Story about Floyd McKay from 3/18/2022 McMinnville N-R/News-Register
Journalist,
author Floyd McKay dies
By Starla
Pointer, McMinnville N-R/News-Register
March 18, 2022
Journalist Floyd McKay, a McMinnville High
School and Linfield graduate, died March 4 in Bellingham, where he had lived
since retirement. He was 86.
Service information has not yet been announced.
During his long career, McKay reported on key
periods in Oregon political and social history, including the governorships of
Tom McCall and Bob Straub, and groundbreaking Oregon legislation, such as the
Beach Bill, the Bottle Bill and land use policies.
Without the latter, McKay said, “it would have
been very difficult for Oregonians to build the wine industry.” If it weren’t
for those decisions, he said, houses rather than vineyards would now cover
Yamhill County hillsides.
He grew up in McMinnville, then “a modest farm
town.” Before graduating from Mac High in 1953, the future journalist covered
sports for the News-Register. He studied journalism at Linfield.
Remaining in McMinnville for college was a good
choice, he told the News-Register in 2016. He said it ensured him “a good
liberal arts education.”
And when he was a senior, he married a fellow
Linfield student, Dixie Johnson. They lived in an apartment on Ford Street,
near the campus.
After graduating with degrees in journalism and
political science in 1957, McKay found a job with the Springfield News. During
the 1960s and early 1970s, he covered politics for the Oregon Statesman in
Salem, writing about how McCall and other leaders were shaping Oregon’s
environmental policies.
Later, he covered Oregon’s growth and change as
a commentator, analyst and documentary producer for KGW-TV in Portland. After
Neil Goldschmidt was elected governor, he spent two years as his press
secretary.
In 2016, he came home to McMinnville to promote
his new book, “Reporting the Oregon Story: How Activists and Visionaries
Transformed a State,” a comprehensive look at the innovative policies and
changes that occured in Oregon from the early ‘60s through the ‘80s.
He wrote two earlier books, numerous scholarly
articles and columns for the Seattle Times and online news agencies. In
addition, he did interviews for a monthly news program in the Bellingham area.
McKay also earned his master’s degree at the
University of Maryland and a doctorate at the University of Washington. He taught
journalism at Western Washington University in Bellingham for many years.
In the early 1970s, he also taught journalism as
an adjunct professor at Linfield. He served as a Linfield trustee from 1972 to
1978.
In 2016, in addition to publishing his Oregon
book, he received Linfield’s Distinguished Alumnus Award.
