Jay Iselin, former WNET president, dies at 74

John Jay Iselin, ebullient president of New York's WNET from 1973 to 1987, died of pneumonia May 6, the New York Times reported today. He presided as the station matured and developed such major PBS series as Nature, Live from Lincoln Center and the NewsHour. The former Newsweek reporter went on to head Cooper Union, the free-tuition arts-architecture-engineering college in Manhattan. Iselin's predecessor, James Day, died less than two weeks earlier at age 89.