Friends remember Rudy Abramson as role model for reporters, advocate for rural America

Rudy Abramson was a role model for reporters and an advocate for rural America who put on no airs and treasured his small-town roots, his friends and admirers said at his memorial service in Washington this week.

Abramson, 70, died Feb. 13 of injuries suffered in a fall at his home. After a stellar career with The Tennessean and the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times, he became an acclaimed author and a fighter for the public interest, usually through journalism. He co-founded the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and was chair of its national Advisory Board.

Above all, he was a storyteller, one who “understood the power of storytelling,” said Freedom Forum Chairman and CEO Charles Overby, who presided at Tuesday's service on the top floor of the Freedom Forum’s new Newseum. With the Capitol dome in the background, and a bluegrass band creating a sort of virtual, aural bridge to rural America, a group of storytellers told stories about a storyteller who never stopped reporting – and at the end of his life was still urging and helping others to report, to serve the public interest that is the core mission of journalism.

“I don’t think he ever thought of himself as a role model or an inspiration to young reporters, but he was,” said former Tennessean publisher John Seigenthaler.

Political commentator Mark Shields told the crowd, “He was a stranger to self-importance and a sworn enemy to smugness. Rudy never, never forgot where he came from, or the people from who he came. Rudy understood that the one demographic group that could be caricatured could be ridiculed and could be condescended to with total impunity, are the white working-class Americans that did not go to college, and who often live in the rural United States. He was truly the voice for the voiceless.” (Read more)