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Newsman Cox was born March 31, 1870, in an Ohio hamlet named Jacksonburg ("there must," he cracked, "have been Democrats in the vicinity"). He lived up to his Algeresque origins by delivering newspapers, quit school at 16 to become a teacher, soon took a job as cub-of-all-work on the old Middletown Signal. He always had "a passionate interest in newspapers." Turning passion into profit, he put the Dayton Daily News into the black in less than five years after he bought the paper (for $26,000) in 1898, bought the Dayton Journal-Herald (current circ. 93,290), the Springfield, Ohio morning Sun (17,874) and Daily News (30,044) while expanding into Georgia and Florida (where the Miami Daily News is the only Cox paper that is not solidly in the black.)
End at Trailsend. Publisher Cox allowed his papers to keep their own personalities, gave free rein to his local publishers—who sometimes showed more concern for the cash register than the crusading journalism for which James Cox stood. (All Cox dailies are Democratic except the pro-Ike Dayton Journal-Herald and Springfield Sun.) Overall management of the seven-paper group and a string of allied TV and radio stations fell increasingly to James Cox Jr., the twice-married publisher's son. But the governor still showed up at his Dayton office, held frequent long-distance powwows with Atlanta Constitution Editor Ralph McGill, even found time to indulge his second passion, golf.* A fortnight ago, Fighting Jimmy suffered a stroke in the $3,000,000 Dayton newspaper building he had dedicated last month, died five days later at the home outside Dayton that he called Trailsend.
* In common with the New York Times's Chief Washington Correspondent James B. ("Scotty") Reston, who used to be Cox's caddy in Dayton.