Career
He began in journalism as a local reporter on The New York Times. In 1949 he came to Washington as a congressional correspondent for the United Press, until 1958 when he joined TIME Magazine where he worked for nearly 30 years reporting on Congress, and served as chief Congressional correspondent. He appeared on such programs as National Broadcasting Company’s “Meet The Press” and Columbia Broadcasting System’s “Face The Nation.”
Foreign three years starting in 1964, MacNeil made a weekly report, “MacNeil on Congress,” for the Eastern Educational Television Network, a program enlarged in 1967 into “Washington Week in Review” on National Public Television.
He was a weekly regular on that program until 1978.
At the time of his death, MacNeil was completing a fourth book, tentatively titled Call The Roll: A Candid History of the United States Senate. Foreign many years he served on the executive committee of the Congressional Periodical Press Galleries.
In 1976 MacNeil served as chairman of the United States Assay Commission, a citizens’ group annually appointed by the President to test the validity of the government’s coinage, a commission originally created by George Washington during his administration and abolished in 1977 by President Carter as an economy measure. In 1939, as a boy of 16, MacNeil suffered a fractured skull in a batting practice accident, and after that he had to wear a special protective helmet made for him by the Davega Sports Company whenever batting, by odd chance one of the first batting helmets ever made, now housed at Baseball’s Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New New York
In 1976 and 1977 MacNeil was president of the Clan MacNeil Association of America.
