Guy H. Jenkins
Inducted 1991
Lansing bureau chief, Booth Newspapers, Inc.
When Guy Jenkins died in 1957, the entire Michigan Senate attended the funeral in an official tribute. Jenkins, a native of Saginaw, probed state government and politics for Booth Newspapers for more than 32 years. “The conscience of Michigan,” he was sometimes called. By what authority? “I appointed myself to the job,” he’d proclaim. Jenkins’ gruff impatience with bureaucratic misdeeds guarantees his icon status in Lansing Press Corps history. Never cowed by officialdom, he welcomed new governors as equals. The question was never how Jenkins would get along with a chief executive, “but how he’ll get along with me.”