Born April 16, 1947
New York, New York
Died Aug. 4, 2025
Red Bank, New Jersey
Details of services
A memorial gathering is planned for this fall in Red Bank. Details to come at https://thompsonmemorial.net/obituaries/2851-jonathan-m-storm.
Jonathan M. Storm, 78, an influential television critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer and former Rutland Herald reporter and editor, died August 4, 2025, in Red Bank, NJ, peacefully, of complications from treatment of metastasized melanoma, with which he had lived gracefully, enthusiastically, and appreciatively for almost six years.
He was a very funny man; a kind, sardonic curmudgeon; bon vivant; gambler; devoted husband; generous mentor; and a man who loved life, his family, and his many friends.
Storm became a television critic at The Philadelphia Inquirer in the late 1980s. It was the dawn of reality TV and shortly before the arrival of landmark shows like “The Simpsons,” “Seinfeld,” “Northern Exposure,” “Law & Order”and, eventually,“Survivor,” “The Wire,” “The Sopranos,” and “The West Wing,” to name a few. Storm was there for all of this, espousing, with a sharp sense of humor, the belief that the art form of television deserved serious thought and criticism.
“I think he accepted a responsibility to write about television in an elevated way,” said his fellow television critic David Walker of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Storm played a leading role in the Television Critics Association and in its biannual TV Tour in Los Angeles and was noted for a combination of playfulness and journalistic rigor. As a reporter, said Walker, “He was the perfect combination of sweet and sharp as a knife,” one who prided himself on asking the intentionally provocative but humorous question.
Pop culture writer Will Harris recalls that at a celebrity press conference Storm asked a panel of Kardashians: “Who are you, and why should I care about you?”
He once asked rocker Jon Bon Jovi, who had recently begun television roles: “What makes you think you can act?”
While he leveled his incisive gaze on the industry on behalf of his readers, he also mentored younger TV writers and other young people who relied upon him for wisdom and fun counsel.
Storm’s journalistic roots were at the Rutland Herald in Vermont in the 1970s, then considered one of America’s best small-town papers. He lived in the hills and covered selectmen’s and school board meetings and an early campaign of an upstart named Bernie Sanders. In the newsroom, as everywhere in his career, they called him “Stormy,” and he became city editor. Rutland was also where he met his future wife, Kathleen Pottick, whom he loved deeply from the start. He said that the Herald was where he learned the role of the hard-nosed journalist.
He moved to the Detroit Free Press when Pottick was earning her PhD at the University of Michigan. In Detroit, he rose to become Associate Sunday Editor, and also found time to become The Anonymous Gourmet, reviewing restaurants for the newspaper, incognito.
From the Free Press he went to The Inquirer when Pottick began teaching at Rutgers. He held a variety of editing jobs, including editing TV critics, before landing the TV critic job.
He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize with reporter Stephen Seplow for a year-long series about the effects of television on culture.
His farewell column in The Inquirer ended: “It was a tremendous pleasure serving you.”
Full obituaries are at the funeral home website, https://thompsonmemorial.net/obituaries/2851-jonathan-m-storm, and https://www.inquirer.com/obituaries/jonathan-storm-obituary-philadelphia-inquirer-critic-tv-20250813.html.
