Buchanan, Jean

Jean, who enters the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame at the same time as her parents, Tom and Christine Buchanan, got her start in journalism working at their weekly newspaper, The Washington County News, in north central Kansas. Her parents were talented journalists and active in the profession. 

Jean swore on many occasions that she would never pursue a newspaper career, saying: “Why would anyone want to work that hard for so little money?” But her love of writing and news made journalism the perfect profession for her.

From 1982 to 1990 she worked as a reporter and managing editor of the Atchison Daily Globe in Atchison, Kan., where a Kansas City Star Magazine story about the murder of her boss eventually led her to The Star. She spent nine years there, five of them as night city editor where she was popular with reporters, who appreciated her wisdom, wit and coaching leadership. After moving to a combination reporting/editing position, she specialized in turning around quick follows to major breaking news stories. She coached investigative projects and reported and wrote a series that focused on women who graduated from Kansas City area high schools in 1972 to show how women’s lives were changing. The series won a national award.

From 1999 to 2004 she worked at The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., as city-state editor and assistant managing editor, leading coverage of environmental degradation along Delaware’s coast and the effect of race on cancer diagnosis and treatment in the state. 

In 2004 she moved to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where as an assistant managing editor she supervised investigative projects, inspiring the same loyalty among reporters there that she’d won at The Star. She led reporting that showed how people with means were allowed to avoid points to their drivers’ licenses by pleading guilty to nonmoving violations, how traffic stops and fines were used by towns and cities in Missouri to pad their budgets (spurring the state legislature to set limits on the practice), how St. Louis police and the department’s towing company abused people whose cars were towed (the police chief resigned during the investigation).

She was the editor of a narrative and multimedia project, Reporting for Duty, that won an Emmy and a national award from the Online News Association. She was part of the newsroom team that won the national Scripps-Howard Award for breaking news for coverage of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the protests that followed.

One of her favorite stories in her last few years as an editor was a quick turn-around look at a technique used by St. Louis police during a protest to box in everyone in the vicinity and make mass arrests, a technique called “kettling.” The story drew more than 1 million page views. The reporting found that among those detained were an African-American police officer working undercover (he was badly beaten and was unable to return to work), an Air Force officer who lived in the neighborhood, a documentary filmmaker and a Post-Dispatch reporter. The police were accused of beating and kicking those arrested and spraying them in the face with chemical irritants. The city has agreed to pay more than $10 million to settle lawsuits. Two officers were sentenced to prison for the beating of the undercover officer and two others got probation. 

Jean was married to Dan Wiggs, a highly regarded copy desk chief at The Kansas City Star and the Philadelphia Daily News. After he suffered a severe stroke, she cared for him while working full time, until his death.

Jean retired in 2019.