SOMERSET, Ky. (AP) — The longtime editor of the Commonwealth Journal newspaper in Somerset, Kentucky, has died. An obituary from Southern Oaks Funeral Home says Bill Mardis died Tuesday at a hospital. He was 89. Mardis was recruited in 1964 to work at the Commonwealth Journal by then-publisher George Joplin III and was still working there part-time as editor emeritus when he died. Along with being the newspaper’s longtime editor, Mardis was known regionally as the “Humble Reporter,” after a column he wrote. U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell praised Mardis as a “consummate community journalist, prizing truth and integrity over sensation and spin.”
