Veteran Texas Newspaper Editor Martin Dies at 81

TYLER (AP) – Veteran Texas newspaper journalist Bill Earl Martin, former publisher of the Longview News-Journal and Lufkin Daily News, has died. He was 81. Martin died Friday of congestive heart failure, according to an obituary on the website of the Stewart Family Funeral Home in Tyler.

Martin began his career in 1955 as a reporter at the San Angelo Standard-Times and worked his way up to assistant to the publisher. He was publisher of the Walton Tribune in Monroe, Ga., before being named president in 1980 of Harte-Hanks Newspapers’ Georgia Newspaper Group. He was also publisher of the Greenville Herald-Banner and the Mansfield Journal-News in Ohio. He retired from the same post in Longview in 1997. He was president of the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors organization in 1976.