Masterson

Continued from page 2 wrote in a letter to Walter Hussman concerning Masterson’s Ronald Carden articles:

“That the press is the palladium of our liberties is something which could be demonstrated in no manner more profound than by Masterson’s unflagging determination to see justice done for an innocent man.”

Montgomery then added:

“That Masterson, on the strength of his reportorial skills and his dedication to his craft was able to undo an error of the law and win a citizen his freedom, is a monument to and example for journalists everywhere. But the credit is due, too, to the news organization which provided a man of Masterson’s stature the opportunity, and then the resources, to practice his considerable talents.”

Masterson was involved in numerous other investigative articles during that period at the Democrat. One series led to an unprecedented third trial for convicted “cop killer” James Dean Walker, who at one point had been within six days of the electric chair at Cummins Prison.

“Walker accepted an odd plea deal of sorts to gain his freedom when the prosecutor asked him to plead guilty by admitting had he not been on the highway that night, the patrolman would not have been killed,” Masterson said.

Walker served more than 20 years in prison before his release. He died earlier this year in his hometown of Boise, Idaho.

Among other topics, Masterson wrote a series of articles on school bus safety issues and the Faulkner County jail cell death of U.S. Army veteran Marvin Williams of Menifee.

Masterson’s next stop was the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, where he and a staff of three were assigned the task of restoring the investigative reporting legacy of journalist Don Bolles, who had been murdered in a car bombing 10 years earlier. While there, he worked on a story about Native American women being injected without their consent with a drug for contraception known to cause cancer in lab animals.

“My team and I then spent two months investigating how Native Americans had been cheated and abused on almost every level, from slant drilling on their lands, to poor education, rampant alcoholism and teen pregnancies, as well as substandard health care, crime and cultural matters,” Masterson said.

The 28-page insert led to Senate hearings. It received the George Polk Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting in 1988.

The following year the staff again was a Pulitzer finalist for a special report on the widespread negative effect of dosing drugs such as Haldol in nursing home residents who ordinarily would be alert and inquisitive.

Masterson then entered the academic world with an exciting position in an endowed chair at The Ohio State School of Journalism to head the graduate school’s Kiplinger Public Affairs Reporting Fellowship Program. The program was designed for up to 10 students annually.

“I had always seen myself in a classroom at some point and now, some 19 years from Newport, I knew this was meant to be,” Masterson said. The program was limited to five years and Masterson enjoyed weekly seminars with nearly 50 of the “best and brightest print and broadcast journalists from around the world.”

From there he became editor of the investigations department of The Asbury Press in New Jersey, where he did a series on “Dying in Custody,” detailing the absence of federal agency review of imprisonment deaths in the country.

He eventually testified in Washington, D.C., on the issue, leading to the Dying in Custody Act, a federal reporting law in lockups and jails across the country.

“By now I was missing my native state a lot,” Masterson said. “Living in New Jersey will do that to people. So, within a few months I had returned, this time as executive editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times in Fayetteville. That lasted five years working with supportive publishers Randy Cope and Jeff Jeffus. I also began a regular Sunday column.”

See Masterson Page 4