I just celebrated my second anniversary as the Editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Among the many things that make this a great job are the reminders of the rich history and traditions of this newspaper’s journalism.
Recent events gave me the chance to learn more about two journalism giants who spent important parts of their career with The Atlanta Constitution: Eugene Patterson and Jack Nelson.
They were a couple of journalists who fearlessly called out corruption and wrongdoing and angered plenty of people — as the work of all good newspapers inevitably does.
Patterson died on Jan.12. He’d been Editor of The Atlanta Constitution from 1960 to 1968, following the great Ralph McGill, who was his mentor and friend.
Patterson won the Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for his columns, in which he took strong stances during the difficult years of the civil rights movement.
Remarkably, Patterson wrote a column every day — more than 3,200 while in Atlanta. (He later went on to The Washington Post and the St. Petersburg Times.)
Many of those columns exhorted the South to come to terms with segregation and its attitudes about race.
His most famous column was written in the aftermath of the Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls.
We published the column again with his obituary. It was so powerful that Walter Cronkite invited Patterson to read it on the CBS Evening News.
A recent event at The Jimmy Carter Library and Museum highlighted the career of another famous journalist that Atlanta can call one of its own: Jack Nelson.
(Incredibly, there was a point when McGill, Patterson and Nelson were part of the Constitution’s staff at the same time, and all three won Pulitzer Prizes while working in Atlanta. And The Atlanta Journal in those years had developed a strong reputation for investigative reporting as well.)
Nelson’s widow, Barbara Matusow, recently published his memoir, “Scoop: The Evolution of a Southern Reporter.”
At the Carter Library event, Nelson’s amazing career was the subject of a discussion by a panel that included Jimmy Carter, Andrew Young, Matusow and Terry Adamson, Executive Vice President of National Geographic and a longtime friend of Nelson’s.
(The panel discussion will be broadcast on CSPAN2’s BookTV today at 8 p.m.)
Carter described a remarkable trust and respect for Nelson, whom he knew while a young politician in Georgia and interacted with as president when Nelson ran The Los Angeles Times’ Washington Bureau.
Carter shared several stories of Nelson’s work, and in materials prepared to promote the book, said: “Although he was a personal friend of mine, he was never hesitant to criticize me severely, and I think sometimes maybe excessively. But when Jack Nelson wrote something, anybody who read it would know it was accurate, balanced and truthful.”
Patterson called Nelson “the ablest investigative reporter I’ve ever known” in a letter to a friend just before his death.
Nelson won his Pulitzer Prize for reporting about abuse and corruption at Georgia’s state mental hospital in Milledgeville. Among his findings: a nurse was performing major surgery and doctor who was paid by a drug company used experimental drugs on unknowing patients.
The work of Nelson on this story served to inspire Rosalynn Carter, who made mental health her signature issue as First Lady and continues her interest in it.
(Last Sunday, Alan Judd of our staff wrote a story marking the final days of the notorious hospital. Judd was part of a team of reporters that in 2007 brought to light problems at the hospital that resulted in a U.S. Justice Department investigation.)
While at the Constitution, Nelson said he “realized it was past time for me to start plunging into the civil rights movement.”
At that point, he was offered a job by The Los Angeles Times to start a bureau in Atlanta. He took the job, and brought his investigative approach to the beat.
Young called Nelson “a friend” of the civil rights movement. He believes that Nelson, just by his presence in covering the story, validated the work of Martin Luther King and his followers. And Nelson brought the story to a national audience.
The work of these great journalists remains an important part of the history of this newspaper and of Atlanta. And their work inspires us still.
