He began his career with
The Wall Street Journal in the 1950s, covering business and social issues, including the early years of the
Civil Rights Movement. He served as a journalist and speechwriter in the
United States Army from 1957 to 1959, and returned to
The Wall Street Journal after completing his service. In 1961, he went to work at
NBC News, becoming lifelong friends with
Tom Brokaw. While at NBC, Apple reported for
The Huntley-Brinkley Report and won an
Emmy Award for his work. In the last of his 29 appearances on the
Charlie Rose talk show, he said that the most satisfying time of his career was when he was reporting on the American civil rights movement. In 1963, Apple joined
The New York Times, where he worked for over 30 years, contributing foreign correspondence from over 100 countries, including coverage of the
Vietnam War – where his penetrating questioning helped expose the unreliability of the military briefings known as the
Five O'Clock Follies – the
Biafra crisis, the
Iranian revolution, and the fall of
Communist governments in the
Soviet bloc. In addition, he served as the ''Times' '' bureau chief in
Saigon,
Lagos,
Nairobi,
London and
Moscow. In Vietnam, Apple distinguished himself as chief of
The New York Times bureau and won many awards for his work. Nearly 40 years later, it was revealed that one of the main sources for that influential story was Lt. Gen.
Frederick Weyand, commander of U.S. forces in III Corps, the area around Saigon. Apple covered combat stories in the field in Vietnam. In 1966, he was nearly killed by friendly fire while covering a firefight at a village when a machine-gun bullet ripped through the back of his trousers and split his belt in half.
Timothy Crouse profiled Apple in his book
The Boys on the Bus about journalists covering the
1972 presidential campaign. Reporters "recognized many of their own traits in him, grotesquely magnified. The shock of recognition frightened them. Apple was like them, only more blatant. He openly displayed the faults they tried to hide: the insecurity, the ambitiousness, the name-dropping" and "the weakness for powerful men." on a farm near
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; and in the
Cotswold region of
England. Apple was widely known as an expert on
food and
wine, and lectured on those as well as political, social, and historical topics on several continents. According to his
New York Times colleague Adam Nagourney, "Johnny was the person to call for a restaurant recommendation when heading anywhere around the globe. To his eternal credit, he never kept secrets; he wrote about the places he discovered and loved. I soon learned a trick to find his recommendations without pestering him: I would search Nexis using three elements: his byline, the name of a city and the phrase "my wife, Betsey." For his 70th birthday, Apple threw a party at his favorite Paris bistro
Chez l'Ami Louis that
Calvin Trillin wrote about in Gourmet Magazine: 'It's my understanding that Apple has simplified what could be a terribly difficult choice by telling them to bring everything." On October 4, 2006, Apple died from complications of thoracic cancer. His last article published for
The New York Times while he was still alive was an article on
Singapore cuisine that was published on September 30, 2006. The last
New York Times article he wrote, entitled "The Global Gourmet," was published posthumously on October 5, 2006. The article was meant to be published in the
Times' travel section several weeks later but was brought forward due to his unexpected death. ==Honors and awards==