James Jones, longtime Alabama journalist who led Selma Times-Journal as managing editor, dies

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ( WIAT ) — James Jones, a longtime journalist from Tuscaloosa County who was the managing editor of the Selma Times-Journal, died Friday following complications from a stroke. He was 54.

Jones, who had guided the editorial direction of the newspaper since 2018, had previously spent nearly 26 years as a sports writer for The Biloxi Sun-Herald, where he and the staff won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi.

“It’s going to be hard to replace him, almost impossible,” Times-Journal Publisher Brent Maze said.

Jones grew up in Cottondale, later graduating from Holt High School. In 1992, he graduated from Stillman College with a degree in journalism. While a student, Jones worked as a sports correspondent with The Tuscaloosa News.

“Working at my hometown newspaper was a big deal to me and my family,” Jones wrote in one of his final columns back in August.

Throughout his career, Jones won 14 awards from the Alabama Press Association awards and was named to the Gulfport Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.

“He was just so well liked in Selma,” Maze said. “Pretty much everyone knew him and they always loved being around him.”

As a columnist, Jones could lean into many different subjects, sports being a particular favorite theme .

“I’m asking the fans and media to give (Kalen) DeBeor a chance,” Jones wrote not long after DeBeor was named head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide. “I count myself in that mix as well. He deserves the opportunity to restore Alabama’s national championship legacy.”

However, Jones also drew from his own life for copy, such as a column about growing up without a father and how even though they both lived in Tuscaloosa, he was not part of his life.

“When my father died in 2004, I did not attend his funeral,” Jones wrote. “How could I attend a funeral for someone I did not know?”

Later in the column, Jones said his father’s absence encouraged him to be a better father to his own children.

“My advice to people with fathers in their lives: embrace and appreciate them. Take the good and bad. Some of us never got that opportunity,” he wrote.

Outside of journalism, writing remained a passion for Jones, who wrote several e-books under the pen name “K.T. Bishop.” He also worked on a number of screenplays, winning awards in several competitions.

“My dream is to write movies and get paid to do so,” Jones wrote on his personal website .

No funeral arrangements have been announced.

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