Armed with a vast range of knowledge and an English teacher’s devotion to grammar, Jim Musser was in his element on the copy desk during a long career with the Chicago Tribune.
Mr. Musser, 60, died of complications from liver disease on Thursday, March 20, in his Cicero home, said his wife, Sharon Duplain Musser.
Mr. Musser spent time on almost every copy desk at the paper, editing stories for the national and foreign section, features and Metro.
Longtime Metro copy desk chief Mitch Dydo, now retired, still remembers Mr. Musser’s 1979 Tribune tryout, when job prospects are tested on their knowledge of grammar and style.
“He was the best grammarian I ever had trying out on my desk,” Dydo said. “I was just floored by his grammatical knowledge.”
In 1995, Mr. Musser received the newspaper’s Johnrae Earl Award for excellence in editing.
Mr. Musser was an old-school copy editor whose near-obsessive attention to detail sometimes proved irritating to reporters whom he questioned in late night phone calls.
“He was an ornery sort, but at the same time he liked to be a teacher, he liked to instruct people,” Dydo said. “He was really intent on making stories and the newspapers as perfect as he could.”
After a night of poring over copy on deadline, Mr. Musser sometimes brought his work home with him, his wife said.
“He’d always come home and say, ‘I don’t know why these guys can’t get the streets straight, or the chronology right,'” his wife said.
But he found great satisfaction in improving flawed copy.
“He liked to pull a story together, having the correct grammar and making it clear to the reader,” his wife said. “He loved the challenge — although he wasn’t that patient.”
Mr. Musser grew up in the small town of Tiffin, Ohio. At Ohio State University, he started out as a math major but became frustrated with the professors in that department and switched to journalism, which he quickly embraced.
He worked as a copy editor at papers in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Milwaukee before coming to the Tribune.
A passionate game player and designer, Mr. Musser left the Tribune briefly in the 1980s to run a retail game store in Oak Park. Before his death, he was designing a game based on the history of the American Indians, his wife said.
Mr. Musser was previously married and divorced three times.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Karl; a daughter, Lisa Reid; two brothers, Marion and Jerry; a sister, Nancy, and two grandchildren.
Visitation is scheduled for 2 to 9 p.m. Tuesday at Sourek Manor Funeral Home, 5645 W. 35th St., Cicero. Services will be held at a later date in Ohio.
———-
ttjensen@tribune.com
