Roy L. Matson, former editor of the Wisconsin State Journal, was born June 26, 1908, in Cloquet, Minnesota, and spent his boyhood in Minnesota and Wisconsin. He attended high school in Minneapolis and started his newspaper work on high school publications. In 1925, he came to the University of Wisconsin, and the next year began haunting the Wisconsin State Journal for odd jobs of reporting. In the summer of 1927, he filled a vacation assignment as state editor. In 1929, he joined the staff as a full-time reporter and feature writer, and covered everything from murders to concerts. In 1931, at the age of 23, Matson became city editor, the key spot in a competitive newspaper field. When Daniel D. Mich, State Journal managing editor, left in 1937 to become associate editor of Look magazine, Matson was chosen to fill the vacancy thus created. In 1942, upon A. M. Brayton's retirement, Matson was placed in full charge of the editorial department of the newspaper.
It was his abiding conviction that editors should take a stand on the issues; his firm opposition to the West Washington underpass issue (1944-1948) is evidence of his action on this belief. From mid-1941 to 1944, Roy Matson's personal observations appeared daily on page one in a column entitled “This World of Ours.”
In 1952, Matson was one of fourteen newsmen who took a Department of Defense air tour of Europe and the Near East to become acquainted with the problems of European defense. He visited England, France, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Libya, and Morocco. From each stop, Matson sent back articles describing the sights and commenting on particular defense problems.
Again in 1958, Matson accepted a similar assignment. He and Norman E. Issacs, managing editor of the Louisville (Ky.) Times, spent ten weeks conducting seminars on the American press in India. They worked under the American specialists branch of the International Exchange Service of the United States' State Department.
In the two years after his India trip, Matson found his schedule full of invitations to speak at city and area service clubs and other organizations. During this period he made more than 150 speeches on his experiences, and participated in foreign affairs seminars at several Midwest universities.
Matson was a director of Madison Newspapers, Inc., a director of the Badger Broadcasting Company, and owner and operator of Madison radio station WIBA. He also was a member of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and of Chi Phi and Sigma Delta Chi fraternities, served as president of the United Press Newspaper Editors of Wisconsin, and was a member of the University Club and the Rotary Club.
Matson died of a heart attack on December 3, 1960. He was survived by his wife, the former Helen Laird, whom he married on September 6, 1930; and his sons, David and Dan.
