Christopher Ma, Washington Post Executive, Dies at 61

The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Nathalie Gilfoyle.

Donald E. Graham, chairman of the Post Company, said in a statement to the corporate staff that Mr. Ma had been given a diagnosis of cancer a week ago and was being examined at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center when he collapsed. He was rushed to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he died. His wife and two children were with him.

In a wide-ranging career of more than three decades in journalism, Mr. Ma was a Washington correspondent for the Post Company’s Newsweek magazine in the 1980s, covering economics and foreign affairs, including the Iranian hostage crisis. He later was an editor and a deputy editor of U.S. News World Report until 1996, when he became the editor and developer of The Washington Post’s Web site, washingtonpost.com.

From 1998 to 2000, he was the executive editor of The Post’s online subsidiary, which was renamed WPNI, for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. He originated its Live Online talk programming and was instrumental in negotiating a partnership of the Post Company, Newsweek, MSNBC and NBC News.

Mr. Ma became a corporate vice president in 2000, started the commuter tabloid Express in 2003 and was named senior vice president in 2008.

Christopher Yi-Wen Ma was born in Columbus, Ohio, on March 20, 1950. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Harvard College in 1972, and spent several years traveling in the Far East on a Michael Clark Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship and developing literacy programs in China.

Mr. Ma was the co-author of “The Practical Guide to Practically Everything” (1995, with Peter Bernstein), which covered consumer developments, from health and money matters to personal technology, travel and education.

He graduated from law school at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978, and practiced law for six months before deciding that his future lay in journalism.

Besides his wife, whom he married in 1978, Mr. Ma is survived by a daughter, Olivia Otey Ma, of San Francisco; a son, Rohan, of Oakland, Calif.; his mother, Margaret Ma, of Menlo Park, Calif.; two sisters, Louise Ma and Cathryn Ma, both of San Francisco; and a brother, Philip Ma, of San Carlos, Calif.

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