McKinnon leaves a lasting mark on Pittsburgh journalism
James Colton McKinnon, “Dilly” to many and “Jimmy” or “Jim” to most, went to be with the Lord on Dec. 8, 2025, after a brief battle with cancer. He was 71, according to the calendar, but far younger in spirit.
McKinnon was born Feb. 22, 1954, to Roger and Mattie McKinnon in Braddock, Pa., and graduated from General Braddock Area High School in 1973.
Because he was tall and knew how to focus on goals that fit his competitive spirit, he earned a basketball scholarship to Point Park College. He played three years of varsity ball before moving on to serve as director of sports information. In these roles, he learned that teamwork was essential to success at every level.
At Point Park in the fall of 1973, he met Deborah Melledge, a stylish and beautiful young woman who may have been half his height, but more than equal to the task of providing their decades-long life together with stability and grace. The couple married in 1978, and she was the ultimate team player in their relationship.
Just as the Vietnam war was winding down, McKinnon left Point Park in 1975 to do a brief stint in the Navy. After figuring out that being in the military wasn’t really his thing, he left the Navy in 1977 and returned to Point Park to earn a bachelor’s degree in journalism and communication, finishing in 1979.
The possibility of working in the media during a time of national tumult – civil rights, the nation’s weariness with the Vietnam War, the fallout from campus demonstrations, the trauma of Watergate – appealed to McKinnon’s sense of youthful optimism.
Journalism had become a popular profession in the post-Watergate era. It was a way of earning a living, expressing patriotism and contributing to the values of the country without getting shot at.
McKinnon began his journalism career at the Valley News Dispatch while still in college. He enjoyed the job, but he longed for the kind of big-city journalism that was only possible at the region’s two largest dailies: the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Pittsburgh Press.
He joined the Post-Gazette on Feb. 13, 1979, as a City Desk clerk, but quickly proved that his Point Park education and his apprenticeship at the Valley News Dispatch had thoroughly prepared him for the rigors of daily journalism.
By becoming a full-time staff writer, McKinnon became an essential part of that first generation of minority reporters in the P-G newsroom. He was a trailblazer, and thus, a role model to the many who would follow.
McKinnon’s early reporting assignments included stints as the P-G’s court reporter and day and night cop beat reporter. It was on the police beat that McKinnon encountered soul-crushing stories about the people who fell through society’s many cracks.
Ervin Dyer, of the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation, joined the P-G as a copy editor half a decade later and speaks fondly of how McKinnon’s “good spirit” permeated the newsroom in those days.
“He covered the worst of the worst,” Dyer said, “but he was always in good spirits and remained upbeat. He had a rapport with the cops and the charisma of a team player.”
Carmen Lee, now a Senior Communications Officer at The Heinz Endowments, started as a reporter at the P-G in 1985. She entered a newsroom that was far more integrated than the one that greeted McKinnon a few years earlier.
For Lee, the thing that stands out most about McKinnon was his love and dedication of his family.
“I remember when his daughter [Jewel] was diagnosed with bone cancer, he demonstrated love and solidarity with her by shaving his head so that they could go through that experience together,” Lee said, recounting one of several memorable gestures McKinnon made over the years she’s known him. His daughter survived her cancer ordeal and is now a pediatric nurse oncologist.
Beginning with the Valley News Dispatch, McKinnon devoted 45 years to journalism, ending at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Nov. 15, 2010, when he took an early buyout.
While some might have called it a “retirement,” McKinnon had no intention of sitting in a rocking chair.
The siren call of the basketball court lured him back to sports. He played on a P-G team, with a couple of Old-Timers leagues and suited up as a basketball referee and coach for a college women’s team. Once again, he was thrust into the world of sweaty young people running up and down courts in search of a community that would support their quest for meaning and identity.
Basketball was one of many spiritual missions for McKinnon. The other was musical. Because he no longer had to worry about making deadlines, he finally had time to rediscover his love of playing trombone, an instrument he had tried to master since his early youth.
His various ministries at Union Baptist Church of Swissvale kept him busy and motivated. The boy who loved jazz and basketball and had become an inspiring journalist and a devoted husband, spent his remaining years as a pillar of a church in a community that needed him.
He leaves behind three daughters: Debbi-Jamese McKinnon (Notalelomwan), Jewel Tartt (Jeremy) and Alecia Carter (Earl). Eleven grandkids called him “Grandpa.” He also leaves behind three siblings—Clayton McKinnon, Linda Wade (Alan) and Valerie Perkins—and a host of friends and family, not to mention those who remember how hard he played for Point Park College.
A celebration of his life takes place on Tuesday, Dec. 16, at Union Baptist Church of Swissvale. Viewing will be held from 10 a.m. to noon followed immediately by a memorial.
