans on hold and he left Dartmouth to enlist in the military at the age of 18. He was part of the U.S. Army’s famed 10th Mountain Division, skiing, climbing and using alpine warfare tactics in harsh terrain in the mountains of Italy.

After the war, Nickerson returned to Dartmouth to finish his undergraduate degree. He received a doctorate from the State University of New York at Albany. After working with the AP wire service in Baltimore and New York, he left the newsroom to follow his love of teaching.

​On campus, Nickerson taught in the lower level of Memorial Hall, in a dimly lit journalism lab that featured only typewriters, even into the late 1980s. This writer remembers the need to arrive to class early to secure an electric typewriter, not a manual one.  

Those were the days of true cut-and-paste journalism, when students handed in stories that had been rearranged with the help of scissors and adhesive tape. Each week, Nickerson would bestow his “boos” and “bouquets,” extensive notes on the assignments submitted the prior week. He was a gentle and kind man, but his notes were unflinchingly honest. “Bouquets” were only bestowed for truly superior work. 

In a farewell column in UD’s student newspaper The Review, Nickerson wrote that “despite all the flaws of journalism, printing the news is worthwhile, for the simple reason that knowledge is better than ignorance, openness better than secrecy and light better than darkness.”

After retiring in 1991, Nickerson established a fund to support UD students. The E.A. Nickerson Fund is responsible for bringing to campus speakers such as New York Times columnist Maggie Haberman and NPR host Leila Fadel in honor of World Press Freedom Day.

“I am grateful to Nick for many reasons. He never lost touch with UD Journalism, celebrating efforts to strengthen the minor and his generous funding of the annual Byline lecture series,” said Nancy Karibjanian, UD alum and the current director of UD journalism.

“Another reason dates back to my time as a student at UD, when he burst into my journalism class wearing a trench coat, tweed driving cap and possibly holding a pipe,” added Karibjanian. He introduced himself as the investigator searching for the ‘Gentleman Book Bandit.’ Without instruction, we were expected to interview him and write a story by the end of class. It was a valuable lesson on deadlines that I’ve recreated and use in my classes today.” 

Alumni Remembrances

Countless UD journalism alumni credit their experience in Nickerson’s classroom as a roadmap to their success in the field.  

Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist David Hoffman, who attended UD from 1971-1975 and was an editor at The Review, remembers Nickerson’s “generosity and flinty wisdom.”

Hoffman worked at The Washington Post for 43 years, as a reporter, editorial board member and a contributing writer. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing for “a compelling and well-researched series on new technologies and the tactics authoritarian regimes use to repress dissent in the digital age, and how they can be fought.” He also received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for his book The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy.

Hoffman said of Nickerson, “he had an important impact on me and my generation at The Review.”

One time, Hoffman was working on a long piece about what was then called the UD Solar Institute – “probably my first real ‘investigation,’” he said.

“I remember so clearly taking the story to Nick’s house and sitting there - it was evening - as he read it carefully and made editing and reporting suggestions, and I was chagrined to find I had left so many holes! I followed his advice,” recalled Hoffman.

“The great thing about Nick was that he had been there, and you knew he’d held a notebook in those hands,” he added.

Kevin Tresolini, who graduated from UD in 1980, is an award-winning sports reporter for the Delaware News Journal whose primary beat is UD sports. He knew Nickerson both in his role as academic advisor to The Review and as a classroom professor. He credits Nickerson with getting him off to the right start journalistically.

“Nick drummed into us the essentials of being a good journalist – including the need to always be accurate and factual,” recalled Tresolini. “He was a kind man, and he always made me feel good about my work while also letting me how I could improve,” he recalled.

To read his obituary or leave online condolences, visit the Delaware News Journal.