Veteran Pocono Record court reporter McDonald dead at 67 Elizabeth McDonald Pocono Record's veteran courts and crime beat reporter, Joseph J. McDonald Jr., has died. Journalism was in his DNA. For nearly five decades, Joe was a hard-charging newspaper reporter with a talent for covering high-impact breaking stories in Pennsylvania, driven to get the story and to get it right. Joe died on Jan. 12 at Monroe County Hospice House, East Stroudsburg, at age 67, after a private and hard-fought 21-month battle with a terminal illness. He was a reporter for the Pocono Record. His last bylined article was published on Jan. 4. Joe was born in 1953 in Scranton to Joseph (Sr.) and Margaret McDonald. He began his career at the Scrantonian Tribune, where his father became publisher, in a gritty, smoke-filled newsroom of typewriters and teletypes, and city editors growled approval or disapproval of stories.