Silurians Press Club KIHSS AND DUGGAN AWARDS via Zoom September 16, 2020 NOON Details to come online Published by The Silurians Press Club, an organization Check your email of veteran New York City journalists founded in 1924 SEPTEMBER 2020 Celebrating The Best BY JACK DEACY a 40-minute documentary that told the Virtual Awards Ceremony on June 24. Type Investigations won two Merit Awards Chair story behind the stories, plus shorter The event was attended online by more awards and the following outlets each videos showing the contrast in how than 300 people, and featured video of won one Merit award: the New York Post, acial discrimination comes in white and minority house-hunters were many of the winners describing how they Bloomberg Businessweek, WFUV-FM many forms—some so subtle treated. The Newsday report generated reported their award-winning stories. Radio and Spectrum NY1 News. Rthat it takes years of hard study action within days of publication from Tom Brokaw of NBC News delivered Competition is always fierce in the to expose it. That’s what Newsday did the highest levels of federal, state and the keynote address. Investigative Reporting category and in producing its series “Long Island county governments that led to significant “This year’s Silurians Excellence this year was no exception. But one Divided,” co-winner of this year’s reforms. in Journalism Awards comes at a most extraordinary series by Brian Rosenthal President’s Choice Award, the top prize The New York Times also garnered a challenging moment for our profession,” of the NY Times stood out. His five-part in The Silurians Press Club’s Excellence President’s Choice Award for a photo and said David A. Andelman, president of report examined in detail the predatory In Journalism Awards. text essay that seems like something from The Silurians Press Club through June lending empires and lax government Newsday reporters and trained another era in this time of Covid virus of this year. “In our first Zoom Awards oversight that exploited thousands of investigators hired by the Long Island and social distancing. For “Welcome to Gala, it is our privilege to recognize an hard working, largely immigrant cab newspaper spent three years uncovering the Party,” the Times dispatched 20 of extraordinary collection of the best and drivers in New York City, Chicago and evidence of widespread discriminatory its photographers in the summer of 2019 brightest, paying tribute to all those who elsewhere. Drivers were bankrupted and treatment of minorities by real estate to attend and record the fun at 65 block each day give so much of their talent and many families financially ruined by the agencies on Long Island. Newsday’s parties throughout the five boroughs. energy to keep us informed and in touch purchase of overpriced taxi medallions. 45,000 word, 16-part report found that What resulted was an extraordinary with our world.” Several drivers committed suicide. The agents accommodated white potential series of photographs that captured the In the competition, The New York Times did more than 600 interviews buyers but denied equal service to joy of New Yorkers celebrating with Times won six Medallions and three and their data bases examined more minorities, directing white and minority food, music, dancing and camaraderie. Merit (runner-up) awards. Newsday than 10,000 taxi medallion sales, 3,000 buyers to different neighborhoods and One block in New York City can be a won three Medallions and eight Merit bankruptcies and more than 500 loans. warning white buyers that the schools world unto itself, the photos revealed, awards, The Record/northjersey.com and This fine piece of journalism exposed a in predominantly minority communities with people from many nations and The City, an online publication, each won public disgrace. were not up to standard. The study found professions living together in harmony. two Medallions and one Merit award. The In the Breaking News category, that black home buyers received disparate It is sad to note that similar festivities following media outlets each won one The New York Times and The Record/ treatment by agents 49 percent of the would have brought opprobrium down Medallion: The Intercept, the New York northjersey.com both won Medallions. time. For Hispanics the rate was 39 on the celebrants in the summer of 2020. Post, Vanity Fair, Type Investigations, The Times won for J. David Goodman’s percent and, for Asians, 19 percent. Because of the coronavirus, The the Asbury Park Press, the Journal-News/ coverage of Amazon’s abrupt cancellation “Long Island Divided” included more Silurians Press Club cancelled its annual lohud.com, WABC TV Eyewitness News, of its plan to create a corporate campus than 35 video elements, one of them awards dinner and feted the winners at a News 12 New Jersey, Financial Planning. Continued on Page 4

COMMENTARY: Pitchforks in the Newsroom BY ANTHONY MANCINI

ed Poston sat on a bench in the county courthouse at Sumner, TMississippi in September, 1955, jotting notes on the trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, accused killers of the black teen Emmet Till. A ceiling fan whirred above his head. A local spectator approached. Having noticed the reporter’s press card and also remarked Poston’s unmistakably black face, the man drawled, “Hey, son, what newspaper you write for?” The lanky and courtly Dean of Black Journalists gave a laconic reply: “The New York Post.” “Is that there a Negra paper?” Poston peered impishly at the man over his spectacles and said, “Let me see, if a man has a drop of Negro blood in his veins does that make him a Negro?” The questioner did not hesitate: “Yup.” “Then it is a Negro newspaper because In Breaking News Photography, the Medallion went to William Farrington of the New York Post for his exclu- I am the drop of Negro blood on the New sive photograph of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as he was being wheeled out of the Metropolitan Correction York Post.” Center where he had committed suicide only hours before. Continued on Page 3 PAGE 2 SILURIAN NEWS SEPTEMBER 2020 President’s Report WNBC’S DIENST TO RECEIVE KIHSS AWARD Dear Silurians: I am honored to take office as your new president. I didn’t anticipate having to FOR CAREER AS A REPORTER, MENTOR do the job from this computer desk, but, mmy-winner Jonathan Dienst, journalists. The Kihss Award will be the hey, life is full of challenges. The Silu- who has been covering New latest honor racked up by Dienst, whose rians Press Club isn’t about to let a few York City and its environs as work has often received national and local stray germs deter her from her destiny. E We will plunge ahead, first with a Zoom a television reporter for close to three acclaim. Last year, he and his team won program Sept. 16 featuring two award decades, has been named this year’s the Edward R. Murrow Award, pre- winners: WNBC reporter Jon Dienst, recipient of the Silurians’ prestigious sented by the Radio Television Digital who will receive our Kihss Award for a Peter Kihss Award. Dienst is the chief News Association, for their coverage of career in which he took the time to mentor investigative reporter for NBC 4 New local government in North Bergen, N.J. younger reporters; and Rachel Sherman, who will receive our Duggan Award after York (WNBC), as well as a contributing Dienst is a 1990 graduate of Colgate being selected by the CUNY Journalism correspondent for NBC News. At WNBC, University. A year later, he received his School as the student who did the best job Dienst and his investigative team have master’s degree from Columbia Univer- of covering New York City and environs. specialized in breaking major stories on sity’s Graduate School of Journalism See stories in this Silurian News to learn topics that include terrorism, political and had a brief stint as a reporter at more about them. That Sept. 16 luncheon without lunch corruption, corporate scandals and crime. Newsday before joining WSAV-TV, an will be the start of a new season in which He also files for the Today Show, NBC NBC affiliate in Savannah, Ga., where we present a monthly program starring Nightly News, MSNBC and CNBC, and he covered the city’s skyrocketing mur- some of your favorite journalists. The has appeared on Dateline. JONATHAN DIENST der rate and several police corruption October virtual get-together will feature Dienst will be honored at a Silurian scandals. In 1992, he was on board for Times film critic A.O. Scott, who will Zoom event at noon on Wednesday, investigation as well as the 2005 London the launch of New York 1 News and fulfill a commitment he made to speak to us last spring. Sept. 16. bombings. played a major role in the station’s Let me tell you a bit about myself. Dienst helped to lead WNBC’s cov- The Kihss Award, first presented by coverage of the 1993 World Trade After matriculating at the Columbia Grad erage of the investigation into the Sept. the Silurians in 1986, is given to a re- Center bombing. From 1996 to 2001, School of Journalism, I worked for a cou- 11 terror attacks, the anthrax attacks and porter who exemplifies the spirit of the Dienst was at WPIX/Channel 11 News, ple years as an investigative reporter for the crash of American Airlines flight 587 late New York Times legend for whom it covering police and the courts, politics a New Jersey newspaper. Having won an is named. Kihss, who died in 1984, was award for my series on Jersey’s dreadful in the Rockaways in 2001. He also broke and national and international news. He’s prison system, I took a job in New York and reported key developments for NBC noted for his meticulous reporting and been WNBC-TV’s chief investigative editing two magazines underwritten by in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings for his generosity in mentoring young reporter since 2001. the Ford Foundation that took a hard look at corrections and law enforcement. Those magazines were finalists for Na- tional Magazine Awards three times. Then Time magazine hired me as the CUNY’S RACHEL SHERMAN WINS writer of their Law section. After a couple of years writing about Supreme Court decisions I was able to take up my true THE 2020 DENNIS DUGGAN PRIZE calling: editing and reporting stories about achel Sherman, a 29-year-old me to choose journalism. So I quit my ers and New Times, Rwanda’s leading international politics and economics. I student whose interest in jour- job and in 2019 I enrolled in the graduate newspaper. did that for more than 10 years at Time. nalism was ignited by the sto- journalism program at CUNY.” She is Ms. Sherman, who lives in Brook- I wrote the story about the first intifadah R in Palestine. I covered the handover of ries of the people she encountered while scheduled to graduate this coming De- lyn with her brown tabby cat, Dash, the Panama Canal to the Panamanians. I working in Rwanda, is the winner of the cember. is the fourteenth winner of the Dennis was in South Africa during the political 2020 Dennis Duggan Prize. “Rachel in many ways typifies the Duggan Prize. campaign that elected Nelson Mandela The prize, which includes a $2,000 spirit of the Newmark J-School,” says The previous winners have worked president. (A Mandela campaign poster stipend, has been awarded annually since Tim Harper, her academic advisor and her for major media outlets, including the still graces one of my walls.) I was in 2007 by The Silurians Press Club to an professor for Craft, the school’s intense Washinton Post, The New York Times, Hong Kong just before the handover of outstanding student at the City Univer- 6-credit reporting course. “She’s a career the New York Daily News, NBC News, that territory to China. sity of New York’s Newmark Graduate changer driven by curiosity and the belief PBS, the Christian Science Monitor, My stint at Time was followed by a School of Journalism that telling people’s stories will make the Boston Free Radio, Crain’s New York couple of years at Institutional Investor, six Ms. Sherman will officially receive world a better place by spreading knowl- Business, Al-Jazeera America, the Salt years at Business Week and nine years at the prize at a virtual Silurians Press Club edge and truth.She goes the extra mile Lake City Tribune and others. Bloomberg News—at each place specializ- ing in investigative and international stories. luncheon on Wednesday, September 16, in her shoe leath- In all those jobs, I applied what used which will be broadcast via Zoom. er, and makes the to be the fundamental principles of jour- The prize is named in honor of Den- extra call or five nalism: give both sides of every story; nis Duggan, the respected and popular when street report- label anything interpretative as analysis; Newsday reporter and columnist who ing isn’t possible. keep all opinion on the editorial and op- chronicled the lives and trials of everyday She’s determined, ed pages. New Yorkers for more than four decades. resilient in the face These principles were already being Duggan, who also served two terms as of setbacks, gener- bent on a regular basis when Donald president of the Silurians, died in April ous to both sources Trump took office. Since then reporters 2006 at the age of 78. He was still writing and co-workers, and editors angry at being labeled purvey- his column until a few weeks before his and a sponge for ors of “fake news” have too often thrown off all restraint and made their own views death. advice and coach- of Trump and his policies part of their A 2013 graduate of the University of ing to make her a “news” stories. For a frank discussion of Texas at Austin, Ms. Sherman originally better reporter.” this issue, take a look at Tony Mancini’s pursued a career in international devel- Ms. Sherman article in this issue. Is “objectivity” dead, opment, including a year of service in says her role as and did it ever deserve to be alive? Read Rwanda at a school for 500 teenagers who a journalist “is to Tony’s analysis. were orphaned as a result of the Rwanda listen” and “to ap- That story was commissioned by the genocide. proach every sto- new editor of the Silurian News, Joe She described that experience as “the ry with curiosity.” Berger, a longtime New York Timesman most meaningful of my life.” On her re- She wants to spe- who is also First Vice President of the turn from Rwanda she curated “Rwanda cialize in feature club. He is joined in our new leadership by the brilliant David Margolick as Sec- Retold”, an art exhibit at the Museum of writing and, like ond Vice President and Carol Lawson Contemporary African Diaspora Arts in Dennis Duggan, (another Times veteran) as Secretary. The Brooklyn. write human in- ever-reliable Karen Bedrosian Richardson Ms. Sherman arrived in New York City terest stories and remains as Treasurer. in 2016 for a private-sector job but a year character-driven With this great crew helping to row later she decided to change careers and narratives. the boat, I look forward to two produc- pursue one in journalism. Her writing has tive years as your president. If you have Why did she choose journalism? already appeared comments, requests, even complaints, “In international development I came in Teen Vogue, don’t hesitate to contact me in contact with incredible people and Food and Wine, through the club mailbox. places and human stories,” she said. “I the Bronx Times, Best regards, wanted to write about these people and the New York City Michael S. Serrill their stories. While traveling in Beirut, I News Service,Co- President met a Hungarian journalist who inspired da Story, Sojourn- RACHEL SHERMAN

SEPTEMBER 2020 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 3

Pitchforks in the Newsroom People Profiles: Medallion Winner Continued from Page 1 letter branding the paper as an illegal For many years Poston indeed was “hostile work environment” for writers “The Beautiful Power,” by Jesmyn Ward for Vanity Fair the only African-American reporter on who don’t follow the party line of social the Post, then a liberal tabloid, and only justice orthodoxy. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a for- the third black journalist in history to “Twitter is not on the masthead of midable writer and thinker. write for a mainstream New York City The New York Times,” she wrote. “But After his virtuosic memoir newspaper. I and my colleagues heard Twitter has become its ultimate editor.” The Beautiful Struggle was this story from Ted at his retirement Some might regard these charges as released in 2008, he found party in 1972, two years before his over-the-top but they fit the pattern of an audience that was solidly impressed not only by the death. The memory made me wonder complaints voiced in other estates of the quality of his writing, which how the ghost of this award-winning republic, especially academia, the arts and politics. A July 7 letter in Harper’s careened along and rose and scribe would react to the storms raging fell like a song, but also by in newsrooms today where a more di- Magazine signed by 153 renowned artists and intellectuals, including his intellectual prowess, his verse community of journalists seems curiosity, his ranging mind. Margaret Atwood, Gloria Steinem and bent on destroying the graven images of The book revolves around the traditional craft, like “objectivity” Wynton Marsalis, hardly a cadre of what it meant for Coates to and “neutrality.” They enlist in the ranks right-wing flamethrowers, warned of grow up Black in Baltimore of social justice regiments spawned by a growing and dangerous “intolerance in the ’80s and is heavily the obscene police killings of black men of opposing views, a vogue for public informed by his father, like George Floyd and injustices inflict- shaming and ostracism and the tenden- who worked as a librarian ed on immigrants, transgender persons cy to dissolve complex policy issues in at Howard University, and and other marginalized groups, and do a blinding moral certainty.” The letter, whose life was driven by the not think that such alliances undermine brainchild of African-American cultural desire to equip his children their credibility as journalists. critic Thomas Chatterton Williams, also with the tools they would No doubt we are witnessing an his- applauded “powerful protests for racial need to survive in Ameri- toric crisis of American journalism that and social justice” spurring “overdue ca…. couldn’t have come at a worse moment, demands for police reform, along with Baltimore in the ’80s when most newspapers have one foot in wider calls for greater equality and demanded a different ed- the grave, others are converting to sole- inclusion across our society.” ucation of him, one where ly digital platforms where the economic Still, the iconoclasts of revered jour- he was bored by teachers, landscape is uncharted, and 24-hour ca- nalistic practices do not back down. fell asleep in class, walked TA-NEHISI COATES ble programs like Fox News, MSNBC Many disparage the very notion of through the streets assessing and CNN broadcast non-stop opinion objective journalism as an unattainable the landscape and the people incessant- an enslaved man named Hiram as he and propaganda of both left and right. absurdity. News reporters are biased, ly, wary and aware that at any moment, attempts to find his way to freedom... The fog deepens with the “fake news” they argue, just like everybody else. at any time, he could be jumped and This is a proper novel, an abrupt rants of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. The attempt to give both sides of a news beaten for any number of imagined departure from what overbearing, offenses by boys who looked like him. messy fame demands of Coates. And Skirmishes in the journalism culture story leads to the graveyard of truth. That world trained Coates to navigate because of that, he is nervous too…. wars recently have erupted in the bas- Would the story of an SS man executing a Jewish baby have two sides? violence with his body and his mind, (W)e talk about fame. Not only can tions of the profession, including The pressured his inner self to become the fame be dangerous, Coates believes, New York Times, Washington Post, the But these are straw man arguments. In my more than sixty years of smudg- man he is today, a man with a baby face but it flattens you. You have all Wall Street Journal — practically every and easy bearing whose looks belie these ideas about who you are, what ing my fingers and damaging my major news outlet in the country, with the weapon within, a self-honed to a you do, what you believe. But people editorial employees demanding greater eardrums in and around newsrooms scythe’s sharpness. He brandished that don’t see that. They only see what diversity in their ranks and more sensi- and forty years of mentoring students weapon in 2015’s Between the World they want to see. And then Coates tive coverage of racial injustice. to follow this worthy path, I have and Me, an epistolary revelation to his utters something that strikes me as so The Times’s ruckus arose from the never witnessed this cartoon version son on what it means to live and die as insightful and true, something like: decision in early June by the paper’s of “both-sideism.” Most often I en- a Black person in America. The book This erasure of the authentic self for editorial page editor, James Bennet, to countered journalists who did their did something Coates hadn’t expected: the famous (reflective, wish-fulfilling, publish an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton damnedest to be independent of outside It rose to the top of the best seller lists, stardust-glazed) self is only good of Arkansas arguing for using military affiliations and neutral in the sense of and all hell broke loose. He won the for people who dislike themselves, force against looters and rioters among avoiding advocacy of anything but the National Book Award for non-fiction, because it allows them to erase who otherwise peaceful protestors of police facts and locating them in a fair and and damn near every cable show, every they are and become someone total- brutality on black men. The decision to accurate context. Journalists like Joe magazine, every reader was hungry for ly new. In order to be really good at run the column unleashed a backlash of Kahn, the bane of slumlords, and Ed his insight…. being famous, in order to embrace it criticism by a faction of Times staffers, Katcher, the bete noire of crooked pols. After Between the World and Me, wholeheartedly, you have to dislike triggered an apology from the publisher Of course they were biased. But their though, fame elbowed her way into yourself. and Bennet’s forced resignation. It also reporting methods weren’t. By putting his life like a belligerent drunk: loud, One of the reasons fame is difficult sparked withering expressions of scorn their biases aside and digging into re- imperious, and blind to her sloppy for Coates to navigate is because he from journalism pundits who accused cords and interviewing whistle blowers need. The café we are meeting at, doesn’t hate himself. He knows who the Gray Lady of tripping over her skirts and climbing the stairs and wearing out where Coates walked to work and he has worked so hard to become, and shoe leather and writing with head and sat for hours in his corner, drafting he is proud of that. New York Times to pacify “woke” newsroom rebels and rewriting his articles, his books, writer David Carr, his first editor, saw while betraying long-held codes foster- heart, they achieved, in Carl Bernstein’s phrase, “the best obtainable version of for years, was no longer the dim safe that he had talent and encouraged ing lively public discourse by printing haven it had always been, especially in him early on, even though he wanted controversial but newsworthy opinions the truth.” Their comrade-in-arms, Ted Poston, the literary bubble of New York. After to quit. Carr, who died in 2015, had by influential politicians. Between the World and Me came out, known Coates since they worked at was cut from the same cloth. The backlash came not only from he says, “I would look on Twitter, and the Washington City Paper. Coates columnists of rival but usually com- people would tweet I was here, and has spoken affectionately of Carr’s panionable publications such as the Anthony Mancini, winner of the Pe- then people would come up to me. I occasionally aggressive support— Washington Post and the New Yorker ter Kihss Award in 2017, is a longtime would run into people and they used Carr was known to chase Coates into professor of journalism at Brooklyn (not to mention right-wing outlets) but to say, ‘I hear you write here.’” So the elevator yelling about perfecting College and before that worked as a also from the disciples of free speech he stopped coming to this dim pastry story copy. (Coates will contribute the journalist at the New York Post for 20 within the dowager’s own domain. shop so often… foreword to a forthcomng collection years. As our conversation properly be- of Carr’s own work.) But the two “A strong paper and strong democ- Silurian News welcomes comments racy does not shy away from many gins with my first question, which is became close friends over “a rela- from its members on this issue roiling why he chose this café as his office, I tionship built on the mutual interests voices,” tweeted Michael Powell, a American newsrooms and hopes to print learn that Coates has his own reasons of journalism, typing, and fun smack veteran reporter and columnist for the some responses in its next issue. for self-doubt and self-consciousness. talk,” says Erin Lee Carr, who wrote Times, also scolding his editors for an I learn that I’m not the only one who a book, All That You Leave Behind, “embarrassing retreat from principle.” is nervous today, because after writing about her dad. “My father believed in Many in-house columnists then en- dozens of lauded articles and three T because he knew he would get there, tered the fray on both sides of the issue, Silurians Press Club book-length works of creative non- that the writing demanded it, and it was including Bret Stephens, Roger Cohen P.O. Box 854 fiction, Coates has written a novel, a up to the media landscape to take note. and Michelle Goldberg. The unseem- Planetarium Post Office wondrous, unpredictable novel set in How lucky we all are that Ta-Nehisi ly family feud came to a head when 127 West 83rd Street Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia kept going. What an incredible loss editorial page contributor Bari Weiss called The Water Dancer; it follows that would have been.” wrote a tongue-lashing resignation New York, N.Y. 10024 PAGE 4 SILURIAN NEWS SEPTEMBER 2020 The Silurians Celebrate Journalism At Its Best Continued from Page 1 toil for what in some situations amounts researched, multi-part series about the Ramos of Newsday won a Medallion in Queens. The judging panel called his to nickels and dimes. planned decommissioning of dozens of for “Climate of Fear,” their examination piece “a model of deadline reporting, Alex Vadukul, city correspondent the nation’s nuclear power plants, Wall of the anxiety raised in the Latino laying out in knowledgeable detail the for the Sunday New York Times Street’s grab of the $60 billion set aside communities of Long Island by the political, economic and community Metropolitan section, was awarded for the teardowns and the safety concerns Trump administration’s determination to consequences of the Amazon decision.” two Medallions, one in the Arts and of the nearby communities. deport undocumented, and some legal, The Record/northjersey.com earned a Culture category for his profile of a In Breaking News Photography, the immigrants. Medallion for its staff coverage of a wild, New York barber who blossomed into Medallion went to William Farrington Jesmyn Ward’s profile of writer Ta- violent day in Jersey City, which began a serious painter. He also won in Sports of the New York Post for his exclusive Nehisi Coates for Vanity Fair, which with the killing of a police officer and Reporting and Commentary for his story photo of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein the judging panel described as “a richly was followed by the murder of a Hasidic about a Northern Irish-born New York as he was being wheeled out of the satisfying, superbly written gem,” couple, gunned down in the kosher food pub owner who is also a world class Metropolitan Correction Center, where garnered the Medallion in the People store they operated. The siege ended ultramarathoner as he prepared for his he had committed suicide hours earlier. Profiles category. when the two gunmen were killed in a last event, a four-day, 100-mile solo run In Television Breaking News, WABC Alejandra Villa Loarca of Newsday shootout with police. between Belfast and Dublin. Eyewitness News won for its 11 pm won the Medallion for Sports Photography The City, a new non-profit online In Business and Financial Reporting, coverage of the Jersey City shootout. for her dramatic photo of courageous publication dedicated to coverage of New the Medallion went to Ann Marsh of In Feature Television News, Walt Amaya Williams, a 17-year-old double York City and launched by editor Jere Financial Planning magazine. Marsh Kane of News 12 New Jersey won for amputee who plays on the Copiague Hester, walked off with two winning dug through records and previously his reports on school bullying. High School basketball team. A Merit Medallions and a runner up Merit Award in undisclosed material, and then narrated In Radio Feature News, Juliana award in Feature Photography was won its debut season. The City’s investigative in vivid detail how JPMorgan presented Schatz Preston’s podcast, “A Desperate by Anthony J. Causi of the New York team of Greg B. Smith, Josefa Velasquez fabricated testimony in eight dreary days Bargain,” for Type Investigations and Post for his photo of New York Giants and Yoav Gonen won the Medallion for of arbitration for an advisor fired by its Reveal won the Medallion for a moving quarterback Eli Manning with his family Commentary for their in-depth coverage Chase Private Client group. While the story about how parents of children with after he played his last game with the of the DeBlasio Administration and their adviser still seeks justice for a wrecked severe mental illness in Connecticut were team. Less than a year after he took articles examining the New York Police career, the reporting provoked outrage by pressured to give up custody to the state the photo, Causi died, a victim of the Department’s record in confrontations lawmakers and helped inspire legislation so their child could receive residential coronavirus. with the mentally ill. designed to better protect whistleblowers treatment. The judges for this year’s competition The City Photographer Ben Fractenberg and end mandatory arbitration. Natasha Lennard of The Intercept were David A. Andelman, Anthony won in the Feature Photography category A trio of reporters from The USA won the Medallion for Public Service Mancini, Scotti Williston, Herb Hadad, for his moving photo essay on the Today Network, Thomas C. Zambito Commentary for what the judges called Clyde Haberman, Joe Berger, Linda homeless seeking refuge in New York’s of the Journal-News/lohud.com, “her cutting commentaries that focused Amster, Jack Deacy, Allan Dodds subway system. Christopher Maag of The Record/ on how sexual misconduct and gender Frank, Betsy Ashton, Michael Serrill, Andy Newman of the Times won in northjersey.com and Amanda Oglesby discrimination collided with New York Carol Lawson, Aileen Jacobson, Mort Feature News Reporting for his series, of the Asbury Park Press won the State’s criminal justice system.” Sheinman, Fred Herzog, Kevin Noblet, “Risky Businesses,” an exploration of Science, Health and Environmental In the Minority Affairs Reporting Myron Kandel, Tony Guida, Bill Diehl, the world of gig economy workers who Reporting Medallion for their deeply category, Will Van Sant and Victor Continued on Page 5

he Record/northjersey. a breaking news event that unfolds civilians racing to safety and wit- on everyone affected. We learned com won a Medallion for for so long that our reporters find nessed gunfire in the streets. Report- everything we could about the fallen TBreaking News Reporting themselves caught in the middle. ers back in the newsroom worked the cop. We talked to the students and for its coverage of a wild shootout But that was the case on Tuesday, phones and the internet, running teachers locked down all day while last December in Jersey City that December 10, 2019 when our re- down every angle. As a result, The gunfire erupted. We looked at the left a police officer, three civil- porters arrived on the scene of an Record NorthJersey.com was the neighborhood, where shootings ians and two suspects dead. What hours-long gun battle in and around first to report the name of the police are all too common. We talked to follows is the description by The a Jersey City Kosher market that officer killed as well as the three the Jewish community as lawmak- Record’s editors of how their re- left a police officer, three civilians civilians who lost their lives inside ers branded the shootings a hate porters covered this fast-breaking and two suspects dead. They saw the market. Nearly our entire staff crime. It was breaking news at its story. “Rarely do we experience armed cops manning street corners, worked this story to report and write finest .”

Sifting through the debris at JC Kosher Supermarket after a deadly shootout in Jersey City. SEPTEMBER 2020 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 5 The Silurians Celebrate Journalism At Its Best Continued from Page 4 Online Media, Magazines) Bernie Kirsch. The Awards Chair was Medallion: “Taken For A Ride” Jack Deacy, assisted by consultant Ben By Brian Rosenthal Long. The New York Times Merit: “Conviction” and “Vigilante” Here is the full list of Medallion and By Saki Knafo, Merit Award winners: Type Investigations

PRESIDENT’S CHOICE AWARD BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL “Long Island Divided” REPORTING (Newspapers, News Wire The Newsday Staff Services, Online Media, Magazines) Medallion: “JP Morgan Chase’s Private PRESIDENT’S CHOICE AWARD Client Group Used False Evidence” “Welcome To The Party. The New By Ann Marsh York City block party” Financial Planning The New York Times Photography Merit: “Stark Lessons From Wall Staff. Jeffrey Furticella, editor. Street’s #MeToo Movement” By Susan Antilla BREAKING NEWS (Newspapers, Type Investigations News Wire Services, Online Media) Antilla’s report is as troubling as it is Medallion: “Amazon Pulls Out of exhaustive, as she examines 30 years of Planned New York City Headquarters” regulatory records to show how women By J. David Goodman who spoke out against financial firms The New York Times saw their careers destroyed or set back, Medallion: “Jersey City Shooting” while most of the men accused of abuse, The Record/northjersey.com Staff harassment and discrimination continued Merit: “Election Night In Queens” to enjoy success. By Christine Chung Merit: “Cantor Fitzgerald Doesn’t Want and Josefa Velasquez This Woman Talking About Her Mug In The City Court” By Max Abelson and Katia Porzecanski FEATURE NEWS (Newspapers, Bloomberg Businessweek Wire Services, Online Media, Magazines) While Wall Street remains a man’s Medallion: “Risky Businesses” world, that status quo is being challenged By Andy Newman like never before. Abelson and Porzecanski The New York Times provide a remarkable example, reporting Merit: “Lovers In Auschwitz, with sometimes shocking detail about a Reunited” junk-bond saleswoman’s harassment case By Keren Blankfeld against Cantor Fitzgerald, where “F-bombs, The New York Times pranks and the occasional fistfight are still With restrained and sometimes lyrical part of a sharp-elbowed culture.” prose, Blankfeld shows that even amid brutality and slaughter, humans could SCIENCE, HEALTH AND find love. This story of David Wisnia’s ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING and Helen Spitzer’s brief affair and their (Newspapers, News Wire Services, improbable reunion 72 years later made Online Media, Magazines) for riveting reading. Medallion: “Nuclear Options” Merit: “In the Shadows” The USA Today Network By Victor Ramos By Thomas C. Zambito, Rockland/ Newsday Westchester Journal News; Christopher Ramos’s two-part feature tells the Maag, The Record (Bergen County); and gripping story of one migrant’s Homeric Amanda Oglesby, Asbury Park News, for journey through the reefs and sea monsters the USA Today Network of border agents and bureaucrats to rejoin Merit/Shared: “Delayed Childbirth his family in the United States. Helps Push a Boom In Long Island’s Newsday photographer Alejandra Villa Loarca captured the Medallion Fertility Business” for Sports Photography for her dramatic photo essay on Amaya Wil- INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING By David Reich-Hale liams, a courageous 17-year-old double amputee who overcame mul- Newsday (Newspapers, News Wire Services, Continued on Page 6 tiple surgeries to play for the Copiague High School basketball team.

A drone photograph of the Indian Point nuclear plant, taken by Peter Carr and John Meore of The Journal News for the winning science entry. PAGE 6 SILURIAN NEWS SEPTEMBER 2020 The Silurians Celebrate Journalism At Its Best Continued from Page 5 “New Law Will Require More Coverage For IVF, Fertility Treatments” How We Investigated the New York Taxi Medallion Bubble By Beth Whitehouse Newsday BY BRIAN M. ROSENTHAL Merit: “Dumping Ground” [Rosenthal and The New York By Paul LaRocco Times won the Silurians Award for Newsday Investigative Reporting, an honor also bestowed on the series by the Pulitzer ARTS AND CULTURE Prize committee.] REPORTING (Newspapers, Wire It took a year, 450 interviews and a Services, Online Media, Magazines) database built from scratch to answer Medallion: “The Michelangelo of the a simple question: Why had anyone Barber Shop” ever agreed to pay $1 million for the By Alex Vadukul right to drive a yellow cab? The New York Times The story started, like a lot of sto- ries seem to, with President Trump’s SPORTS REPORTING AND former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. On COMMENTARY (Newspapers, News April 9, 2018, the F.B.I. raided Cohen’s Wire Services, Online Media, Magazines) office, thrusting him into the national Medallion: “Irish Forrest Gump” spotlight. The next day, the top editors By Alex Vadukul at The New York Times asked five The New York Times reporters to start working on a profile. Merit: “Verbal Abuse Blamed for I was one of them. The other reporters Decline In Officials” researched Cohen’s family, his legal By Jim Baumbach career, his real estate interests and, of Newsday course, his work for the president. I price reach $1 million? It became my started calling dozens of current and took on the last piece of his business North Star. I heard plenty of theories, former industry bankers, brokers, SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHY empire: his ownership of 30 New York but I began to get somewhere only when lawyers and investors.... New York (Newspapers, News Wire Services, taxi medallions, the coveted permits I had an epiphany: No driver-owner had City did not have reliable digital data Online Media, Magazines) needed to own a yellow cab. ever really paid close to $1 million for on medallion sales, so I used paper Medallion: “Unstoppable” After a few weeks of reporting, the a medallion. On paper, thousands of records to build a database of all the By Alejandra Villa Loarca team learned enough to publish our low-income immigrants had. But while 10,888 sales between 1995 and 2018. Newsday story on Cohen. And I discovered they had poured their life savings into The city taxi commission had never Merit: “Eli’s Retirement” enough to know what I wanted to their purchase, virtually all had signed analyzed the financial records sub- By Anthony J. Causi investigate next. At that time, the taxi loans for most of the cost — and never mitted by medallion buyers, so I did. New York Post industry was becoming a big story. really had a chance to repay. Nobody knew how many medallion Cohen had owned his medallions as I needed to examine as many loans as owners had gone bankrupt because PEOPLE PROFILES (Newspapers, an investment, counting on them rising possible, to see if they were as unusual of the crisis, so I convinced my boss News Wire Services, Online Media, in value because of the city’s decision and reckless — and predatory — as some to pay a technology company, Epiq, Magazines) to issue only about 13,000 permits. of my sources said they were. But how? I to create a program that sped through Medallion: “The Beautiful Power” But thousands of the medallions were got a lead from an unexpected source: the court records and spat out a tentative By Jesmyn Ward owned by drivers themselves, and lenders themselves.... Many of them had list — and then two news assistants Vanity Fair two driver-owners had just died by filed lawsuits against borrowers — law- helped me verify every result. Merit: “Keano Is N.Y.’s Most Famous suicide. Public officials were talking suits which had to include copies of the As I dug into the data and the doc- and Mysterious Psychic. I Found Her.” about how the price of a medallion loans. I ultimately reviewed 500 of these uments, I sought out driver-owners. I By Sam Kestenbaum had plummeted from over $1 million loans, and I saw disturbing patterns: Al- wanted to understand what they had The New York Times to under $150,000. Most were blaming most none of them included a large down been through. To find them, I went to ride-hailing companies such as Uber payment. Almost all of them required Kennedy International Airport. EDITORIALS, COMMENTARY, and Lyft. the borrower to repay everything within [When all of our reporting was PUBLIC SERVICE (Newspapers, News …When I pursue an investigation, three years, which was impossible. There done], the headlines on the two-part Services, Online Media, Magazines) I identify the single most important were a lot of interest-only loans, and a series told the story: Part 1: ‘They Medallion/Public Service: “Natasha question that I am trying to answer, and wide variety of fees, including charges Were Conned’: How Reckless Loans Lennard’s New York Reporting” orient all of my reporting around it…. for paying loans off too early. Many of Devastated a Generation of Taxi By Natasha Lennard In this case, I ended up interviewing the loans required borrowers to sign away Drivers. Part 2: As Thousands of Taxi The Intercept about 450 people, and I asked almost their legal rights Drivers Were Trapped in Loans, Top Medallion/ Commentary: “The all the same question: Why did the Armed with the loan documents, I Officials Counted the Money. DeBlasio Files” and “The NYPD’s Mental Illness Breakdown” By Greg B. Smith, Josefa Velasquez, Yoav Gonen, The City Merit/Commentary: Columns & Essays By Jim Dwyer The New York Times

MINORITY AFFAIRS REPORTING (Newspapers, News Wire Services, Online Media, Magazines) Medallion: “Climate of Fear” By Victor Ramos and Will Van Sant Newsday Merit: “Alvarado Investigation Series” By Monsy Alvarado The Record/northjersey.com

BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY (Newspapers,News Wire Services, Online Media, Magazines) Medallion: “Jeffrey Epstein Suicide” By William Farrington New York Post Merit: “Tears for the Fallen” By Steve Pfost Newsday Merit: “Medal of Honor”” By Alejandra Villa Loarca Newsday The Medallion for Feature Photography went to Ben Fractenberg of The City for his moving photo essay on Continued on Page 7 the homeless who seek out warmth in the New York’s subway system. SEPTEMBER 2020 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 7 Corona Time Reflections: I Am The #$%& from New York BY JOYCE WADLER severance.” A few days after my pitch, flops back on a berth and free associates ters something about not discussing his Dave calls back. “How would you like to likes he’s on a shrink’s couch: “…I guess marriage. A few minutes later he stands had mixed feeling about travel go to Tahiti?” he says. “Dino De Lauren- you’ve heard all about what’s been going up. “This interview is [another exple- when I was a reporter – a terror of tiis is doing a remake of ‘Mutiny of the on on this film. I called the director a tive, though not Hopkins’] boring me to I flying will do that to you – but now Bounty’ with Mel Gibson and Anthony filthy [colorful Brit expletive deleted for tears,” he says and walks out. He returns that COVID has left American tourists Hopkins. You can do a profile of Mel.” the sake of the genteel Silurian readership a few moments later for a quick apology, unwanted in so much of the world and Now, remember, this was years before here]; he called me a filthy [same Brit which allows me to think I may be able I see no travel at all in my immediate Mel Gibson’s arrest for drunken driving expletive; they certainly like that word], to save this story after all. future, I look back on my experiences, and his anti-Semitic remarks; so long ago but we sorted it all out…” The next morning, I return to the even the ones requiring an overnight stay all the public knew about Mel Gibson “God, I’m good,” I think. H.M.S. Bounty. The mood is cool. Every- in Albany, with an ache in my heart that was that he was an actor. He also did not Finally, about five days in, I get my one is avoiding me, with the exception of is damn near poetic. say much in the few stories I could find sit down with Gibson, at an empty a make-up artist who takes me aside and Oh, the places I’ve been on someone on him, which is never a good sign. But I restaurant. He is stiff and unhappy and says Mel Gibson had an early call and else’s dime. People Magazine sent me was so besotted with the notion of Tahiti obviously here under orders. I try to make screamed at some length about – oh, this to Morocco when we weren’t even sure – and better yet, hearing the lamentations him comfortable with softball questions: is going to be difficult to describe, with so the French spy I was looking for was in of my enemies when I told them I had “Road Warrior was your big break- many of you being sheltered newspaper the country. I covered a terrorist trial in gotten an assignment in Tahiti – that I through, right? How did that happen?” people. Let us say that Mel Gibson used London and tried to find a protected state ignored it. “You were living in a boarding house on a particularly foul vulgarism for the fe- witness in Ireland. Unfortunately, it takes so long for the the beach, now you have Richard Gere’s male anatomy to refer to a woman from Being a serious journalist, I paid magazine to pin down the interview that agent, how has that affected your life?” I New York. As I have not met any other particular attention to the hotels: The the production has moved on to a remote get responses which are one step beyond female from here I am reluctantly forced Mamounia, in Marrakesh, with its end- corner of the North Island of New Zea- grunts. Man has discovered language to conclude that the person Gibson was less pools; The Hotel Lancaster in Paris, land, but I have never been to that part of and thinks it’s not worth the bother. I am referencing must be me. where Richard Burton and Liz Taylor had the world either, so fine with me. It quick- desperate, flipping over every journalistic Naturally, I want to get the first plane shacked up; The Shelbourne, in Dublin, ly becomes obvious that Gibson, who is maneuver in my head. Is it my body lan- out, but there are only two flights a week, where the high teas were so delicious I in New Zealand with his wife and three guage? Cadence? Should I be more laid so I am stuck in a town where nobody had two and called it dinner. kids, is in no hurry to do an interview. I back? If I am any more laid back I’ll be will talk to me. I do get to see Tahiti, in But by far, my most exotic assignment, have a quick introduction to him on the dead. They sent me 9,000 miles to get a stopover on my way home, but unless the one which confirmed my good sense creaking replica of H.M.S. Bounty. He is this story and I’m getting nothing. you are on your honeymoon, there is in becoming a reporter, was the one in- pleasant and extraordinarily handsome, Had I been blessed with the journal- not a whole lot to do. I rent a jeep and volving the South Pacific. It happened but not much on conversation. He says, istic power of Retro-Vision I would have drive around Moorea, I go to a fancy in the 1980’s, the golden age for feature if am remembering this right, that see- aborted this interview two questions in, hotel where they put flowers on my head, writers, when there were shiny objects ing a white girl is a sight for sore eyes. better yet, never started it. I would have but try as I might to enjoy it, Tahiti is called magazines and you got money for Then, small talk apparently exhausted, understood that Mel Gibson was not a sit depressing. Mel Gibson had cast a pall writing. he sucks on the string of his yellow down, question-response guy; he’s a guy over everything. My assignment comes from a movie slicker for a while. He will not, despite you follow around and watch and have a COVID lingers. I cannot travel, there magazine where my friend and former the film publicist’s efforts, commit to a few drinks with. True, when I tried that are countries which refuse Americans Daily News colleague, Dave Hirshey, is time for an interview. with New York City detectives I ended entry. But at least I’m not stuck in New an editor. My pitch goes like this: “Dave, I have dinner with some of the crew., I up loaded after two glasses of wine and Zealand, in a room with Mel Gibson. I’m bored. Nothing exciting ever happens go to a party with a lot of young Tahitian told them everything I had. But if only, to me.” (Pop Quiz for Columbia J. School extras where I see Mel leave the party for if only… Joyce Wadler is a New York City hu- Young-‘Uns: Write a 500-word essay a spell with two Tahitian cupcakes who Finally, recalling the mysterious morist and journalist who created and defending or critiquing the axiom that it look about 16. Various scenarios of what interlude with the Tahitian cupcakes at wrote the ‘I Was Misinformed’ column is not what you know, but who you know. that’s about roll through my head, none the party, I take a dumb, desperate shot. for The New York Times, where she was Remember that while Joyce is no of which involve the three going out for “Well, how is success affecting your a staff reporter. She has also been a longer a New York Times columnist, a newspaper. marriage?” feature writer at Dorothy Schiff’s New she is grading this paper and still knows I go to the Bounty to interview Antho- There is a moment in an interview York Post, The New York Daily News a lot of people.) Where was I? Oh, right, ny Hopkins, who plays Captain Bligh in when you say something and realize and The Washington Post. If you spot my Columbia J. School guest lecture, the film and who is as garrulous as Gib- you have lost that person for good. This yourself in one of her humor pieces, she “Nothing Replaces Hard Work and Per- son is remote. I walk into his cabin, he is that moment. Gibson glares and mut- will deny it.

The Silurians Press Club Andy Fisher using his ancient manual to mock FEMA. Celebrating The Best Officers 2020-2021 Continued from Page 6 President COMMITTEE MICHAEL S. SERRILL CHAIRPERSONS: FEATURE NEWS Merit: “Going, Going, Gone: Forced First Vice-President Awards: PHOTOGRAPHY (Newspapers, News Home Sales” JOSEPH BERGER JACK DEACY Wire Services, Online Media, Magazines) By Lydia Hu Medallion: “Homeless Face an Second Vice-President Constitution and Bylaws: Spectrum NY 1 DAVID MARGOLICK ALLAN DODDS FRANK Elusive Refuge In The Subway” Secretary By Ben Fractenberg BROADCAST JOURNALISM CAROL LAWSON Awards Dinner: The City AILEEN JACOBSON (Radio: Breaking News/Feature News) Merit: “The Big Chill” and “Spell RADIO FEATURE NEWS Treasurer Pressure” KAREN BEDROSIAN Futures: Medallion: “A Desperate Bargain” RICHARDSON ALLAN DODDS FRANK By Tom Ferrara Newsday Podcast By Juliana Schatz Preston BOARD OF GOVERNORS: Membership: Merit: “Commencement Day” Type Investigations & Reveal LINDA AMSTER SCOTTI WILLISTON “A Desperate Bargain,” podcast by DAVID ANDELMAN By J. Conrad Williams, Jr. BETSY ASHTON Nominating: Newsday Juliana Schatz Preston JACK DEACY BEN PATRUSKY Is a bitterly painful story about how BILL DIEHL parents of children with severe mental ALLAN DODDS FRANK Silurian News BROADCAST JOURNALISM TONY GUIDA illness in Connecticut were pressured JOSEPH BERGER, Editor (Television: Breaking News/Feature MYRON KANDEL to give up custody to the state so their BERNARD KIRSCH News) Website: AILEEN JACOBSON child can receive residential treatment. MORT SHEINMAN, Editor BREAKING TV NEWS BEN PATRUSKY One mother told Preston that her son MYRON RUSHETZKY Medallion: “Jersey City Shootout” had threatened to kill her and her family. MORT SHEINMAN Webmaster: WABC TV Eyewitness News/11 PM SCOTTI WILLISTON FRED HERZOG “I can only pray,” she said “that if he Broadcast cracks it’s only me he kills and nobody GOVERNORS EMERITI: Social Media: The Eyewitness News Team else.” BILL DIEHL GERALD ESKENAZI FEATURE TV NEWS Merit: “Stonewall at 50: From GARY PAUL GATES Medallion: “Kane In Your Corner: Uprising to Gay Rights Movement” HERBERT HADAD SILURIAN CONTINGENCY FUND LINDA GOETZ HOLMES BOARD OF TRUSTEES: Bullied In School” By George Bodarky & Student ROBERT D. McFADDEN STEVEN MARCUS, PRESIDENT Walt Kane Reporting Staff News 12 New Jersey WFUV-FM

PAGE 8 SILURIAN NEWS SEPTEMBER 2020 became the basis for the wildly popular thoughts about newspapers and how they song, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the should be covering cities, to “Downtown: Obituaries Ole Oak Tree,” a song that became an My Manhattan,” a journey through time anthem of sorts after 52 Americans that combines history and contemporary were taken hostage in Iran in 1979. The observations of the city he loved. Peter Hamill, 1935-2020 songwriters contended they heard the BY MORT SHEINMAN he dropped out of Regis High School, a story from another source and Hamill A TRIBUTE FROM A selective Catholic school, at age 15, he dropped the suit. ete Hamill, the legendary received an honorary degree from that When Hamill was 11, he earned FELLOW SILURIAN journalist whose newspaper high school a month after he was awarded pocket money delivering the Brooklyn Clyde Haberman: I shadowed Pete columns and books cast a lu- an honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Eagle. He won a scholarship to presti- P gious Regis, but dropped out to become for my Times column in January 1997, on minous light on New York City in a John’s University. the first day of his brief tenure as editor in voice that could be both sensitive and He lived at times in Barcelona, Dublin, an apprentice sheet metal worker in the chief of The Daily News. As he stepped hard-hitting but always characteristi- Mexico City, San Juan, Rome, Tokyo, Los Brooklyn Navy Yard and attend night off the elevator, a security guard greeted cally his, died on Aug. 5 in his native Angeles and Santa Fe, but New York was classes at the Cartoonists and Illustra- him: “Good morning, Mr. Hammond.” Brooklyn. He was 85. the one city he called home. With passion tors School (now the School of Visual Pete laughed it off. The guard, he He died four days after fracturing his and elegance, he wrote more than two Arts). In 1952, he enlisted in the Navy. said, must have been thinking of Percy hip when he fell at his home in Brooklyn dozen books and countless newspaper Returning to civilian life, he spent a Hammond, who’d been a drama critic after returning from a dialysis treatment. columns and magazine articles, even year in Mexico City, trying to become a at the Herald Tribune decades earlier. He was taken to New York-Presbyterian though his first love had been cartoon- painter and learning instead that writing He went on at length about Hammond’s Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he ing. He covered urban riots in America was his game. work. Right there, you had two aspects succumbed to heart and kidney failure. and wars in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Leb- He was hired by the Post in 1960, of Pete: He took his work seriously, but Hamill, a long-time member of the anon and Northern Ireland, but wrote leaving during a long newspaper strike not himself. And there seemed to be Silurians, is the only person who ever sensitively about the trials and triumphs to become a European correspondent nothing he didn’t know. As I wrote back won the club’s Lifetime Achievement of ordinary New Yorkers, always with a for The Saturday Evening Post. In 1965, then, he could hold forth on just about Award (1989) as well as its Peter Ki- rooting interest in the underdog. after a brief stint as a feature writer at the any topic, from “Carmen” to Carmine hss Award (1992). He was a featured He chronicled presidential campaigns New York Herald Tribune, he returned Basilio. luncheon speaker on several occasions and New York neighborhood politics. He to The Post as a columnist. In 1993, as More to the point, at a time when the and always drew a big crowd eager to was in the hotel kitchen in Los Angeles the Post was going through four owners, New York tabloids’ top editors were in hear more of his stories about the poli- in 1968 when Robert F. Kennedy was he was hired to become editor-in-chief. the main British Empire refugees, he laid ticians, entertainers, athletes and other gunned down and helped wrestle down When the fourth owner, Abe Hirschfeld, out what a paper should and should not assorted characters he wrote about for the assassin, and he was in Ray Robin- a parking lot mogul with no experience be. “A newspaper serves a community in more than 50 years. His tales of New son’s dressing room in 1965 after the in media, promptly fired him the staff this country,” he told me, “and you can’t York reflected Hamill’s background as great champion’s last fight. In his spare mutinied. He edited the paper from a learn about that community in any other a street-savvy guy from Brooklyn with time, he wrote the liner notes on a Bob nearby diner and put out an entire edition way except by coming from it.” And to a limited formal education — he was a Dylan album, “Blood on the Tracks.” It filled with derogatory pieces about the new owner. Realizing he was damaging hell with celebrity-obsessed journalism. high school dropout — but with a keen won a Grammy in 1975. his investment, Hirschfeld rehired him “We should never look like we’re eye for observing the life around him and In 1971, he wrote a story about an ex- and gave him a much-photograohed pressing our nose to the glass, watching reproducing it in punchy prose that often con who had been released from prison remorseful kiss. Rupert Murdoch eventu- the goings-on of the privileged.” approached the poetic. and on his way home wondered whether ally bought back the paper and dismissed Important lessons then. Important A New York institution as a reporter, his wife would take him back. In a letter Hamill. lessons still. Hamill was a columnist, an author, a to her, Hamill wrote, the ex-con told her Hamill was hired in 1997 by Mortimer novelist and the editor of New York’s that if she wanted him back she ought Zuckerman to run the newsroom of the Tony Guida recorded two half-hour two major tabloid newspapers, the Post to attach a yellow handkerchief on a big Daily News, but left after a contentious conversations with Hamill four years in 1993 and the Daily News in 1997, oak tree at the bus stop near their home; eight months. ago. The first featured reminiscences and also wrote for the Village Voice and otherwise he would keep on riding on In addition to the Saturday Evening about growing up in Brooklyn and some New York Newsday. He was selected by the bus. When he arrived, the tree was Post, magazines in which his articles have caustic observations about the blight the Museum of the City of New York covered with yellow handkerchiefs. The appeared include New York, The New of super-tall buildings and a fellow as one of the 400 most influential New story was reprinted in Readers Digest Yorker, Esquire, Playboy and Rolling named Trump. The second chat was Yorkers of the last 400 years. Though and, according to a lawsuit by Hamill, Stone. His books range from “A Drink- about his long friendship with Frank ing Life,” a 1994 memoir that traced Sinatra. Here are the links: his journey into alcoholism and how he https://tv.cuny.edu/show/tonygui- overcame it, to a 1998 extended essay dasny/PR2004917 Albert Lasher, Business called “News Is a Verb: Journalism at https://tv.cuny.edu/show/tonygui- Journalist, Dies at 91 the End of the Twentieth Century,” his dasny/PR2004992 BY MYRON KANDEL who would never dream of returning an advance. So they finished the book, and lbert Charles Lasher, a ded- it was published to critical acclaim. Christopher Dickey: icated journalist , successful By that time Albert had entered the Abusinessman and master of a business world as head of corporate A Man for All Seasons distinguished array of public and private relations for Lily-Tulip Cup Corp. He BY DAVID A. ANDELMAN activities, died on May 12. He was 91, later served as chairman of the New York early force in his life. The book Summer of Deliverance was Chris’s moving, bru- and had battled Parkinson’s disease for Stock Exchange-listed Fonda Group. He hris Dickey was many things— tally-honest profile of growing up in the many years. and his wife Stephanie also started their foreign correspondent in three shadow of a brilliant, abusive, alcoholic A loyal Silurian, he started his jour- own successful businesses in the paper mediums (print, broadcast, web), father. nalism career contributing to community goods and food-services industry, which C accomplished editor, novelist, brilliant That was one of seven Chris Dickey papers as a boy growing up in the Bronx; continue to this day. memoirist, devoted husband, father, and books, including two novels. I was es- honed it on the legendary Brooklyn He wore many hats in the non-profit grandfather, and, of course, Francophile. pecially taken by his last book, Our Man College newspaper Vanguard and at the world, devoting his time, money and I am personally most privileged to have in Charleston: Britain’s Secret Agent in Columbia Graduate School of Journal- boundless energy to worthy causes. He called him a friend. the Civil War South, a New York Times ism, and then won professional praise led the way in creating the Interracial His untimely death at 68 stunned the best-selling history which reads like a as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal Council on Business Opportunity, world of international journalism, where novel. He was on the final chapters of a and an editor at Business Week. Right which provided management consulting Chris was a fixture for four decades, first sequel when he passed away. “The hardest thing about writing an after J-School, he landed a dream job at at The Washington Post, then Newsweek, expertise to minority businesses, and finally The Daily Beast and along the obituary for Chris Dickey,” began his Daily the Journal, serving on a three-man team served on the boards of the American way innumerable appearances on media Beast colleague Barbie Latza Nadeau, “is that roamed the United States and wrote Jewish Congress and the Alvin Ailey from MSNBC to France24. His career not having him edit it. He would have in- notable front-page profiles of a number American Dance Theatre, among others. took him to four continents—Nicaragua variably found a better way for me to clum- of states. Close to his heart was his life-long and the contras early on, followed by the sily try to express how truly inspirational he He and his former Journal colleague love of magic, which he practiced since Middle East, before moving on to France was to a whole generation of journalists.” Carter Henderson broke new ground with boyhood. In addition to performing where he put down deep roots. He was Chris would toss off invaluable advice their 1967 book “20 Million Careless before family and friends, he visited proud to have reported from 42 countries, almost without a thought. There was the Capitalists”, a pioneering in-depth study hospitals and youth groups. He but especially proud to have served as a time over a year ago, when I met Chris of the concept of shareholder value. particularly liked to encourage young mentor to innumerable young journalists, and our mutual friend Mort Rosenblum, a Like most new authors, they were late people to share his enthusiasm, and he giving freely of his manifold sources and former editor of The International Heald in delivering the manuscript to the contacts, not to mention wise advice on Tribune, for lunch at L’Écluse, a wine bar mounted a one-man crusade to restart the reporting and writing. on the Place de la Madeleine. Talk turned publisher, and were so mortified about New York chapter of Young Magicians Christopher Swift Dickey was born to our finances. “I’ve just sold off half of missing a deadline that they talked about of America. Inspired by his father, his in 1951 in Nashville—one of many ad- my 401(k),” he announced. “I’d do that if I returning their modest advance. But son Micah even had a book on magic dresses he inhabited. It was his father, were you. It’s not going to get any better.” I friends (including this writer) warned that published while still a teenager. James Dickey, poet laureate of the United cashed out some of my own portfolio within if they did so they would arouse the wrath Albert Lasher was a tireless do-gooder, States and author of the best-selling novel the week. He was right then, as he was of the horde of similarly late authors in the best sense of that word. Deliverance, who was the most important invariably throughout his epic life.