Joann Meyer, who spent nearly 60 years as a reporter, columnist, editor and associate publisher at The Marion County Record in Kansas, died on Saturday at her home, a day after the police searched the newspaper\u2019s offices. She was 98.<\/p>\n
Her son, Eric Meyer, the newspaper\u2019s publisher, confirmed the death. He said that the cause had not been determined, but that the coroner had concluded that the stress of the searches \u2014 at her home, which she shared with him, as well as at the paper\u2019s offices \u2014 was a contributing factor.<\/p>\n
The raids came after a local businesswoman accused the newspaper of illegally acquiring a letter from the local government explaining how she could reinstate her driver\u2019s license after it had been suspended following a citation for drunken driving in 2008.<\/p>\n
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 about it. Nevertheless, on Friday morning a judge issued a warrant permitting the police to search the Meyer residence and the newspaper\u2019s offices for evidence of identity theft and the \u201cillegal use of a computer.\u201d<\/p>\n
An hour later, members of the town\u2019s police department showed up at the Meyers\u2019 house, which Mrs. Meyer and her husband had moved into in 1953, the day before Eric was born. They took computers, cellphones, documents and even Mrs. Meyer\u2019s Alexa smart speaker.<\/p>\n
Mr. Meyer said that his mother was in shock after the raid, and that she had trouble sleeping. On Saturday, he went to wake her after noon, and to bring her breakfast, which she refused to eat.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said over and over again, \u2018Where are all the good people to put a stop to this?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cShe felt like, how can you go through your entire life and then have something that you spent 50 years of your life doing just kind of trampled on like it\u2019s meaningless?\u201d<\/p>\n
She died in midsentence, he said, at around 1:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
Marion\u2019s chief of police, Gideon Cody, has refused to go into detail about the case, but he has insisted that more information will be forthcoming.<\/p>\n
Marion is a town of about 2,000 people, located amid the vast flat cornfields of central Kansas, roughly 50 miles north of Wichita.<\/p>\n
As at most small-town papers, job titles at The Record are nominal; everyone does everything. Editors might write articles, reporters might sweep the floors. Mrs. Meyer worked as a copy editor and the social news editor, and for decades she wrote a column about local history called Memories.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a walking encyclopedia of local history,\u201d Rowena Plett, a features reporter for The Record, said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n
The Record is a Meyer family affair. Mrs. Meyer\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy father wrote and my mother read,\u201d said Eric Meyer, who also wrote for the newspaper in high school. \u201cThey spent 24 hours a day together.\u201d<\/p>\n
The newspaper had a reputation for aggressive reporting alongside the sort of lighter fare often found in small-town publications. Recent coverage included an article about a thresher exhibition and an expos\u00e9 of a scam involving supposedly free Covid tests.<\/p>\n
In 1998, when the longtime owners of The Record, the Hoch family, decided to sell it, the Meyers stepped in as buyers to prevent it from going to a corporate chain. They also bought two nearby papers, The Hillsboro Star-Journal and The Peabody Gazette-Bulletin.<\/p>\n
Joann Wight was born on May 23, 1925, in Marion and rarely ventured beyond its limits. Her father, Ollie Wight, was a town marshal, and her mother, Mercil (Thompson) Wight, ran a funeral home.<\/p>\n
Before joining the staff of The Record, she worked in a grocery store, a hospital and an alfalfa mill.<\/p>\n
She married William Meyer in 1949; he died in 2006. Along with her son, she is survived by a grandson and three great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Meyer set the tone for the newspaper as a punctilious editor \u2014 though she refused to let anyone, even her husband or son, touch her copy.<\/p>\n
After her husband\u2019s death, Mrs. Meyer stepped back from many of her daily duties at the paper. Eric, who had spent his career as a journalist in Milwaukee and later as a journalism professor at the University of Illinois, returned home to help. He eventually took over as editor and publisher.<\/p>\n
She continued to write her column every week until last year, when a medical procedure damaged her vision. But she would still write an occasional article, with the help of her son.<\/p>\n
Since the raids, the newspaper\u2019s staff has struggled to put out the next issue, because of both the lack of equipment \u2014 the police took most of the computers \u2014 and the sudden worldwide attention being cast on their small town.<\/p>\n
In addition to constant calls from the news media, Mr. Meyer said, they have been contacted by numerous well-wishers and subscribers eager to help out.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe would feel very good about all this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n