Remembering “Mad Martha” Brian

Guest Author
Fri, 08 Aug 2025 19:04:58 +0000
Campus

By Leon M. Rubin

On March 25,1982, Martha Brian — an associate professor of journalism at Ohio State known affectionately as “Mad Martha” — died of cancer. Her death devastated her former students, colleagues and friends. Shortly afterward, a group gathered in the Journalism Building to pay tribute. I was honored to be one of the speakers that day. A few excerpts from my remarks and recollections follow:

I’d have to start with the fast-breaking story in Journalism 202 — the one that involves a plane crash, with new information coming in about injuries, famous people aboard and finally, the dramatic announcement that there are no survivors. All this is taking place under the premise that it’s about five minutes from deadline and the editor is frothing at the mouth to put the paper to bed.

I can still picture Marty racing around the room, grabbing sheets of paper out of our typewriters as we struggled to get even a few lines on each page. “Copy, copy, I want copy!” she’d scream, and you’d hear the ratchet on another carriage spin like the cylinder on a six-shooter. Needless to say, accuracy went out the window. My total score for the exercise was minus 132 points — and I foolishly thought I kept up pretty well.

I remember Michele Orzano and I camping out in Mary Umberger’s Chicago apartment so we could be in Joliet at 6 a.m. to go whistle-stopping across Illinois with Gerald Ford. Pleading with Marty to let me change the spelling of Naghten Street in a Journalism 641 story before she graded it so I wouldn’t get a zero on a 15-page paper. The great time we had planning — under Marty’s strict orders — the “surprise” party for her 50th birthday.

I’m sure I’m just one of hundreds of students Marty influenced. Some of them were influenced to get out of journalism and may have been better for it. Many others were inspired to do great things while they were in J-School, and they’re still doing them today.

I wrote a letter to Marty after I went to work for the Chronicle-Telegram in Elyria, telling her how much the real world of journalism was like she said it would be and how thankful I was that she had helped me prepare for it. I know that pleased her. She told me she read the letter to her class so they could hear first-hand that what she was trying to get across to them was important.

If Marty left a legacy, I think it’s the inspiration she gave all of us to try to be like her in the work we do — to be a stickler for detail, to ask the tough questions, to know how to get a difficult job done under pressure.

Anywhere in the world where there’s a former student of Martha Brian, we’ll keep teaching her lessons. Through us, Marty Brian will never be forgotten. And her influence will always be felt in our profession.??

After Marty’s death, a group of her former students launched a campaign to establish an endowed fund in her memory — the Martha Brian Fellowship in Journalism. Initially, more than $36,000 was raised and scholarships began to be awarded to graduate students in 1987. Now called the Martha Brian Fund, the endowment has grown to about $242,000. It supports graduate student travel to attend annual conferences in communication and journalism to network and present papers. Just over $44,000 has been awarded in the past three years. Almost $316,000 has been distributed since 1990.?

Editor’s Note: Leon M. Rubin, a 1977 graduate of the School of Journalism, has been the president and owner of his own communications company for 34 years in addition to having served as Director of Communications for the Office Depot Foundation, as a writer and editor for the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, as Director, Marketing Development/Communications at Ohio State, and as a community volunteer. Today he is a freelance writer in Dahlonega, Georgia.