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 Murrsy, 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 long after that Willis left the paper to go into public relations. There were stories about Minter paying a ransom to free the 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, who spent 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.
Well done Maria. Jim’s legend lives. He always joked he fired me from my then part-time position during my first year of law school before I quit. We became friends thereafter.
This is a wonderful tribute to Jim Minter, Maria. And, that group picture of AJC old timers at Manuel’s? Priceless.
Thank you, Maria, for the superb story detailing the life and career of Jim Minter. The photo is no doubt of him on his sturdy tractor that tilled the red clay of Fayette Co. that he loved so much. My family goes back many years with the AJC when it consisted of the morning CONSTITITION and the evening JOURNAL. My father would grab a copy of the Journal (Blue Streak edition) when he would leave his office building at 101 Marietta St before walking over to Five Points to catch his bus for the ride out to our suburban home. (Paper’s cost may have been a dime or so back then.)
Minter was Sports Editor of the Constitution back then….I would read his counterpart, Furman Bisher, on the sports pages of the Journal…..learning how to read a baseball box score, etc. (the Braves moved to Atlanta when I was in high school…still have my souvenir opening game ticket…Braves lost that opening game to the Pirates in an extra inning heartbreaker.) The paper carried a photo the next day of a beaming Mayor Ivan Allen tossing out the opening ceremonial pitch.
Over the years there are many names that come to mind from the pages of that great enterprise….Celestine Sibley and her beloved Crabapple……Ralph McGill….Jim Wooten….and the sage of Moreland, GA., Lewis Grizzard, whose whimsical writings would eventually be syndicated across the nation …I believe Mr Minter may have had something to do with Lewis’ arrival on staff.
I remember the paper’s coverage of the Reg Murphey kidnapping in ’74….the exciting reports of Atlanta’s Olympic Games…(and the sad saga of Richard Jewell)
……political cartoonist Clifford “Baldy” Baldowski….whose pen tweaked the meek and the powerful alike. (I went to high school with some of his offspring.)
Why my pathetic mug even made the pages of the AJC on a couple of occasions…firstly when I was all of 11…in a story in the Sunday Magazine section about my Little League ball team that one summer was led by a (hold on, now) WOMAN manager….and under her expert tutelage, guidance and instruction we WON the league PENNANT ! Great times. My second appearance was my Eagle Scout photo a few years later.
Yes, my hometown paper has certainly been a mainstay in my lifetime….and Jim Minter was a guiding light through much of that time. Years before I arrived on campus, he was no doubt marching with the other cadets across the parade ground at my old Alma Mater, North Ga. College in Dahlonega. I have read elsewhere that he was described by an employee of the paper as “fair, but scary”. I guess for those of you who were there, Maria, that could have been an apt description….. but maybe those Cuban cigars help to tame that temperament… just a little bit.
Long live the Saporta Report.
Greg