Farris was longtime Sentinel editor, reporter
Before Trueman Farris was a demanding editor, he was a tough reporter who covered City Hall and the courthouse in Milwaukee.
Every story Farris wrote competed against every article written by his chief rival. Back then, Milwaukee was a two daily newspaper city and Farris’ byline appeared in the Milwaukee Sentinel while the Journal’s city hall reporter was Bob Wills.
When the Hearst-owned Sentinel was purchased by The Milwaukee Journal in 1962, Wills was named the Sentinel’s city editor. He could pick anyone he wanted to be his deputy and the first name on his list was his former competitor.
“After the purchase, I insisted Farris be named assistant city editor,” Wills said Tuesday.
Farris spent more than four decades as a reporter and editor at the Sentinel, retiring in 1989 as managing editor. He died of natural causes March 10 in Hales Corners. Farris was 91.
Born in Sedalia, Mo., in 1926, Farris moved with his family to Milwaukee in 1938 when his father bought a Standard Oil franchise. Before Farris graduated from Juneau High School, he got his first paying newspaper job covering high school football as a stringer.
Farris actually didn’t know anything about football and had never seen a game. But he really wanted to be a journalist, so he read the rules of football to prepare for his first assignment, riding the streetcar to football stadiums and earning 75 cents a game for his stories.
While earning a journalism degree at Marquette University, he began working part time in 1945 for the Milwaukee Sentinel. He graduated from Marquette in 1948.
“I worked the night I graduated from Marquette, and I went over to the ceremony on my lunch hour,” Farris told Sentinel reporter Rick Romell when he retired. “I remember asking (his editor) if it was OK if I took a little extra time and he said, ‘I guess so, but get back as soon as you can,’ which I did.”
Farris covered features, sports and news, worked as a copy editor and then spent three years as a city government reporter before covering the court system. In 1958, he earned an award from the Milwaukee Press Club for stories about an alderman who was appointed to a city job without taking the civil service exam. Following Farris’ stories, the Common Council froze the man’s pay and ordered him to take the exam which he failed, losing his job.
In 1962, he switched to management and spent the rest of his career as an editor, moving up through the ranks until he was managing editor.
Marta Bender started at the Sentinel in 1965 and worked with Farris for years.
“Trueman was very thorough. He was an old-time journalist who knew the city like the back of his hand. He knew where the bodies were buried and he wanted the Sentinel to be a hardnosed paper, and we were,” said Bender.
Compared to the Journal, the Sentinel had a smaller staff, fewer resources and fewer pages.
“As city editor, he was in a constant battle to wedge stories into the paper and that meant editing them to their essence,” said Dan Patrinos, who was hired by the Sentinel in 1962.
Farris initiated and oversaw the development in 1988 of the Wisconsin Election Service, a joint effort with Milwaukee’s television stations to efficiently report election results.
He served on the board of directors of The Associated Press Managing Editors, was a Pulitzer Prize nominating juror and president of the Milwaukee chapter of Society of Professional Journalists and the Milwaukee Press Club.
In a 1985 column on Farris’ 40th anniversary at the Sentinel, Bill Janz wrote: “When Farris was editing copy, his will was the wall we all ran into. If the Bible had come across his desk, he would have tightened it up a little, rearranged a few paragraphs and rewritten the beginning, to give it more va-voom.”
He is survived by his son Jim. At Farris’ request, no services were held and his ashes were spread in two locations dear to him.