MICHAEL C. BURTON was author of the book, John Henry Faulk: The Making of a Liberated Mind, a biography of Texas folklorist and First Amendment champion John Henry Faulk. The biography garnered critical praise from authors James Michener, Studs Terkel, and CBS news icon Walter Cronkite, among others.
A former television and newspaper journalist, Burton wrote for several daily newspapers, including The Huntsville (Alabama) Times, The Paris (Texas) News, the Lubbock-Avalanche Journal, the Amarillo Globe-News, and the Austin American-Statesman. He freelanced for Agence France-Presse, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's EXTRA!, Government Technology Magazine, and several regional magazines in Texas. His writing earned awards from the Texas Press Association and Texas Society for Communicators.
After receiving his bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in communications and sociology, Burton moved to Austin, Texas to work as a journalist. In the early 1990s he co-created the Council for Public Media, an organization established to encourage the mainstream news media to be more responsive to public concerns. As a director of that nonprofit group, he edited a bimonthly publication called Media Monitor, a publication the Utne Reader called “one of the most substantial local publications of media criticism” in the country.
Burton initiated and developed the second annual John Henry Faulk Conference on the First Amendment at the University of Texas at Austin, presented by the UT Center for American History. The 1995 conference was one of the first in the country that discussed First Amendment issues pertaining to the Internet.
In 1998 Burton moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands and continued writing, editing, and developing marketing plans for varied clients, including FEMA and the U.S. Small Business Administration. For three years he was a news reporter for TV2 with Innovative Cable, where some of his stories were run by the national Fox News network, including one showing Osama Bin Laden’s connection with a popular gemstone called Tanzanite.
In 2003 Burton began a career in healthcare marketing, creating award-winning advertising campaigns and revamping external websites for two healthcare institutions. As Public Information Officer for Schneider Regional Medical Center in St. Thomas, he created commercials for the hospital, one that won a national Aster Award for branding and another Marcom Creative Award for video production. In 2006 Burton moved to Salisbury, North Carolina where he ran the Marketing and Communications Department for Rowan Regional Medical Center for three years, until forming his own communications firm where he created websites for independent physicians and retail firms and writing health-related articles for the healthcare publication, Ragan.com. He moved back to Texas in 2013, working as Communications Manager for Healthcare Quality for the national American Heart Association from 2013-2015. In that role he helped coordinate the largest social media in AHA history for World Stroke Day, and wrote several stories about heart attack and stroke survivors.
From 2015-2021, Burton worked as Senior Communications Consultant for the Healthcare Service Corporation in Richardson, Texas, the largest customer-owned health insurance company in the U.S. that operates the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. While there he worked on developing benefit education material for Medicare and Medicaid customers in five different states.
In 2021 Burton accepted a new position as Health Market Specialist with Jacobs, an international consulting and advisory firm based in Dallas, Texas.
Burton leaves behind his wife Agnes C. Burton, and son, Jared Michael Burton, currently a student at Southwestern University in Georgetown. He is survived by his father, C. Emory Burton and mother Dorothy Burton of McKinney, Texas, brother Paul Burton in McKinney, and sister Deborah Burton in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.sparkmanrichardson.com for the Burton family.
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