A Crusader Comes to Howell

James C. Turner is a onetime shoe salesman with a chronic sore back. Raised in Texas, exposed for a while to big-city life in Detroit, he decided in 1964, at 42, to become a publisher in a small Michigan town. He chose Howell (pop. 5,000), in Livingston County, halfway between Detroit and Lansing, where the most reliable source of excitement is the annual muskmelon festival. At least it was until James C. Turner turned crusader.

After an unsuccessful attempt at a weekly newspaper (it went under while he was laid up with back trouble), Turner launched a monthly newsmagazine called Today. With a format unabashedly imitative of TIME'S, the first issue (December 1967) attacked the "royal mess" in a local school system. Then Turner charged that unnecessary delays in the county probate court were caused by "not having a well and healthy judge." (The judge resigned within weeks.) But Turner's prime target quickly became the most powerful lawyer and wheeler-dealer in the county: Martin J. Lavan.

After accusing Lavan of plundering estates entrusted to him by the probate court, Turner wrote in April 1968, that Lavan "has almost totally corrupted the entire judicial system in Livingston County." For this and a similar outburst, Turner was convicted of contempt of court, sentenced to 15 days in jail, and fined $150. But the other side did not escape unscathed. After Bar Association investigations, Lavan resigned from the bar, and six other members of the county bar (including judges, former judges and prosecutors) were punished for misconduct. Moreover, the State Supreme Court issued stricter state bar and probate court rules. Now, Turner has also had his contempt conviction reversed by the Michigan Court of Appeals.

Turner figures that advertising losses during his battle for vindication have run Today $70,000 into debt. But he is not about to sell shoes again. After a long shutdown, Today resumed publication in November. And, Turner declares, "once I get a little money together, we're going to expand our reporting into other counties."

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