Legendary Courier Journal reporter Richard Wilson, who changed education in Kentucky, dies

Richard Wilson, universally known as Dick, a pipe-smoking, professorial-looking reporter who provided authoritative coverage of higher education and the state capitol for three decades for The Courier Journal, is dead. He was 85.

He passed away just after 7 a.m. Tuesday at his home in Frankfort, Kentucky, where he was under hospice care, said his son Peter Wilson.

“Dick understood the state’s higher education system better than many of those administering it and certainly better than the legislature that funded it,” said Mike King, a former Washington and medical reporter for the Louisville newspaper and later the metro editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Dick was a model for explanatory journalism. Nobody did it better.”

Phillip Shepherd, a Franklin Circuit Court judge and former secretary of what is now called the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, said Wilson exemplified the best in journalism.

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"He had an uncanny way of getting politicians, university professors and board members, and local officials to confide in him," Shepherd said. "As a reporter, he received more confessions than any priest in Kentucky, and in my last conversation with him, he told me his only regret was he couldn’t get more of that information into the newspaper.

"Still, the stories he broke changed the trajectory of higher education in Kentucky. He knew nothing could be more effective at solving the problems on this state than improving public education."

Wilson was famed for reporting the names of new University of Kentucky presidents before they were announced by its board of trustees, David Hawpe, The Courier-Journal's late editorial director, wrote in 1999, when Wilson retired.

“If Wilson were a doctor, his specialty would be the premature delivery,” Hawpe wrote. “He has been responsible for a long list of journalistic preemies.”

In 1969, his scoop that Otis Singletary had been named UK’s eighth president, while dead-on accurate, prompted Singletary to withdraw and a delegation of irate officials to demand that publisher Barry Bingham Sr. take Wilson off the story. But Bingham refused. UK conducted a new search and named Singletary president again.

“He was masterful at finding out stuff people did not want anyone to know,” said Robert T. Garrett, formerly the Courier Journal’s Frankfort bureau chief and now head of the Dallas Morning News capital bureau. “He was wired in with insiders.”

Garrett said Wilson was the consummate beat reporter who knew his subject and had the best sources.

“He scooped all competitors, but he never gloated,” Garrett said in an email. “He was content to stay out of the limelight, and just puff his pipe and observe.”

Ferrell Wellman, a former Frankfort reporter for WAVE-TV and political analyst for WLEX, said Wilson “set the standard for Frankfort reporters for accuracy, fairness and thoroughness. He did not make mistakes. Ever. Readers could trust every word in a story with a Richard Wilson byline."

When he was on the job, Wellman said in an email, “Richard Wilson served his readers and the citizens of this state much better than most of the politicians they sent to Frankfort.”

Born in Towanda, Pennsylvania, he was a 1966 journalism graduate of UK, where he was editor of the Kentucky Kernel. He served in the Army for four years, including a stint in Korea, then worked at the Frankfort State Journal and the Lexington Leader before joining the CJ staff in 1967.

Two years later, editors sent him to the Frankfort bureau, where for 16 years he covered state government, politics, education and political campaigns. In 1985, became The Courier-Journal’s Bluegrass bureau chief in Lexington, where he continued to cover UK and was known as one of the nation’s pre-eminent reporters on higher education

With his tweed jackets and glasses, he looked like a professor. And he loved higher ed so much he would visit college campuses while on vacation.

In 1984, he won the Kentucky School Boards Association exemplary investigative reporting award for a series of stories with Richard Whitt, entitled “What’s Wrong with Kentucky Schools.” The series won the Kentucky Education Association’s Annual School Bell award and was part of The Courier Journal's push for school reform that culminated in the Kentucky Supreme Court's historic 1989 ruling that the state public schools were inequitable and inadequate.

He taught public affairs reporting at UK and mentored hundreds of young journalism students, including Dan Hassert, later the city editor of the Cincinnati Post.

“To us, Dick was a god, a legend,” Hassert recalled. “He made journalism fun. But he was tough. He had no qualms about telling us where we screwed up.”

In an oral history interview recorded in 2014 at UK, Wilson recalled how he got the scoop on Singletary’s appointment from a trustee. The source agreed to leave a meeting at Maxwell House, the president’s residence, once a vote was taken and flash his headlights at Wilson, who was sitting in his car in the driveway. If he flashed once, it meant Singletary had gotten the job. The source flashed his lights once. And the next morning Wilson’s story was on the front page of The Courier Journal.

“Dick was an example of how a reporter could be competitive, and Dick was very competitive, and still maintain the highest ethical standards,” Wellman said. “He had great sources because people trusted him.”

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Wilson wrote long “think pieces” about the rise of Kentucky’s regional universities and about a proposed merger of UK and the University of Louisville − and how Singletary managed to kill it.

Wilson also broke stories about corruption in UK’s basketball program, including one that prompted the university to unsuccessfully move to grill him about the sources of his leaks.

And while he had no peer covering education, he was willing to get his hands dirty, whether it was covering a coal mine explosion or a grisly murder, former colleagues said.

“He was like the horse at the old timey firehouse who heard the alarm bell and shot out of the station,” Garrett said.

While some of his stories embarrassed UK, John Thelin, an education historian and professor emeritus in UK’s Department of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation, said he was respected.

“He saw the bluster and foibles of many university presidents and higher education figures,” Thelin said. “But he was courteous and reserved as he resisted the temptation to pillory them in print. He stuck with the policy issues even though he knew the personalities.”

Garrett said Wilson was a gifted storyteller who loved Kentucky politics.

“Nothing was more fun than to raise a glass and listen to Dick’s dry and pungent stories about the decision makers and, yes, the clowns on our public stage.”

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Reporter Richard 'Dick' Wilson dies; known for higher education scoops