American Reporter

By Douglas Martin

Douglas Martin, scion of Iowa pioneers and a World War II hero, surrendered his heart to newspapers at age 11 when his village's weekly published three paragraphs on his swim across the local lake. He went on to more than four decades of old-fashioned "newspapering," writing thousands of stories that ranged from personally capturing live rattlesnakes in Texas to chatting with oil ministers in the Persian Gulf to celebrating a Coney Island sideshow performer for stylishly hammering nails up his nose. His last "beat" at The New York times was the obituary desk where he roamed far beyond obligatory obits of the world's eminences to tell of an armadillo breeder, a peculiarly well-traveled hobo and the last survivor of one of New York's saddest tragedies, the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in 1911 in which 146 garment workers died because the owner had locked the door.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0DV5CHV7F
• ISBN13: 9798218498276
• Release Date: January 2025
• Publisher: O'K Books New York
• Length: 202 Pages
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"