Dave Seaton, exemplary owner-editor in Kansas, dies at 80

Dave Seaton

Dave Seaton of Winfield, Kansas, a community newspaper editor and owner who exemplified "what every town in America needs," as the well-known editor of the nearest metro daily editor said, died Saturday. He was 80.

"His health had been failing and he underwent major heart surgery a year ago, but his death was unexpected," Judith Zaccaria writes for the Cowley CourierTraveler, Seaton's paper. "He had written Saturday’s editorial ... about the coronavirus."

From 1978 to 2009, Seaton was editor and publisher of the Winfield Courier, which his family bought in the 1940s. He bought the Arkansas City Traveler, in Cowley County's largest town, and the Newkirk Herald Journal in Oklahoma, then helped oversee the 2016 merger of the Courier and Traveler.

"Over Dave’s career he earned a reputation as an editor devoted to the communities the newspaper served," Zaccaria writes. 'Buzz Merritt, former long-time editor of the Wichita Eagle, said Dave Seaton was what every town in America needs:"

“An editor of a local newspaper who has the necessary journalistic tools and instincts — including the hammers-and-nails parts — to produce an honest picture of the town’s strengths and weaknesses, but who combines those with the carriage, character, kindness, education and intelligence of a renaissance gentleman,” Merritt told Zaccaria. “Such people are rare.”

His son, David Allen Seaton, told The Associated Press, “He saw his role . . . as one of advocacy and community leadership, in the tradition of William Allen White,” the famous editor from Emporia, 100 miles to the northeast. Perhaps his last big project was a documentary about White. Doug Instate, former executive director of the Kansas Press Association, praised Seaton's work on that and said he “always stood out as one of the top editorial writers in Kansas.”

Seaton earned degrees at Harvard University and the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He and his wife Callie served in Brazil with the Peace Corps. A moderate Republican, he worked for U.S. Sen. Jim Pearson before becoming publisher. The family is planning a small graveside service with a larger memorial service that will be announced later.