William Woo, former editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who moved to Palo Alto in 1996 to become a Stanford journalism professor and mentor to hundreds of young journalists, died Wednesday (April 12) of colorectal cancer at age 69. “A three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Woo was an elegant, eloquent writer who articulated ideas steadily, slowly and with devastating clarity,” a Mercury News obit by Jessie Mangaliman said. James Fishkin, chairman of the Communications Department at Stanford, is quoted in the Chronicle as saying, “He offered not only feedback on writing, but the whole perspective on a journalism career … Because he’d also been an editor and reporter, he could anticipate how to make work better. After a while, it wasn’t just students standing in line, but colleagues, myself included, waiting to get his reaction, on what to write and how to frame it.” [Mercury News obit] [Chronicle obit] [St. Louis Post Dispatch obit] [Stanford Daily obit] [Stanford News Service obit] [Friends remember Bill Woo in online guest book]