MOULTRIE, Ga. — Dwain Walden, known affectionately as the “red-headed editor” of The Moultrie Observer, will retire March 1, capping a 46-year career at the paper. He has served as the paper’s public face in the community for decades.

A public reception will be held Tuesday, Feb. 27, from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at The Observer’s office at 25 N. Main St. Community residents are invited to attend.

Jeff Masters, veteran south Georgia newspaper executive, will assume Walden’s publisher duties. Newsroom manager Kevin Hall has been promoted to managing editor in charge of the news operation.

Masters is the regional publisher for The Observer’s parent company,  CNHI, LLC. He also oversees the Valdosta Daily Times and the Thomasville Times-Enterprise in south Georgia, and the Suwannee Democrat, Mayo Free Press and Jasper News in north Florida.

He said daily management of The Observer will be handled by the paper’s advertising director-general manager, Laurie Gay. She started at the paper 27 years ago as an advertising representative, becoming the advertising director in 2016 and recently the general manager.

Hall began his journalism career in 1990 at the Americus Times-Recorder and worked in Valdosta and Tifton before joining The Observer in December 1997. He became the newsroom manager in February 2001.

Walden, a native of Whigham and a graduate of Georgia State, joined The Observer in 1972, and was named editor in 1981. He added the dual role of publisher 19 years later.

Former Observer publisher Gary Boley said Walden led The Observer through newspapers’ “golden age.”

His career spanned the evolution of newspaper technology from the hot metal type and typewriters of the 1970s to the photo pagination composition and desktop computers of the 1980s to the digital production, websites and mobile phone sites of today.

 “I’ve seen the industry grow and at its best,” said Walden.

He  was at the fore of ensuring significant changes went smoothly at The Observer while also making sure the readers were served with big and small local news and through his popular twice-weekly column.

“I’ve enjoyed being at The Observer and being part of Moultrie and Colquitt County,” said Walden. “I have no plans to leave.”

The membership of Trinity Baptist Church, his cronies at the Burger King coffee club and fellow lifters in the YMCA weight room will be glad to hear that.

Born June 10, 1948, in Cairo, which had the hospital closest to his family’s Whigham farm, Walden grew up in the rural south Georgia he often recollects in his columns. His first acquaintance with Moultrie occurred while accompanying his father to town to sell tobacco.

He is one of the 14 students who graduated from Whigham High in 1966. Four years later he graduated from Georgia State in downtown Atlanta and married Libby Booth, who he had met in the first grade. He started his journalism career as a reporter at the Thomasville Times-Enterprise.

At one point at The Observer, Walden said, he turned down an opportunity to join the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  “I just decided this is what I wanted to do,” he says. “I like community journalism.”

Walden had been editor for only a year when the Nussbaum family sold The Observer to Multimedia Inc. of Greenville, S.C., in 1982. Boley, then the managing editor of the Greenville News, moved to Moultrie to become The Observer’s publisher. He knew of Walden’s journalism reputation from his Multimedia boss, Doyle Harvill.

“Doyle said there was a good editor down there,” said Boley, who was publisher from 1982-1997. “He’s a fiery guy. You won’t have to worry.”

It was about that time that Walden was becoming known in town as “the red-headed editor,” for his advocacy of open meetings and open records perhaps more than for the color of his hair. He helped rewrite the state’s Sunshine Laws under then Lt. Gov. Zell Miller.

But his strong open government stance wasn’t so popular in Colquitt County. It led to the recall of a county commission chairman in the mid-1980s for violations of the state’s open meeting laws.

“It’s always been one of my things,” said Walden. “That’s the role of a newspaper. That’s one of the ways we keep people informed.”

Kevin Hogencamp, deputy city manager of Atlantic Beach, Florida, was a young reporter not long out of the University of Alabama when he covered The Observer’s tussle with county commission over executive session meetings.

“It was from Dwain’s leadership covering the closed-door shenanigans that I gained an appreciation for the axiom that government operates best when it operates openly,” said Hogencamp.  “My training under Dwain not only influenced the rest of my journalism career, it continues to guide me as a local government administrator.”

Over the course of his career, Walden has helped young reporters like Hogencamp hone their craft. Hogencamp went from The Observer to The Augusta Chronicle, The Florida Times-Union, the Albany Herald and the Albany Journal before becoming a local government official.

“I pulled into town as a snot-nosed 22-year-old with a new journalism degree, but who’d only written about sports,” Hogencamp remembers. “By the time I left 13 months later to go to work in a larger community, he and Glynn Moore, the city editor, transformed me into a bona fide journalist.”

In the mid-1980s, Walden taught an advanced journalism class for Valdosta State University. The students would occasionally meet in The Observer’s newsroom. “It let them smell the ink,” he said.

“As an editor working one-on-one with young reporters fresh out of college, Dwain was no-nonsense, yet patient and kind,” Hogencamp remembered. “He implored us to get your facts straight and take very special care not to waste readers’ time with excess verbiage.”

Walden has long promoted interaction between the paper and the community, encouraging readers to submit letters to the editor and send their comments to the “Rant and Rave” column.

His editorial and columns over the years never feared to espouse the unpopular.

“You have to have a tough hide in this business,” he said.

In 1994, he published a volume of his columns titled , “From My Back Porch.” They seldom dealt with politics and often took a lighter approach with subjects that appealed to readers.  In 2000, he was named the columnist of the year by the Thomson Newspapers group, The Observer’s owner at the time.

“I get a lot of response to it,” he said, noting that he once received an email from a reader who said he and Walden must have gone to different schools together. “The big reward is knowing you served the public and your readers.”

Walden was diagnosed with amyloidosis in May of 2016 and hospitalized for six weeks at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, after undergoing a grueling stem cell transplant procedure in August of that year that caused him to lose 40 pounds.

He said he now feels healthy as he nears 70 years of age and prepares to do more fishing as well as spending additional time at the family home  in Whigham.  

He said nothing is certain in life as he looks ahead, but he has no regrets for his lifetime as a newspaperman.

“I’ve had a real good run,” he said. “I’ve worked with some real good people. And I still believe in the importance of a community newspaper.”