PROLIFIC journalist Howard Fineman, whose career spanned nearly five decades, has died at the age of 75.

Fineman’s wife, Amy Nathan, confirmed the news on Wednesday, writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Fineman had died following a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Iconic reporter, Howard Fineman, has died following a battle with cancerCredit: Twitter/howardfineman

Fineman’s wife, Amy Nathan, said he died on Tuesday nightCredit: Twitter/howardfineman

“I am heartbroken to share my brilliant and extraordinary husband passed away late last night surrounded by those he loved most, his family,” Nathan wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“He valiantly battled pancreatic cancer for 2 years. He couldn’t have been adored more.

“The world was a better place because he lived in it and wrote about it.”

Fineman covered nine presidential campaigns as a reporter, writer, and analyst, leading the political coverage at Newsweek for 30 years.

He interviewed every president and major presidential candidate from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama and appeared on shows such as Face the Nation, Larry King Live, and The Daily Show.

His career began in the late 1960s at Colgate Univerity in Hamilton, New York, as a reporter and later editor-in-chief of The Colgate Marron student paper.

Following his graduation, Fineman mentored many young journalists who followed in his footsteps.

“If I am any guide — and today I am supposed to be — this lovely college will be a constant star, a steady torchlight, as influential as family, faith or profession,” he said during Colgate’s 2011 commencement speech.

“Friends I made here remain my friends. My great teachers still guide me through the years. The town of Hamilton and its genial people, the beauty of the campus, and the Chenango Valley, forever remind me of what is best about our country and its history.”

‘TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF FUN’

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1948, Fineman was raised in the Jewish community of Squirrel Hill, which he described as “very large and very wonderful.”

After graduating from Colgate, he completed his master’s program at Columbia and moved to Kentucky to work for The Courier-Journal in Louisville.

There, he reported on environmental issues while he took night classes to earn his law degree at the University of Louisville.

He would later move to the paper’s Washington, DC bureau in 1977 for three years before moving to Newsweek.

On the Colgate podcast, 13, Fineman recalled the competition between Newsweek and Time Magazine.

“It was a tremendous amount of fun, and some of my best friends are actually from Time magazine,” he said.

“I had carte blanche to travel the country reporting on national politics starting in 1983.”

He married his wife, Amy Lee Nathan in 1984 while she was studying for the bar exam and Fineman was covering his first presidential campaign for Newsweek.

“Four decades later, we know how lucky we still are to love each other so completely,” he wrote for the couple’s anniversary last year.

The couple shared two 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren, Meredith and Nick.

In 2010, Fineman left Newsweek to become the political editor for HuffPost.

“It really wasn’t a difficult decision at all once I really began to think about it because this is where the action is,” he said at the time.

“The chance to dive headlong into the future is one that I don’t think anyone could pass up.”

Fineman left HuffPost in 2017, writing in a note to staffers, “I have been in and worked in a lot of newsrooms, and there is NO PLACE where people care about and cheer for each other the way HuffPosters do.

“That spirit abides not only in DC and NY but around the world.”

Fineman worked for several publications in several statesCredit: Twitter/howardfineman

He covered nine presidential campaigns throughout his careerCredit: Twitter/howardfineman