Max Jones

2024

By Tim Harmon

Often today, disagreements are winner-take-all battles, compromise is weakness and courtesy is for losers. Max Jones has a very different approach to journalism and leadership, based on a deep set of Hoosier values.

As those who have worked with him know, Jones looks for points of consensus instead of division. He knows that good management, and good community journalism, are about listening to people as much as they're about telling them things.

“Max in many ways is a diplomat,” said IJHF President Stephanie Salter, who worked for him for eight years and is herself a member of the hall of fame. “He keeps his cool and is so fair. He doesn’t lose it — he’s super adaptable, always trying to find his way through, no matter the mess or controversy.”

The skills that made Jones the editor of a much-honored paper, a leader in state press organizations and a charter member of the Indiana Debate Commission were burnished entirely in south-central Indiana. Jones was born in the tiny town of Loogootee and has lived as a Hoosier ever since.

“I always kind of looked on myself as a writer, as a reader, and I was very interested in current events,” Jones recalls. 

He settled on journalism as a freshman at Indiana University-Bloomington, worked at the Indiana Daily Student and graduated in 1974. An almost-yearlong search finally landed him a job in the Sullivan Times’s three-person newsroom – one of only two newspapers Jones has ever worked for.

Three events just after he became editor of the Times in the winter of 1977-78 forged Jones’ view of why newspapers are important and how they should be led.

The first two were a nationwide coal strike, which had an outsized impact on the Terre Haute area, and the memorably immobilizing Blizzard of 1978.  

The third crisis arrived while the tiny Sullivan newspaper was still reporting on the strike and the blizzard. On the nearby town square, a gas leak led to a massive explosion that killed four and a fire that stopped at the Times’ door. 

The next day, some staffers were afraid to go back into the newsroom. But the publisher, Rex Pierce, rallied the troops. “Our community needs us,” he said, “so let’s go.”

Jones was struck by the publisher’s unfazed leadership. “It was amazing to me how calm he seemed under this kind of strain,” he recalled. “He set a lot of good examples for me. But that was one that I never forgot.”

Jones also never forgot the community’s response: “I saw just how valuable the newspaper was to the residents. That really planted a deep seed for me.”

After a decade in Sullivan, Jones moved to The Terre Haute Tribune-Star in 1985, serving as bistate editor and editorial page editor before being named editor in 2000.

Under Jones, the Tribune-Star has not been hesitant to expose Terre Haute’s problems or criticize its leaders, and Jones is known for backing his staff on tough pieces.  

Salter recalls, for instance, how her liberal politics as a columnist often had readers and advertisers lobbying Jones to clamp down on her. "But even when I knew he didn't agree with me, he backed me," she said.

Countless times, she said, she watched Jones and former assistant editor Susan Duncan make room in an ever-shrinking news hole, telling reporters to "go with it" on hot-button stories and series. “They never flinched.”

In 2015, the Tribune-Star took a hard look at the causes of and possible solutions to Terre Haute’s budget deficit. 

A textbook example of watchdog reporting and commentary, “City on the Brink” won the Hoosier State Press Association's Best Public Service Award the following year. Judges said the series was “what journalism should do.” 

In recent years, Jones has also taken on responsibility out of Indiana for other newsrooms owned by the Tribune-Star’s parent company, CNHI. But always, along the way, he has found time to give back. 

Jones served a term as a board member and president of Associated Press Media Editors and began his involvement with Hoosier State Press Association during his Sullivan days, concentrating on providing programs for small newspapers. In 2011, he was presented with HSPA’s Distinguished Service Award.

“He does things he doesn’t have to do,” Karen Braeckel, president of the HSPA Foundation, said at the time.

Jones was also instrumental in the fight to preserve the home of legendary Hoosier journalist Ernie Pyle, serving on a board that helped the town of Dana find ways to sustain and improve the historic site. 

But nothing in Jones’ cornucopian resume of professional and public service has demanded more commitment and hard work than his years with the Indiana Debate Commission.

The commission was organized in 2007 by a group of journalistic and civic leaders to present fairly moderated debates in races for statewide office and encourage public participation. 

When Jones served as president of the organization, “I would say that there were times that it was almost a full-time job," he recalled.  “My employer was very supportive.”

An incident during the Senate debate in New Albany in 2012 showed the stressfulness of his role.  Asked about abortion, all three candidates gave anti-abortion rights answers. But Republican Richard Mourdock went on to offer his opinion that when a woman is raped, a resulting pregnancy “is something that God intended to happen." 

After the debate, Mourdock’s handlers sought to quench a quickly spreading public firestorm by phoning Jones to demand that he stop the news media from airing the candidate's inflammatory words. Jones gracefully but firmly turned away the Mourdock team’s desperate requests, preserving both the commission’s credibility and its nonpartisanship. 

It was yet another moment when Jones’ quiet and reasoned approach saved the day.

There were many others. Craig Klugman, the longtime editor of Fort Wayne’s Journal Gazette and another hall of fame member, remembers when an HSPA committee he and Max were part of began to turn ugly.  Usually convivial editors were drawing lines in the sand, Klugman recalled, and one publisher "was making all kinds of threats."

“Just before the meeting got out of hand,” Klugman continued, “Max broke in and calmed everyone down.  He kept us on track and we got it done. It was a real testament to his coolness.”

Jones helped lead the Tribune-Star newsroom through new ownership, budget and staff cuts, and fundamental changes in the way news is gathered and disseminated — perilous passages that sank some papers and ended the career of many an editor.  Through it all, though, he became known for projecting energy and optimism.  

Jones was one of those who entered the newspaper world during its golden age. Now, in his 24th year as editor, he still believes in the future of journalism but mourns the papers that may be left behind.

“It breaks my heart to see what’s happened to some of these small newspapers in Indiana that had been such valuable institutions for their community,” he said. 

One thing Jones doesn’t regret is staying put in Indiana. His career is proof you don’t have to rush off to the bright lights and big cities to have a major impact on newspapers and their readers. Jones and his wife, Helen, still live in Sullivan; they have two grown children, Chelsea and Nick.