Born-and-raised Chattanoogan Harry Austin, who had a lengthy career working for the city’s newspaper, has died at the age of 79.
Austin began his journalism career while still in high school, working at The Chattanooga Times and also playing football at Central High School, according to his obituary at dignitymemorial.com. The job allowed him to attend the University of Chattanooga, which became the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1969.
In his career, Austin covered the general assignment, crime and county government beats, the obituary said. He left the newspaper to go work for the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1980, but he returned to the paper eight years later to serve as an opinion writer. Following the merger of the Times with the Chattanooga Free Press that formed today’s Chattanooga Times Free Press, Austin took over as the editor of the Times opinion page and remained in that position until his retirement in 2013.
The Times Free Press honors the legacy of its predecessor papers by maintaining two opinion pages, the liberal Times and the conservative Free Press.
Having started his career as a reporter brought more depth to Austin’s work as an editorial writer, Pam Sohn said by phone. Sohn succeeded Austin as editor of the Times page.