James M. Cannon III, 93, a Korean War combat correspondent who held prominent editing positions at Newsweek magazine before serving as a top domestic policy adviser during the Ford administration, died Sept. 15 at the Capital Hospice in Arlington.

He had complications from a stroke, his son James M. Cannon IV said.

In a career that spanned five decades, Mr. Cannon rose from a cub reporter covering city hall to a trusted presidential aide with an office in the West Wing.

Mr. Cannon was covering the 1968 presidential primary in New Hampshire for Newsweek when he realized he wanted to “get out of the grandstand and go down on the playing field.”

He joined the staff of New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, who Mr. Cannon covered during the campaign, as a liason to the state government and the Nixon administration....