RIP John Seigenthaler
(Please note that this is not the TV anchor who may be better known to some DUers, but his father, the legendary editor and human rights advocate. In Tennessee, we always refer to the younger man as John Michael Seigenthaler, although he does not use the middle name professionally)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/john-seigenthaler-crusading-newspaper-editor-and-kennedy-insider-dies-at-86/2014/07/11/159ac99a-0925-11e4-bbf1-cc51275e7f8f_story.html
..."After becoming editor of the Tennessean in 1962, at the age of 34, Mr. Seigenthaler made it one of the South’s most vigorous voices in support of civil rights. He led the paper as editor and publisher for almost 30 years, building a national reputation as an outspoken proponent of freedom of the press and journalistic integrity. He once fired an editor when he discovered she was working as an informant for the FBI.
Mr. Seigenthaler also was among the founding editors of USA Today and was its editorial page editor from 1982 to 1991 while simultaneously serving as editor and publisher of the Tennessean.
“I think he is one of the towering figures in modern American journalism,” Lee Stinnett, then the executive director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1991. “There are three things that concern him — racial justice, freedom of speech and the political process.”.....
