Witty, insightful newspaperman McCloskey dies

Monday, Oct. 16, 2000 | 10:19 a.m.

Goodbye, Jasper.

Writing under this simple pen name, Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame member Jack McCloskey over the past several decades spun his wit and provided keen insight into the state's political dramas.

The longtime editor's column in the weekly Mineral County Independent News made him as much a fixture as the area's ghost towns of Rawhide, Bodie and Aurora, where rich mineral treasures once were mined and where McCloskey became a treasure of the state he chronicled.

Jack R. McCloskey, whose sage advice often was sought by office-holders, office-seekers and other political followers during a newspaper career that spanned eight decades, died Friday in Hawthorne. He was 88.

No services are planned.

"Jack was a man of quality who was hewn from the rocks and hills of central Nevada," former Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, a longtime friend and now chairman of the Sun, said.

"His honest and fearless approach to life and all of its problems set an example for several generations of Silver State residents. He was one of but a few living people I regarded as a true hero."

Ruthe Deskin, assistant to the publisher of the Sun, said her longtime friend "epitomized what people think of when they think about small-town newspaper publishers and editors."

"He knew politics in Nevada like no one else and he was never afraid to speak his mind," Deskin said.

Although long active in the Nevada Press Association, which among many of its activities sponsors an annual contest for journalists, McCloskey was critical of newspaper contests and never entered his columns for consideration.

"We get paid for writing, and we don't need people giving us a gold star for it," he often said.

McCloskey ran his newspaper in Hawthorne, site of a military ammunition center, from 1933 until his retirement in 1994. He continued to write his Jasper column for the paper through this year.

One of his philosophies about newspapering was that the good of the community came first.

"A newspaper and a community it serves are not unlike a man and wife," he wrote in a guest Where I Stand column in the Sun on Nov. 5, 1961. "They have their spats, and maybe even a threat of separation at times, but when working together, they both enjoy the success of their efforts."

An old-school reporter, McCloskey despised being called a journalist -- he was in every sense of the word a "newspaperman." He often said a journalist is an out-of-work reporter.

In a Feb. 21, 1958, Where I Stand column by late Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun, on the occasion of the Mineral County Independent News' 25th anniversary, McCloskey was praised as a "dynamic and gifted editor."

"There's more to the Mineral County Independent News than meets the bare, barren face," Greenspun wrote. "(It is) a reflection of its editor -- erudite, witty and honest.

"Jack is a good writer, shrewd political analyst ... and a fair journeyman printer. Although he is still a young man, he is gifted with the irascibility of age which, coupled with integrity and intelligence, makes for qualities most desirable in an editor."

Despite the small circulation of his paper, the opinions McCloskey expressed in his columns carried great weight with those in power. The Sun often reprinted his Jasper columns on the editorial pages.

In a June 1996 Jasper column on efforts to preserve Lake Tahoe, McCloskey expressed hope that Walker Lake -- and its importance to his county's environment and economy -- would not be lost in the shuffle.

"(Walker Lake) needs and deserves equal attention from the state through a ($20 million) bond issue ... Walker Lake's problem is more than a need to maintain clarity, it is one of survival."

McCloskey could take difficult-to-understand issues and write them in a folksy way that made it clear not only to those who would agree with his viewpoint but to those who were ignorant to the needs of the state's small counties. For example, of reapportionment he wrote in 1962:

"If our entire system of government is to be changed overnight by the simple process of a court order -- the raiding of Senate seats by heavily populated areas -- then what reasonable defense could we in Nevada offer against a similar attack by big Eastern states to revise the U.S. Senate on the basis of population, and thus allot one senator to a senatorial district consisting of Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and maybe Arizona and New Mexico?"

McCloskey began his career as a teenager at the Tonopah Times-Bonanza, learning the business from the ground up before joining the editorial staff of the Hawthorne News.

In 1933 McCloskey and J.W. Connors quit the Hawthorne News and purchased the plant of the defunct Mina Western Nevada Miner, according to the publication the Newspapers of Nevada.

They moved the newspaper to Hawthorne, renamed it the Mineral County Independent and published its first issue on March 1, 1933. McCloskey was editor of the four-page weekly.

In June 1935 Connors and McCloskey bought the Hawthorne News and merged it with the Independent, changing its name to Mineral County Independent and Hawthorne News on July 4, 1935. It later was shortened to the Independent News.

The paper was edited by Alvin Mann from November 1943 until September 1945 while McCloskey served in the military during World War II, according to the Newspapers of Nevada. McCloskey became sole owner in 1954 and ran it the next 40 years until his retirement.

On Sept. 26, 1998, McCloskey was one of 33 inaugural inductees into the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame sponsored by the Nevada Press Association. He was a past recipient of the Silver Makeup Rule Award, the organization's highest honor.

A list of survivors were not immediately available.