Journalist Paul L. Martin was born in Fort Worth, Texas on December 23, 1912, the son of Rev. and Mrs. Logan Martin. His grandfather was a pioneer country editor-publisher who started newspapers in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. In 1933 he graduated from Texas Christian University and began his newspaper career as a reporter with the Oklahoma City Times. From 1935 to 1936 he pursued advanced study at Harvard University while working at night as a re-write man for the Boston Herald. After one year as managing editor of the Quincy Evening News, he returned to Boston as re-write man with the Boston American.
From 1937 through 1940 he was a political and legislative correspondent for the Associated Press at the State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and from 1940 until the beginning of World War II he was radio news editor for the AP in New York. During the war he served in the Air Force, rising from private to major.
Upon his return from the military he took a job as reporter on the Los Angeles Examiner, joining the Gannett Newspaper Group in the following year as a political and legislative correspondent in Washington. In 1950 he became chief of the Gannett Washington Bureau, having served as acting director for several months.
In 1950 Martin won the Raymond Clapper Memorial Award for capital reporting for his series of eighteen articles on the men of the Truman administration. In 1949 he had received an honorable mention designation for the same award.
Martin left the Gannett Group in 1967 to become political editor for U.S. News and World Report. He resigned from that post in 1977 and died of cancer on May 5, 1978. He was survived by his wife, Kathleene Gibbs Martin, and a daughter.
