The sense of national catastrophe is inevitably heightened in a television age, when the whole country participates in it.

(St. Timothy Crouse profiled Apple in his book The Boys on the Bus about journalists covering the 1972 presidential campaign. He married Betsey Pinckney Brown in 1982.

Apple Jr was an associate editor at The New York Times where he wrote on a variety of subjects most notably politics travel and food. W. Raymond Walter Apple Jr.