Ken Towers, who rose from copy boy to executive editor at the Sun

As a top editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ken Towers guarded the integrity of the newspaper.

When, in 1985, one of his reporters was accused of fabricating a scene inside a rural Texas bar full of good-ol'-boy fans of the Dallas Cowboys that seemed just too perfectly scripted to be true, it fell to Mr. Towers, who was managing editor at the time, to check it out.

Mr. Towers traveled to Texas with the reporter, Wade Roberts, hoping he could retrace his steps to the roadhouse he supposedly reported from on the day of a Bears-Cowboys game. But Roberts, who denied wrongdoing, could not, and was sacked.

Two years later, in 1987, Mr. Towers was named executive editor, the paper’s top spot, a role he held for two years.

“He was a guy with integrity and you always want a guy like at the top,”