J. Reginald ‘Reg’ Murphy, renowned journalist and editor who began his career in Macon, dies at 90

J. Reginald “Reg” Murphy, a former journalist, newspaper executive and Mercer University trustee, died Nov. 9. He was 90 years old.

Murphy was born in 1934 in Hoschton, Georgia and grew up in Gainesville. He attended Mercer University, working his way through college as a reporter for the Macon Telegraph, which launched his career in political reporting.

“Journalism is, in my mind, sacred,” Murphy said last year. “It is a sacred trust to tell the truth and to try to give people enough freedom to be able to find the truth and then pursue it.”

In 1955, he opened the Macon Telegraph’s Atlanta bureau, covering state politics for both the Telegraph and the Macon News. 

“My specific instructions from the newspaper were that, ‘Everybody accuses the Atlanta newspapers of lying. You go up there and just figure out what’s real and just report it. Whatever it is,’” Murphy said in a 2010 interview with Bob Short. “And I went to the Capitol and began to report. And I discovered that not only were they not lying, it was the politicians who were lying.”

Murphy was named a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1959 and became the Atlanta Constitution’s political editor in 1961. Following a stint at Atlanta Magazine, Murphy succeeded Ralph McGill as editor of the Atlanta Constitution in 1968. 

In 1974, Murphy was kidnapped, purportedly by right wing militia as part of a campaign against “liberal” news media. Murphy was lured from his Atlanta home, blindfolded and held for 49 hours before the Constitution paid a $700,000 ransom. 

About five hours after he was released, FBI agents arrested William A.H. Williams and charged him with kidnapping Murphy. Williams was later convicted in two separate trials and sentenced to 50 years in federal prison, serving nine years before he was paroled. 

“It was the most trying thing a man can go through,” Murphy said in 1974, adding he thought he was going to be killed. “They frightened my family very badly, they frightened me very badly.”

Murphy left the Constitution in 1975 to become editor of the San Francisco Examiner, where his newsroom was soon involved in a difficult story: covering the arrest and trial of Patty Hearst, the daughter of Examiner owner Randolph Hearst.

“I decided that, and I told (Hearst), I could either make [the Examiner] into a really quality newspaper, or I would leave if he wanted to change that attitude,” Murphy recounted late last year. “And he said, no, that he would like me to stay.”

From 1981-1990, Murphy was the publisher of The Baltimore Sun, overseeing the Sun’s transition to printing color photographs and the newspaper’s sale to the Times Mirror Co. as part of a $600 million deal. Murphy became executive vice president of the National Geographic Society in 1993 and served as the organization’s president and CEO from 1996-98.

Murphy received an honorary doctorate from Mercer in 1975 and served five terms on the university’s board of trustees. In 2023, Mercer named the Center for Collaborative Journalism — which houses the Macon Melody newsroom — after him. 

Mercer announced a new scholarship named for Murphy earlier this year. The Omnicom Reg Murphy Scholarship in Journalism will be awarded to up to 10 students annually pursuing a journalism major.

“Reg Murphy led an extraordinary life. He was a successful business executive and publisher, but most of all, he was a journalist,” Mercer President William D. Underwood said. “Reg was also a loyal supporter of the university, describing Mercer as a place where he learned the who, what, where, why and how of journalism.”

Funeral arrangements have not been released.