Longtime Time magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey dies at 78 in Paris

Hugh Sidey, whose personal portraits of America's chief executives appeared in Time magazine's "The Presidency" column over four decades, died Monday. He was 78.

His brother, Ed Sidey, said other relatives told him Sidey had suffered a heart attack in Paris.

Sidey, who served as Time's White House correspondent and its Washington bureau chief, wrote "The Presidency" from 1966 to 1996. He was a contributing editor to the newsweekly at the time of his death.

"He proved you can write about people in power and still be the gentleman journalist," said James Carney, current Washington bureau chief for the magazine. "He's in some ways the model we all aspire to."

Sidey joined Life magazine in New York in 1955 and went to the Washington staff of Time, a sister publication, in 1957, the year he began covering the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He wrote about every administration since.

He wrote or contributed to seven books on the chief executive, including "Hugh Sidey's Portraits of the Presidents," published last year. He also was a chairman of the White House Historical Association.

Sidey appeared as a panelist on the television program "Agronsky & Company" and its successor, "Inside Washington," for nearly 25 years.

A fourth-generation newsman, Sidey was born in Greenfield, Iowa, on Sept. 3, 1927. He received a bachelor's degree in journalism from Iowa State College in 1950 and worked for newspapers in Council Bluffs and Omaha, Nebraska, as well as for his family's weekly newspaper in Greenfield.

Sidey and his wife, Anne, married in 1953 and had four children, AP reported. V.A.