Legendary reporter Jack Nelson was still revered in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newsroom when I went to work there in 1981, although nearly 20 years had passed since he'd jumped to The Los Angeles Times.
Even old-time Journal reporters who'd competed against Nelson's Atlanta Constitution back in the day lionized him.
Nelson in 12 years at the "South's Standard Newspaper" broke an astounding number of stories, including shocking abuses at the sprawling state mental hospital in Milledgeville. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for his Milledgeville expose.
Establishing The Los Angeles Times Atlanta bureau in 1964, Nelson gained new heights as one of the courageous reporters covering the civil rights movement across the South. Nelson then moved on to the Los Angeles newspaper's Washington Bureau, where he broke key Watergate stories and gained fame as a television pundit and bureau chief.
Nelson's posthumous memoir "Scoop: The Evolution of a Southern Reporter" in the electric language of a good newspaper story traces Nelson's rise from humble origins in rural Alabama and Biloxi, Miss. He had completed most of the book when he died in 2009 at age 80. His wife, journalist Barbara Matusow, finished the book, consulting his records and notes.
"Scoop" was the nickname Biloxi police bestowed upon the young energetic Nelson when he started his reporting career at the Biloxi Herald. Traces of that brash Southern boy remained in Nelson, even when he became a trusted confidante of presidents and esteemed Washington insider frequently seen on shows like "Washington Week in Review" and "Meet the Press."
After launching his career at the Mississippi gulf coast town where he spent most of his childhood, Nelson served in the Army, stationed at Fort Stewart, Ga. Nelson amusingly tells how he nearly escaped basic training by working as a public information officer.
He'd attracted the attention of the Constitution with stories sent from Biloxi, and the Atlanta newspaper hired him when he left the army in 1952, at a weekly salary of $85, barely enough to support his family. Nelson colorfully recalls his grueling career at a newspaper notorious for its stinginess.
Atlanta during his years at Ralph McGill's Constitution was transforming from a mid-sized insular Southern city to a major metropolis. Many of Nelson's scoops exposed Georgia's transition from a corrupt rural-dominated state whose government sought to preserve white power.
While Nelson venerated McGill, he clashed with the famed editor. In one shocking case, McGill sought to protect one of his cronies who was the target of a Nelson expose.
Nelson praises the Constitution for fully supporting his investigative pieces. The Constitution's parsimonious and flinty Executive Editor Bill Fields comes off in the balance as a staunch journalist.
In a surprising revelation for those who know Athens as a progressive city today, Nelson recalls a time when the home of the University of Georgia was plagued with gambling and prostitution. Nelson exposed the corruption, receiving the enmity of city boosters and, he says, the UGA student newspaper the Red and Black.
Nelson also castigates Athens as a hotbed of Southern racism, revisiting the shocking killing of Lemuel Penn, a black Washington, D.C. educator and decorated World War II veteran who was killed while passing through the city. Two Klansmen were acquitted of the slaying in a trial in Athens. Nelson doesn't disclose whether the case is one of those civil rights slayings that should be reopened.
Outside of the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnists McGill and Eugene Patterson, the Journal and Constitution shamefully did little to cover the civil rights movement outside of running wire stories, as Nelson acknowledges. He faults himself for ignoring the movement.
Nelson made up for that neglect at the Los Angles Times, traveling across the South with a courageous band of national reporters to cover key moments in Martin Luther King's campaign for civil rights.
In a memorable vignette, Nelson recalls the poignance of a lesser known moment in King's career, when he visited the rural community of Gee's Bend, Ala. and promised the poverty-stricken descendants of slaves that they would receive voting rights and recognition of their human dignity.
Nelson in an amusing chapter discusses his fraught relationship with Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who singled out Nelson for abuse during press conferences. After Wallace was paralyzed from wounds in an assassination attempt, he turned away from his harsh racism. Nelson was among those with whom Wallace made amends.
While reporting on breaking stories, Nelson also used his investigative skills, notably uncovering police abuses and a coverup in the killing of three black students at South Carolina State University at Orangeburg, S.C., in a protest on Feb. 8, 1968. He also exposed FBI involvement in a complicated entrapment scheme in Meridian, Miss., drawing the hatred of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
Hoover carried out an acrimonious campaign to discredit Nelson, even after he joined the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau. Hoover made false claims and accusations against Nelson, which continued until Hoover's death.
"Scoop," published by the University of Mississippi Press in 2013, deserves recognition as one of the best journalistic memoirs of the South's transformation after World War II.
Nelson loved White House dinners and fine Washington restaurants. But he always remained a reporter.
