James G. “Jim” Minter of Inman (Fayette County) died May 27 at the age of 95.
At Minter’s request (orders), a modest memorial service was held at his gravesite on May 30. At the service, Rev. David Campbell said Minter did not want to be memorialized with long speeches.
It’s hard to overstate how important Minter’s role was in Atlanta journalism from the 1950s to the 1980s, when he served first as a sportswriter and editor ending his AJC career as the executive editor of the combined papers (both owned by Cox Enterprises).
Several veterans of the papers came to the service and the lunch that followed, including Charlie Seabrook, Dewitt Rogers, Alice Wertheim, Sharon Bailey, David Bennett, Bill Hendrick and Tish McCutchen, among others. Jim Minter is survived by his wife, Anne, and their two sons – Rick (a former AJC colleague) and Rob Minter.
We all realized that we belonged to a time that has a passed us by – when we had a daily metro paper that was a must-read for almost everyone who cared about the Atlanta region. If only we had appreciated the important role the newspapers played at the time.
Many graduates of the AJC have shared stories about Minter on social media, including the famous one when Ken Willis threw Minter in the pool at a party for the Extras. It wasn’t longer that Willis left the paper to go into public relations. There were stories about Minter paying ransom to free kidnapped editor Reg Murphy, a tale recounted in Minter’s book of memories – “Some Things I Wish We Wouldn’t Forget (and others I wish we could).”
When I began working at the papers in 1981, we were all scared of Minter, a man of few words but a heavy stick. Minter loved everything about Fayette County and the University of Georgia. If you weren’t part of either, you could feel like an outsider. But as the years went by, he seemed to soften (maybe it helped when I smuggled him some Cuban cigars on one of my AJC-paid international trips). It was a risk breaking U.S. law. But Minter didn’t seem to mind. “It was like smoking a cloud,” he told me.
We had a gathering for Minter at Manuel’s Tavern on March 12, 2020 (just as Covid was shutting down the world). It was the last time I saw him. But we stayed in touch via email. The last email he sent me was on Sept. 11, 2025, thanking me for sharing former U.S. Sen. Wyche Fowler’s contact info.
“He has always been so very nice to me, like inviting me to go to the World Series and visiting when we were at St. Simons. I enjoyed being a fly on the wall at the three martini (Hal) Gulliver lunches at the Commerce Club. Wyche playing it safe ordering his in a water glass.
“We will depend on the SaportaReport to be what the A-J-C was. I have followed your journey through the years. Amazing, and meaningful. Needed now more than ever.”
Looking at the photo of us at Manuel’s more than six years ago is sobering. Too many in the photo have left us: Minter, Glenn McCutchen and Herb Steely.
The Atlanta region has also lost Elliott Brack, the dean of journalism in Gwinnett County, spending decades with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Brack died on May 15. Only three days before he died, Brack sent me an email saying how much he appreciated my column about the need to honor Ted Turner. And then he added comments expressing his disappointment in leadership at the AJC.
It’s sobering how we’re losing a generation of newspaper writers – paralleling the demise of the print edition of the AJC.
At least we have our memories.
