Sunday, November 23, 2008

Former Mexico Ledger publisher dead at 93

Robert M. White, former publisher of the Mexico Ledger died Thursday.

Though White spent most of his career in MIssouri, he achieved national journalism fame in the early 1960s when the New York Herald Tribune shocked everyone by naming the small-town Missouri newsman as its publisher. It was an experiment that did not work out well, as detailed in Richard Kluger's book, "The Paper," a detailed history of the Herald Tribune.

I had the good fortune of meeting Mr. White in the early '90s at a Missouri Press Association Awards Banquet. Though I did not get to talk with him for more than a few minutes, I still came away with the impression of him as an old-fashioned gentleman.

His obituaryis featured in a post on the Missouri Press News blog:

“I think there’s nothing I would like better than to be remembered as a newspaperman. Period. And I could put an adjective in front of that. As a good newspaperman. And not try to define it further than that,” White said in 2005 as part of an oral history project excerpted in the upcoming documentary. “Yeah. A good newspaperman. … I would be pleased with that. You got a stone here? Let’s carve it.”

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