Alan Gould, AP's Chief Editor Led News Service To 14 Pulitzers

VERO BEACH, Fla. - Alan Gould, a journalistic innovator who took command of the Associated Press news report at the start of World War II and led it to the dawn of the space age, died today at age 95.

Mr. Gould died at Indian River Memorial Hospital in Vero Beach of heart failure, said his son, Alan Gould Jr. He had lived in Florida since 1975.

As AP sports editor in the 1920s and 1930s, Mr. Gould covered the great stories of a golden age in sports, and established the AP All-America college football team and the AP college football poll.

Later, as chief editor of the nation's largest news organization, he expanded interpretive and in-depth reporting, and campaigned vigorously for clear writing on a news wire that serves thousands of newspapers and broadcasters around the world.

Under his leadership, the AP won 14 Pulitzer Prizes in reporting and photography.

"Alan left a great imprint on the AP news report," said Louis D. Boccardi, AP president and chief executive officer. "In his advice of 30 years ago, we still find much that speaks to today: Get it clearly, tell it straight and help the reader understand what it means."

The square-jawed, bow-tied Mr. Gould, ever popular among his staff, used to describe himself as a father confessor, a coordinator, an idea man.

A baseball reporter who came to oversee coverage of a global war, Mr. Gould always said he grounded his career on a simple credo picked up reporting a boxing match - the Dempsey-Firpo heavyweight title fight of 1923.

Reigning champion Jack Dempsey put Luis Firpo down seven times in the first round. But then the champ himself was knocked out of the ring, stunning the crowd. He climbed back in, knocked out Firpo and kept the title.

At ringside, as young reporter Alan Gould sat groping for adjectives to describe the sensational action, veteran colleague Vincent "Pop" Byers, AP city editor, leaned over and said: "Alan, just tell 'em what happened."

Telling them what happened was this consummate journalist's mission throughout a half-century in news.

He was born in Philadelphia but considered his hometown to be Elmira, N.Y., where his traveling-salesman father settled when Alan was 13.

In 1914, at age 16, he became a $1.50-a-week part-time reporter for the Elmira Star-Gazette, hired by city editor Frank E. Gannett, who went on to found one of America's great newspaper groups.

After brief stints studying at Cornell University and training in the Army, he returned to the Elmira papers in 1918. He later moved to the Binghamton, N.Y., Sun, and in 1922 to the AP in New York, where he quickly became sports editor.

Mr. Gould's sports department produced such journalism stars as James Reston and Drew Middleton, both later of The New York Times; boxing writer Edward J. Neil, later killed covering the Spanish Civil War; and future AP executives Paul Mickelson and Herb Barker.

"He was the toughest and one of the best editors I ever had," Reston recalled of those days in AP Sports. "He would have been a great umpire: He didn't debate problems, he decided them - a rare talent in this gabby age."

On Dec. 17, 1941, when Executive Editor Byron Price was summoned to Washington to head the wartime censorship office, Mr. Gould took over direction of the AP news report.

Plunging into the business of organizing coverage of a far-flung conflict, he toured AP's Pacific operations in 1943 and traveled to London in 1944 to map AP plans for the upcoming Allied invasion of Europe.

In the postwar years, Mr. Gould oversaw the birth and growth of AP's World Service, providing news and photos around the globe. He also took on two special causes - interpretive reporting and clear writing.

"We have a duty," he said, "to tell what the news means, besides maintaining AP's standards for accuracy and fairness."

Despite some initial resistance, he won acceptance for AP news analysis among the cooperative's member newspapers. He also created specialized writing positions in such fields as science and religion.

He is survived by his wife, Catherine; a son, Alan Jr. of Jeckyll Island, Ga.; daughter Mary Ann Houseman of Panorama City, Calif.; a sister, Rosalie Rose of Penn Yan, N.Y.; and four grandchildren.

Mr. Gould's first wife, Mary Denton Gould, died in 1966. His second wife, Mildred Sliter Gould, died in 1976.

Mr. Gould's body will be cremated. The family said it had no plans for a memorial service.