Kansas Newspapermen Linked by Sports

Topeka Capital-Journal
Dec. 15, 1999

There were a couple of send-off parties earlier this month for Mark Nusbaum and his family, wishing them well in Lubbock, Texas, where he is the new publisher of the uniquely named Avalanche-Journal. I remember it as the only newspaper I ever saw printed blue raindrops on the front page of the weather report.

Nusbaum is a local boy who made good. He started at the Topeka Capital-Journal as a copy boy, almost as low on the totem pole as a local retiree columnist, and he was executive editor when he left.

He became a sportswriter, and as he moved up, he worked on both the news and business sides of the paper. He became a good newspaperman, well qualified to go off at the tender age of 44 and take over a big daily.

When he told his wife he was surprised by how well he got along with the key players on his new team in Lubbock, a West Texas city of 186,000, she said it was because he had enough redneck in him to make it work. It wasn’t the answer he was expecting, but he agrees. Continue reading

Columnist Dick Snider dies at 83

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With Will Snider

By Rick Dean, Topeka Capital-Journal

It once was said that the mark of a good newspaper columnist was the ability to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

By that criteria alone, as well as several others, Dick Snider was a great newspaper columnist.

Snider, the longtime Topeka Capital-Journal columnist and former sports editor, died Saturday after a short battle with cancer. He was 83.

A former oil industry executive, he worked briefly in the Kennedy administration before producing “College Football” — a long- running highlights show for the ABC network in the 1960s.

A man who walked comfortably in the world of sports, politics and business, Snider’s ability to apply a sharply pointed needle to people in power, as well as to himself and those he loved, made him as popular with readers as he was pilloried by politicians. Continue reading