Martin J. Hutchens
1867 – 1929

Inducted August 16, 1974

Martin J. Hutchens, who worked for Dana’s Sun, Pulitzer’s World and Hearst’s Journal, served as editor of the Missoula Missoulian and the Sentinel from 1917 to 1926. He also held editorial positions with the Helena Independent, the Butte Miner and the Butte Free Press.

Hutchens was born Jan. 1, 1867, in Redwood, N.Y. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1888 and began his newspaper career on the Rome (N.Y.) Sentinel that year.

In 1889 he came to Montana to be city editor of the Helena Independent, a position he held until 1893 when he joined the editorial staff of the New York Sun. From 1896 to 1898 he worked on the New York World and from 1898 to 1902 on the New York Journal. In 1902 he went to Chicago to become the first city editor of the American. Subsequently, he was city editor and managing editor of the Chicago Evening Journal. Among those who worked for him in Chicago was Ben Hecht.

In Montana, Hutchens became known for his candid editorials. Larry Dobell of the Butte Free Press wrote that Hutchens “had a natural talent for politics and as an editorial writer held an exceedingly high place in this state.” A writer for the Missoulian commented: “As an editorial writer, he stood in the first rank in this state for years. He was widely informed on many subjects and interested in state and national politics. His editorial columns never failed to interest his readers with the diversity of subjects, the intimate knowledge he possessed of the things he wrote about, a quiet but trenchant humor sometimes verging into irony and a serious concern with everything human.” A reporter from the Watertown (N.Y.) Times said: “As an editorial writer, Hutchens was considered without a peer in Montana. His editorial columns were of the vanishing type of militant editorial comment. He was held in reverent esteem by the men who worked under him, each of whom held him in considerable awe because of his metropolitan experience in the days before standardized newspaper methods.”

After leaving the Missoulian, Hutchens became editor of the Butte Miner and later editor of the Butte Free Press, a newspaper that stridently opposed the Anaconda Company and its control of most Montana daily newspapers. As Free Press editor, he was assaulted, shot at and warned to leave Butte within three days – a threat he did not heed. In 1929 illness forced him to leave the Free Press.

Hutchens died Jan. 12, 1929, in Salt Lake City at age 62.

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