Bryan Monroe was a Bridge Between Old Newspapers and the New Digital Journalism
Bryan Monroe (1965–2021): From Myrtle Beach to Michael Jackson, Barack Obama — and the media elite
Published in
5 min readJan 15, 2021
Journalist Bryan Monroe was “the big guy destined for big things” when he joined us in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We were both 22 then.
On January 13, Bryan died of a heart attack at age 55. This is the third time in nine months that I’ve written about a former journalism colleague dying so young. But Bryan is the one who “went national.”
“He was a maverick in journalism,” Ernest Owens, president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “He never forgot he was Black, and he never forgot about the Black press.”
From the start, Bryan’s path was unique and stellar:
The headlines about Bryan tell us all of his big jobs and milestones
- Bryan was the last journalist to do a sit-down interview with Michael Jackson before Jackson’s 2009 death and the first to interview newly-elected President Barack Obama in 2008.
- He was a deputy managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News, at the hub of Silicon Valley. He was an…
