Dean Martin Johnson
Courtesy of the Manship School

Dean Martin Johnson of the Manship School of Mass Communication passed away the night of Sept. 28, the University announced on Sept. 29.

Johnson, 50, died of a heart attack in his sleep, as was later confirmed by Interim President Thomas Galligan in a press conference.

Johnson’s life was full of accomplishments. He started his career in journalism by serving as editor-in-chief of the Reveille and earning a bachelor’s degree from the Manship School in 1991. He went on to earn his master’s and doctorate in political science from Rice University before becoming department chair and professor at University of California, Riverside, and eventually returning to Manship as sr. chair in political communication and dean.

In between his various university positions, he wrote a book, “Changing Minds or Changing Channels: Partisan News in an Age of Choice,” which was co-winner of the 2014 Goldsmith Book Prize awarded by the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. He had his work printed in American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics and Human Communication Research among other scholarly publications, and his research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation and Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences.

But students and faculty agree that Johnson’s life was more than an extensive resume or prestigious awards. He was the heartbeat of the Manship School – “a loss we’ll feel forever,” in the words of Associate Dean Josh Grimm.

Grimm sent out an email Tuesday morning informing students of Johnson’s passing the night before.

“Our entire LSU Family mourns the loss of Dean Johnson, who was a wonderful colleague, friend, father and husband,” Galligan said in a statement. “We will be forever grateful for Dean Johnson’s countless contributions to the Manship School and LSU, and we will miss him terribly. Please keep Martin’s wife, Sherri, an LSU Department of History faculty member, and their son in your thoughts and prayers.”

Johnson’s long involvement with the Manship School began in his early childhood. He grew up less than a mile away from the University and his parents were both teachers with LSU degrees. In an article from the Fall 2019 LSU Alumni Magazine, Johnson recalled spending much of his childhood on LSU’s campus, swimming at the Huey P. Long Fieldhouse pool, meeting friends at the Student Union or eating at Godfather’s Pizza on Chimes Street. He said he always knew he wanted to attend LSU, and those plans came to fruition when he received the Chancellor’s Alumni Scholarship, now known as the President’s Alumni Scholarship, for his academic performance at Baton Rouge Magnet High School.

He continued his success during his college years as the editor-in-chief of the Reveille, an announcer for KLSU and the editor of the student magazine.

When Johnson was the editor-in-chief of the Reveille, mass communication and political science professor Nathan Kalmoe said, Johnson spearheaded a joint weekly issue between the Reveille and the newspaper at Southern University, The Southern Digest. Kalmoe said Johnson valued greater collaboration between the two schools divided by white supremacy.

“Local white business owners threatened to pull their ads from the Reveille because they didn’t want newspaper integration, but Martin didn’t back down,” Kalmoe said.

Johnson also used his position as editor-in-chief to advocate for an African-American cultural resource center on campus.

“There is no reasonable doubt this campus needs a place for cultural interaction,” Johnson wrote in a spring 1991 editorial. “We would all benefit from the fellowship students of all races would find there.”

After graduating Manship, Johnson attended graduate school at Rice. There, he reunited with Sherri Franks, an old friend from his undergraduate years at LSU, according to the LSU Alumni Magazine. They married, and shortly after Johnson was offered an assistant partnership in the political science program at the University of California, Riverside. The two moved there and Franks accepted a position in the religious studies department.

Eventually, Johnson found his way back to Louisiana and the Manship School after being offered the Kevin P. Reilly Sr. Chair in Political Communication, where he remained until he was appointed dean in 2018.

When asked in the LSU Alumni Magazine article why he chose to leave California, he gave this response:

“We live in paradise, that’s true, but this is LSU.”

Johnson’s promotion to Manship dean was effective July 1, 2018, according to an email

from then-Provost Richard Koubek to the Manship School staff. Johnson replaced Jerry Ceppos, who held the position since 2011.

Johnson, along with Ceppos and former journalism professor James E. “Jay” Shelledy, helped to create the Manship School’s Statehouse Bureau, which allows undergraduates to report on the Louisiana Legislature and have their work published in news outlets across Louisiana each spring.

Ceppos praised Johnson’s qualifications in a 2018 Reveille article.

“The Manship School educates both future professional communicators and scholars who study at the intersection of media and public affairs. Martin has a deep understanding of both of those sets of students,” Ceppos said in an email. “After all, he was editor of the Reveille as an undergraduate at LSU —and his area of scholarly interest happens, by happy coincidence, to be media and politics.”

Ceppos’ words about Johnson proved true. Students remember him as someone who was always accessible and eager to discuss their problems and find a solution. In the words of mass communication graduate student James Smith, he “made the Manship School feel like a family.”

Mass communication professor Christopher Drew said Johnson was the clear candidate during the dean search process, which involved multiple qualified candidates from some of the best journalism schools in the country.

“For him to be part of the school as a student, have grown up here, gone off, learned other things and come back made him the perfect person,” Drew said.

Drew heard the news of Johnson’s passing in a Zoom class Tuesday morning. He had emailed Johnson at 9:40 p.m. the night before.

“Some of the students were crying, they just appreciated him so much,” Drew said. “We ended up ending the class early.”

Drew, who now teaches Statehouse Bureau, said he turned to Johnson every time the group needed something.

“He recognized the best ideas often bubble up from down below,” Drew said. “He wasn’t the kind of person going around telling everyone what to do. He was encouraging everybody to come up with ideas in their field...it didn’t matter if it cost money, he viewed it as his job to figure out how to get us to do what we wanted to do.”

Mass communication senior Justin Franklin remembers his frequent meetings with Johnson.

“Sometimes you have to wait weeks, hours or days to get with people, but not Dean Johnson,” Franklin said. “I thought, ‘how is he meeting with everybody all the time?’ But that’s just the guy he was. He would make time for everybody.”

Students, faculty, friends and family of Dean Johnson gathered at a vigil held on the Journalism Building’s terrace on Thursday.

Student Government, Manship Ambassadors and members of the LSU community combined efforts to plan the service and honor Johnson’s memory.

Political communication senior Carrie Cole took part in setting up and planning the vigil.

“Everybody wanted to do something for Dean Johnson because he was just so great that it didn’t feel right not doing anything,” Cole said. “He was such a universally revered dean.”

Upon arrival, guests wrote condolences, blanketed the stairs with flowers and lit candles in remembrance of Johnson.

Cole had fond memories of Johnson when she took his class in last spring. Amid the looming quarantine and ever-present uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, Cole said he was “the calm in the storm.”

“We’ll miss his presence, how positive he was, how inviting he was and how much he cared for his students,” Cole said

Prior to the event, students and faculty of the Manship School created videos honoring Johnson. At the vigil, visitors gathered to watch the accumulated condolences and memories.

Yongick Jeong, associate dean of graduate studies and an associate professor of creative advertising, reflected upon strong ties between Johnson and the professors and faculty of the Manship School.

“I decided to work for him because I believed he could make big changes,” Jeong said. “He was just a great person.”

To comply with LSU’s safety guidelines, visitors reserved times to attend the vigil, and only 45 people were allowed on the terrace at a time.

Digital advertising junior Lauren Leonard said she was proud of how the community gathered in his memory.

“I think it’s really great that we haven’t seen each other in so long, and it’s almost like the dean brought us together after a time of being apart,” Leonard said.

Leonard said that when she attended a Dinner with the Dean event, Johnson’s welcoming presence surpassed her previous expectations of a dean.

“He was so kind,” Leonard said. “Over time, I realized that was just his personality. He was so approachable...which I think is unexpected.”

Jeong said the tragic loss of the dean has left many upset and recognized the impact Johnson’s presence had on the Manship community.

“He is special to me, he is special to us, and we were special to him,” Jeong said.

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