Colleagues Remembered
The San Francisco Chronicle honors departing staff members
Glen Martin -- Reporter

From Assistant Metro Editor Audrey Cooper
Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Glen Martin is one of those old-school reporters, the sort of character you might imagine working in the newsrooms of 20 or 30 years ago, before the introduction of Human Resources and politically correct verbiage.

He joined The Chronicle in 1990 after the then-publisher (and duck-hunting fanatic) became enraged over the paper's misidentification of a pintail. He was assigned to cover fishing and hunting -- your basic hook-and-bullet beat. He later covered the San Francisco Police Department, which he detested, perhaps in part because of his deep hostility toward most types of authority. Glen likes to say he hates bull-- chicken-- and horse--. And, yes, those are very separate things.

Over the last several years, he covered environmental issues. He was always more comfortable around loggers and commercial fisherman than flacks and lawyers. He covered wayward whales, water woes and wildfires. He kayaked the Sacramento River, tracked turtles and tule elk, and covered toxic pollution.

Because he had the newsroom's most developed vocabulary, he often forced both readers and editors to reach for their dictionaries. Glen says he has a talent for "le mot juste." Don't be afraid to look it up: It means he has a penchant for picking the right words to convey a point. Among our favorite Glen words (at least, the ones we can remember): gambol (that means frolic), noisome (noxious), reprobate (morally depraved), saturnine (sluggish).

Never reluctant to air his views, Glen could make a new editor shake with fear, although most quickly found his soft side. For his part, Glen had deep affection for his colleagues, which he would sometimes show by tossing you a dead, bloodied duck -- lovingly picked clean of feathers and shot.

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