This is second in a series of occasional opinion articles, aka “editorials,” about the journalistic wreckage known as the Arizona Daily Star.
A friend of long standing, J.C. Martin, died last week, having spent 98 short years on the planet. She spent nearly three decades working as a writer for the Star. There was a time that the Star would have paused to honor one of its own, one who merited a news obituary.
In the last decades of her service to the Arizona Daily Star, J.C. Martin’s byline stood atop column after column of reporting about Southern Arizona authors. She wrote with intelligence and generosity about their lives and their books. She knew about writers. She was married to Erskine Caldwell, the author of “God’s Little Acre” and “Tobacco Road.”
The editors at the Star did not see fit to write a news obituary. Her family paid for a death notice, as required by the accountants who rule the Star and Lee Enterprises. The obituary ran last Sunday devoid of any insight into her wit and intelligence. In a city that is home to many accomplished writers, June was well-respected, which only amplified the disrespect of her long-time employer. To some, this will be seen as a relatively small matter in the middle of an often-horrifying pandemic, but a small moment that illustrates all that has perverted American newspapering.
Clearly, one depressing image of our time is that of the Great American Newspaper on a treadmill to oblivion. And if that decline required evidence, it would be the tariff demanded to publish the obituary of someone so prominent and newsworthy as June Martin. One of us.
But the paltry act of asking for alms to report the news, with no effort to write a story worthy of what she meant to this community or shining a light on the good she did, is an uncaring ignorance that will surely resound in silent streets one day, the death notice of the Arizona Daily Star.
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