F. Gilman Spencer, who was known for his freewheeling style and sharp eye for writing talent as the editor of four newspapers, including The Philadelphia Daily News and The Daily News in New York, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 85.  The death was confirmed by his son F. Gilman Spencer IV.  Mr. Spencer, known as Gil, worked in the newspaper business for nearly half a century. Starting out as a copy boy for The Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1940s, he went on to edit The Trentonian in New Jersey and The Denver Post, in addition to the Philadelphia and New York newspapers.  While editor of The Trentonian, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1974 for a series of articles on government corruption in New Jersey that led to the federal prosecution of a number of officials.  Mr. Spencer was known for spotting talent and promoting it in his pages. At The Philadelphia Daily News, he decided that Pete Dexter, an obscure reporter, would make an excellent columnist. He did, and later went on to write a column for Esquire and establish a career as a novelist.  After becoming editor of The Daily News in New York in 1984, Mr. Spencer helped the careers of Juan Gonzalez, Bob Herbert, Mike McAlary and Gail Collins, whose columns he often placed in the front pages to maximize their impact. Mr. Herbert and Ms. Collins later became columnists at The New York Times, and Ms. Collins was editor of the Times editorial page.  “He had an amazing instinct for what people were good at and letting them do it, and knowing how much leash to give them,” said Richard Aregood, who was an editorial writer and rock critic at the Philadelphia paper when Mr. Spencer put him in charge of the editorial page. “He left the same trail from Trenton to Philadelphia to New York to Denver.”  At The Daily News in New York, where he was responsible for the editorial pages as well as the news pages, Mr. Spencer brought a feistier, flashier style and a carnivorous appetite for reporting on city politics and corruption as the newspaper mounted a head-to-head battle for readers with The New York Post. “We want to put out a hard-driving, down-to-earth tabloid and enjoy ourselves doing it,” he told The Times in 1986.  Arthur Browne, the city editor of The Daily News at the time and now its editorial page editor, said: “He worked at a tabloid, but he did not like frivolous silliness. He insisted that the paper not take itself too seriously but that it be a serious newspaper.”  The Daily News was owned then by the Tribune Company, which had been trying, without success, to sell it. Mr. Spencer sought to combat the mood of crisis and impart a sense of purpose and buoyancy, which he managed to do at his first meeting with the newsroom staff.  “It’s like watching Jimmy Stewart play a newspaper editor in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ ” Mr. Browne recalled telling a fellow editor at the meeting.  Mr. Spencer often clashed with The Daily News’s publisher, James F. Hoge. In 1989, before the Democratic mayoral primary, he strongly opposed Mr. Hoge’s wish to endorse Mayor Edward I. Koch, a favorite target of the newspaper’s columnists, preferring David N. Dinkins. In the end, the newspaper endorsed Richard Ravitch.  Soon after the primary election, which Mr. Dinkins won, Mr. Spencer resigned. At the time, he said his decision was motivated by impending negotiations with the newspaper’s labor unions that would have required him to make a long-term commitment to remain at The Daily News.  He was hired almost immediately as editor of The Denver Post, from which he retired in 1993.  Frederick Gilman Spencer III was born on Dec. 8, 1925, in Philadelphia, where his father was a lawyer. He attended Swarthmore High School but did not graduate. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he was hired as a copy boy at The Inquirer and held a variety of reporting and editing jobs at The Chester Times in Pennsylvania; The Mount Holly Herald in New Jersey; The Main Line Times of Ardmore, Pa.; and The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.  He worked in television in the mid-1960s as a writer and editorialist at WCAU, then the CBS station in Philadelphia, before becoming editor of The Trentonian, a tabloid, in 1967. He received the 2003 George Polk Award for career achievement.  In addition to his son Gilman, of Media, Pa., Mr. Spencer, who lived in Manhattan, is survived by his wife, Isabel; three daughters, Amy Becker of Media; Elizabeth Mergel of Dorchester, Mass.; and Isabel Spencer, known as Charlie, of Amherst, Mass.; another son, Jonathan, of Pennington, N.J.; 10 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
A champion of writing talent and a Pulitzer Prize winner himself for editorial writing, F. Gilman Spencer also led newspapers in Philadelphia, Denver and Trenton.