Joanne Meyer, who spent nearly 60 years as a reporter, columnist, editor and co-publisher of The Marion County Record in Kansas, died Saturday at her home, a day after police searched the paper’s offices. She was 98 years old.
Her son, Eric Meyer, the paper’s publisher, confirmed the death. The cause was not determined, he said, but the coroner concluded that the pressure of searches—at her home, which she shared with him, as well as at the newspaper offices—was a contributing factor.
The raids came after a local businesswoman accused the paper of illegally obtaining a letter from the local government explaining how she could reinstate her driver’s license after it was suspended following an advertisement for drunk driving in 2008.
The newspaper, which said it had received the document from an anonymous source, verified the information, but Mr. Meyer decided not to publish an article on it. However, on Friday morning a judge issued an order allowing police to search Meyer’s home and newspaper offices for evidence of identity theft and “illegal computer use.”
An hour later, people from the town’s police department showed up at the Meyers home, which Mrs. Meyer and her husband had moved into in 1953, the day before Eric was born. They took computers, cell phones, documents, and even Mrs. Meyer’s Alexa smart speaker.
Mr Meyer said his mother was in a state of shock after the raid, and that she had trouble sleeping. On Saturday, he went to wake her up in the afternoon, and bring her breakfast, which she refused to eat.
He said, “She said over and over, ‘Where are all the good people to put an end to this?'” “I just felt like, How can you go through your whole life and then have something you’ve spent 50 years of your life doing like it doesn’t make any sense?”
He said she died in the middle of the day around 1:30 p.m
Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody declined to go into detail about the case, but insisted that more information would be available soon.
Marion is a city of about 2,000 people, nestled among the vast, flat cornfields of central Kansas, about 50 miles north of Wichita.
As in most small-town newspapers, the job titles at The Record are nominal; Everyone does everything. Editors may write articles, and reporters may sweep floors. Ms. Meyer worked as a copy editor and social news editor, and for decades wrote a local history column titled Memories.
“It was a walking encyclopedia of local history,” Rowena Plitt, feature reporter for The Record, said in a phone interview.
The record is a Meyer family affair. Mrs. Meyer’s husband, Bill, began working there in 1948, and she joined him in the early 1960s, once Eric was old enough to stay with her parents for a few hours.
“My father wrote and my mother read,” said Eric Meyer, who also wrote for the newspaper in high school. “They spent 24 hours a day together.”
The paper was known for aggressive reporting combined with the kind of light fare often found in small town publications. Recent coverage included an article about a study fair and an exposé of a scam involving supposedly free Covid tests.
In 1998, when The Record’s longtime owners, the Hoch family, decided to sell it, the Meyers stepped in as buyers to keep it from going to the corporate chain. They also purchased two nearby newspapers, The Hillsboro Star-Journal and The Peabody Gazette-Bulletin.
Born on May 23, 1925, in Marion, Joan White rarely ventured beyond her limits. Her father, Ollie White, was the town manager, and her mother, Mercel (Thompson) White, ran a funeral home.
Prior to joining the staff of The Record, she worked in a grocery store, hospital, and alfalfa mill.
She married William Mayer in 1949; He died in 2006. She is survived with her son by a grandson and three great-grandchildren.
Mrs. Meyer set the tone for the paper as a meticulous editor—though she refused to allow anyone, even her husband or son, to touch her copy.
After her husband’s death, Mrs. Meyer stepped back from many of her day-to-day duties at the newspaper. Eric, who spent his career as a journalist in Milwaukee and then a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois, returns home to help. He eventually took over as editor and publisher.
She continued writing her column every week until last year, when a medical procedure damaged her eyesight. But she still wrote an article occasionally, with the help of her son.
Since the raids, the paper’s staff have struggled to get the next issue out, due to a lack of equipment—most of the computers have been taken over by the police—and the sudden worldwide attention being drawn to their small town.
In addition to constant calls from the media, Mr. Meyer said, they have been approached by many eager well-wishers and subscribers for help.
“She would have felt good about all of this,” he said.