Rick and Marianne Edmonds were married in England. “He loved my mom more than life itself,” said their daughter, Jenny Edmonds. (Courtesy: Marianne Edmonds)

A few weeks ago, I got a text from a colleague — check your email when you can, then call me. 

In the parking lot of Walgreens, I dipped into my work email, where I learned of the death of my longtime coworker, Rick Edmonds. In the call that followed, I learned that his wife wanted me to write Rick’s obituary. 

On the drive home, sniffling and trying to process Rick’s death, my daughter said softly, “Mom, aren’t you honored?” 

I was. And daunted. Writing obituaries (which I care about deeply) is tough, illuminating, life-affirming work. But they are very rarely about people I know. 

And I knew Rick. 

At least, I thought I did. 

I knew Rick was a skilled and hard-working reporter. I didn’t know that he’d been a Pulitzer finalist. I knew he was a generous colleague. I didn’t know he was that way with any reporter who needed him, even if they were technically the competition. I knew he had two daughters. I didn’t know he passed on his love of country music to them through their daily car rides to school when they were younger. 

I talked with a lot of people, all part of or still doing pretty impressive things in our industry. And I learned one more thing about Rick that I didn’t know before. I knew he’d spent years helping make sense of what was happening in the business of journalism. I didn’t know that, thanks to his career, his intellect and his nature, he was exactly the right person for the job.

Rick Edmonds, Poynter’s longtime media business analyst, died Oct. 5 at 78 after internal injuries following a car accident.

Here’s his obituary. I hope you can learn more about him, too. 

While you’re here:

• As part of our series looking back at the last 50 years of journalism, Rick Edmonds completed this story shortly before his death. It's about the Gary Hart scandal and how it changed political journalism. 

• Here’s a great new resource from the Reynolds Journalism Institute: Public Policy and Journalism offers “State-by-state resources to see how state legislatures are working to keep community journalism alive.”

• From last month but worth noting — the Ann Arbor District Library plans to acquire the Ann Arbor Observer. 

• Speaking of protecting the first draft of history, Poynter, IRE and Internet Archive are partnering in a program next year to preserve local news digital archives. If your newsroom would like to take part, let us know. Applications will be open soon!

• From The Pivot Fund, read about the KC Defender’s food program.

• Poynter’s Fernanda Camarena and Resolve Philly’s Steve Volk have spent some of this year training journalists to better cover child welfare. Here’s what you can learn from them. 

• Here’s a great resource on covering domestic violence from Blue Shield of California. 

• Check out this news landscape study on Santa Barbara County. 

• And let’s end on an obit — read about Milton Esterow, who covered art stolen during World War II for The New York Times. “A draft of his final article, about the restitution of art stolen during the Holocaust — written as always on Mr. Esterow’s 1950 Royal typewriter, digitally scanned by his daughter and emailed to Mr. Flynn — was submitted before he died and remains scheduled for publication in the near future.”

That’s it for me. I’ve spent the last two weekends at concerts with my daughter, and though the music at each was fantastic and very different, the best part of both Billie Eilish and Megan Moroney was the fashion. 🤘

Kristen