Former city editor of Pittsburgh Press
Flora Rathburn had no college degree in a newsroom that was full of graduates, but the common-sense editor barely over 5 feet tall was one whom many reporters looked up to for both professional and personal guidance at The Pittsburgh Press.
Ms. Rathburn, who went into her first paid journalism job as a young, divorced mother in need of income, ended up overseeing a news staff that won prestigious Pulitzer Prizes in 1986 and 1987 at the former newspaper. She was still the city editor when the Press closed from 1992 labor strife, and she took her editing skills afterward to The Detroit News and Cleveland Plain Dealer before retirement in 2002.
Ms. Rathburn died Wednesday at St. Clair Hospital from congestive heart failure. She was 79 and had been living recently at Providence Point in Scott after initially retiring to South Fayette.
Journalists who worked with her at what was the region’s largest newspaper recalled a woman who was calmly demanding and expected the utmost from them, while also showing how much she cared for them. Many saw her as a motherly figure — the kind of mother you could lean on for advice, but whom you were wise not to let down.
“She brought out the best in reporters, sometimes with a smile, and sometimes with that look similar to the stern expression on a teacher’s face,” said Lawrence Walsh, a longtime courts reporter.
Ms. Rathburn had come to the Press in 1979 after working at suburban weekly newspapers. She was a Colorado native who arrived in Pittsburgh in 1958 due to her husband’s job when she was a young mother. They lived in Moon, where she did volunteer work for a community paper. She began her first paid newspaper work for the Coraopolis Record in 1975 after her divorce.
She transitioned from reporting into a long career as an editor, a job she devoted herself to whether guiding coverage of Pittsburgh’s southern suburbs or the national coverage of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“She loved the pace of it,” said her daughter, Karen Rathburn of Upper St. Clair. “I think she loved working with so many writers and helping to mold their writing style over the years. That was very fulfilling, and she was always very close to her team.”
She helped oversee suburban coverage for the Press before rising to the position of city editor, where the petite woman would constantly be busy at her desk while smoking and interacting with reporters and the group of men who were her deputies in the 1980s and early ’90s.
“She was a hard-nosed editor, but compassionate and understanding and just extremely likable at the same time,” said Otis Sanford, now of Memphis, Tenn., who was one of those assistant city editors. “She really knew the landscape of Pittsburgh and what was news. If a reporter came back to her with an excuse why they couldn’t get some story or couldn’t do something, she always had a response of why you can do it, and she would then offer suggestions.”
A number of staff members ended up at Ms. Rathburn’s house as guests on holidays or were welcomed there to watch big sports events on television. They tasted some of the exceptional pies she was known for baking. Some were satisfied simply to eat up the knowledge of a woman who had managed and gained much in life through her own determination.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer Ed Blazina, who worked for Ms. Rathburn at the Press, recalled, “She was almost like the wise older sister who had already been through whatever situation you were dealing with and was willing to share her experience and guidance, not in an ‘I’m smarter than you’ way, but in an ‘I’ve seen this before, and here’s what you have to consider’ manner.”
Whether with reporters, her children or anyone else, Karen Rathburn noted, her mother wasn’t one to suffer fools. But she was intelligent and well-read to the end, traveling to Europe and acRrOoGssERthHeEcNoRuYntry in reAtigrem8 e6n, t wrhmilersltyill retahdePiinttgsbtuhrrgeheanrewa,sdpiaedpeSrastuardayy, Maanyd2b1u,s2y0in1g6,hienrCsehlafrilnesptuobn-, SC. He was the son of the late lication of newsletter at Henry and Virginia Gartside, aPnrdoivsidsuenrvcievePdoibnyt.his wife of 65 Iyneardsd,itDioonlotroehse; rhdisautgwhostoenrs,, Rathburn of Keswick, Va., an d R) al ph R at hb; u rn odf T o2k yo, a nd fo u r g ra d;ch il drene. liildkreelyn.inRomgiedrJune. Arrangements are by ewmhiocrhiaml Lleeabdaenr ornes.