Remembering former News-Press Publisher Dan Martin's life in the papers

Danny A. Martin, a tough, kind-hearted newspaperman and former publisher of The News-Press died June 26 in Fort Myers. He was 80.

Martin worked most of his professional career for Gannett, the parent company of The News-Press and USA Today, where he was a founding staffer and columnist in the early 1980s.

Born in coal country in Stirrat, West Virginia in 1941, young Martin was determined not to stay in the mines. A voracious reader who always kept a journal, his got his first newspaper job as a 13-year-old carrier for the Charleston Gazette. He went off to Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia to study journalism and marketing. In 1961, he joined the Army, and was stationed in Germany for two years. When he returned stateside, he protected protesters in Selma, Ala. and stood guard during the Cuban missile crisis.

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He began his career in 1963 as a general assignment reporter with his hometown newspaper, the Logan Banner in West Virginia. In 1964, he married Joann Graver and they had two sons. Then, it was onto the Charleston Gazette – the paper he delivered as a kid – as a general assignment and legislative reporter, before joining Gannett in 1971 as  city editor for Michigan’s Battle Creek Enquirer.

In 1982, Martin became a founding staffer, editorial page editor and columnist for USA Today, later serving as a regional editor for the national daily. He led a number of the network’s papers, and served as vice president for Gannett East, before becoming president and publisher of the News-Press in 1989. The following year, The News-Press won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards' grand prize for "Far From the Dream," a 12-part series on the problems of the region's Blacks in 1990.

Martin’s career was marked by dogged perfectionism. “Growing up, it was hard watching TV news on the local stations with him,” son Steven recalled, “as he frequently yelled at the TV because they got the story wrong.”

His management philosophy was simple: “We try to make certain that everybody on the team – from the top to entry-level – knows the mission and understands their part in it. And then we try to encourage them to be active participants in meeting the goals. It’s really not brain surgery .. we just ask 'Where are we? What do we want to be? And how do we get there?' "

Martin left Fort Myers in 1996 for a position at the Springfield News-Leader in Springfield, Mo. The following year, his 32-year-old son, Dorn, an assistant news editor at The News-Press, was killed in a car crash.

Former colleagues recalled him fondly. Bill Miller worked with him when Martin was the Enquirer’s editor and Miller “a newbie on the copy desk,” he wrote in an email. “I’ve always been indebted to him for giving me encouragement and support in the early days of my 37-year Enquirer career.

“Like many others, I have some lively anecdotes about Dan at the workplace, but two stand out for me: When my wife and I returned from adopting a baby girl in South Korea in summer 1978, he let me write my first published story for the Enquirer, with photos — and it took up an entire page of a Sunday paper. He even wrote a teaser for the front page with photo. Still the longest published piece I’ve ever written for the paper after thousands of stories and columns!”

Former News-Press investigative reporter Lee Melsek called Martin “a tough guy who defended his reporters against the politician's arrows with great vigor … The best of all the News-Press publishers I worked for.” The affection went both ways; Martin’s son, said, “He used to tell me how he'd get Lee Melsek all riled up due to their differences in opinion.”

Martin also “defended middle managers against the egos in corporate,” recalled then-News-Press features editor Heidi Knapp Rinella.

In an email, former News-Press copy editor Mike Beck recalled when he “mentioned (OK, probably whined) to him in the hallway that it sure would be nice to have a basketball goal installed so that we could play after we put the paper out. He chuckled, but by golly, the next week, there was a basketball goal bolted to the side of the warehouse. We played a lot of hoops there for a time, thanks to him.”

After Martin retired to Fort Myers in 2002, he kept his hand in the newspaper business, contributing guest columns to The News-Press’ opinion pages full of his tart, conservative wit. He took the city to task for letting the Edison & Ford Winter Estate “rot away … It's a crying shame that the Fort Myers City Council has let the Edison estate fall into disrepair. Such sorry stewardship of a public asset would be political death to the council members if their constituents really gave a damn about the estate. But most Fort Myers voters don't care, so the council members act like dopes and let the place rot (in) the hands of a city council that just wants to use them as a cash cow until the teats are dry.”

In another piece, he lamented “that foul cesspool known as manatee extremism,” that led to low-speed boating zones. “The only consolation of these new zones is that they will drive so many boaters from the river that congestion sure won't be a problem. Of course, they'll also drive millions of dollars out of the economy and give bumbling, stumbling Fort Myers city another kick in the butt.”

Over the years, Martin kept up with his colleagues and old papers on social media, scolding them for decisions he didn’t support and cheering them as they passed milestones.

For Sunday magazine Tropicalia's 17th birthday in 2018, he sent in a list of his favorite Southwest Florida things: "Snook, redfish, grouper, tarpon, trout, snapper, bass, ladyfish, mackerel, mullet, sunset and wine."

When longtime News-Press newsroom stalwart Mary Ann Husty retired in 2020, he pointed out she’d dedicated her career "the heart of what journalism used to be about: persons living in their communities, loving their communities, protecting their communities by keeping them informed about the natural and unnatural forces that threaten or sustain them."

He could have been describing his own.

Dan Martin is survived by his wife Joann, son Steven Martin (Jeanne), granddaughter Jenna, brother Paul Martin (Charlotte) and sister Dova Harris (Karl). He was preceded in death by his son Dorn, his father, mother, and sister Gwen Claypool.

The funeral mass will be held at the Church of the Resurrection of Our Lord at 8121 Cypress Lake Drive, Fort Myers at 11 a.m., Saturday, July 9. A reception will be held immediately following – details will be provided at the funeral mass. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to a charity that benefits veterans such as Hope for the Warriors, Wounded Warriors, Homes for our Troops, etc.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Fort Myers publisher Dan Martin dies, protected 'heart of journalism'