It's difficult to imagine a journalist being praised more broadly and deeply than Jack Nelson, who died last month, was praised today at a memorial service in his adopted hometown of Washington. As his former deputy at the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau, Dick Cooper, noted, "Many journalists have exposed serious wrongdoing and gotten something done about it," but fewer have revealed outrages like the Orangeburg, S.C., massacre, even fewer have "earned the trust of millions of television viewers" like Jack did on "Washington Week in Review" and very few have "built news bureaus that were to Washington what the Yankees are to baseball," always in contention and often on top. "I'm not sure anyone but Jack did all those things. Not many came close."
And to that list of accomplishments add: the leading supporter of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (which his family has designated as recipient of memorial gifts), a pugnacious son of the rural South who took on its racism, and a great friend, evidenced by the same qualities that made him a great reporter, Energy Department official Skila Harris said: "his drive, his passion, his hard-headedness, his soft heart." Most of the other eight speakers said likewise, and many similar comments appear at scoopnelson.wordpress.com. Two of the more recent, back to back, came from former Carter administration officials Hodding Carter III and Bert Lance.
"So the toughest of them all is gone, and the most persistent, and among the most Southern, and for more years than you could count, just about as fine a companion for long nights and great stories as you could want," wrote Carter, now at the University of North Carolina. Lance, who was driven from the budget director's job in part by the reporting of Nelson and others, wrote. "I had the privilege of receiving phone calls -- no matter where I might be -- and personal visits with tough questions that continued until they were answered to his satisfaction. He was quite a journalist as well as a man. I shall miss him."
Gene Patterson, who was Jack's editor when he won a Pulitzer Prize for the Atlanta Constitution, said at the memorial service, "Jack Nelson came into the news media with a high school diploma and a low boiling point." Covering stories in rural Georgia, "He was a heat-seeking missile with a pencil for a warhead" and a former Golden Gloves boxer who put "the hard fist of truth into the belly" of racist officials. ... How many people do you know like Jack who dared to take on J. Edgar Hoover?"
Hoover would have howled had he known how Jack got the medical records to prove the Orangeburg massacre: telling the hospital administrator he was from "the Atlanta bureau," recalled Gene Roberts, who competed with Jack for The New York Times. "I watched in awe as Jack used his index finger like a pistol barrel" in interviews and press conferences, Roberts said, then recounted how Jack used his "command presence" to get a Ku Klux Klan official to provide protection for them and other reporters who had become objects of physical taunting by Klan members at a rural rally.
"He loved his native Souith and he knew it well," from "its charms to its brutality," said U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who helped lead the civil rights movement. "He was an extraordinary reporter who used his pen to prick the conscience of the nation. . . . Jack became, yes, a sympathetic referee in the fight for social justice," one who "did not seek wealth or fame; instead he saw his commitment to the truth as a high calling. . . . We all are better because Jack passed this way."
Doyle McManus, who followed him as bureau chief, said "Jack taught us three things: Break news, aim high, and share your notes." A reporter to the end, "He believed the only real reason to be a reporter was to reveal hidden facts," not write feature stories. "That was his core purpose, to increase the amount of truth in the world." Aiming high also meant "never losing your sense of outrage," and sharing your notes had its limits. Citing one example of a story Jack shared, Doyle said, "If it had been a great story Jack would have kept it for himself." Finally, Doyle said, "He taught us something about how to die," as he "appeared to be having the time of his life" during final visits from friends. "He never stopped passing on tips and leads on stories that he thought might unearth one more outrage."
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