Richard Sted (1919?-2001) was a pseudonym for Theodore Olin Thackrey, a New York newspaperman worked on the New York Post. In 1943 he married the newspaper's proprietor, Dorothy Schiff, who promoted him to editor and assistant publisher. Thackrey had joined the Post in 1936 after his return from Shanghai where he had been editor and publisher of the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury, East Magazine, and a Chinese language daily. In 1944 Mrs. Schiff and Thackrey acquired Radio Station WLIB in Brooklyn. Later they also bought two radio stations on the west coast, KMTR in Los Angeles and KYA in San Francisco.

Thackrey and Schiff had a falling out in 1948 over which Presidential candidate the Post would support. Both opposed Truman, but Thackrey supported the Progressive Party candidate, Henry Wallace, and Mrs. Schiff supported Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey. As the election approached Mrs. Schiff and Thackrey carried on a lively editorial dispute in the pages of the Post. The election and the presidential qualifications of the candidates were the ostensible considerations of the debate. What was undoubtedly really being disputed were the social and political implications for American society of the ideological entrenchment -- the Cold War -- caused by Western fear of Communism, and Soviet distrust of its former allies. The personal and editorial rift widened between Schiff and Thackrey, and when Thackrey refused to voice his editorial support for the North Atlantic Treaty and Truman's Fair Deal program, Mrs. Schiff accepted his resignation as Post editor in April of 1949, stating that between them there existed "unreconcilable differences on fundamental questions of policy". In the following year they were divorced and Thackrey founded the short-lived New York Compass. Thackrey later married a woman called Diana.

Thackrey's given name was Thedor Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Thackera Olwyn von Refrau und zu Holsten. He claimed to have worked as secretary to Ernest Hemingway, and a wartime pilot. Thackray continued to work as a rewrite man for the Los Angeles Times up to the day of his death.

A tribute to Thackrey by Al Martinez can be found here.

Bibliography

They All Bleed Red (1955)

Aces and Eights (1989)