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Society of the Silurians EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM AWARDS GALA The National Arts Club 15 Gramercy Park South Wednesday, May 16, 2018 Drinks: 6 P.M. • Dinner: 7:15 P.M. Published by The Society of The Silurians, Inc., an organization Meet old friends and award winners of veteran New York City journalists founded in 1924 [email protected] MAY 2018 Silurians Celebrate The Best BY MICHAEL S. SERRILL winner of Silurian Medallions for Inves- Awards Co-Chair tigative Reporting and for Reporting on Minority Issues. The Newsday reporter n 2010 a new Nassau County Execu- says he spent 18 months digging into tax tive, Republican Edward Mangano, assessment data, looking for winners and Itook office with a promise to over- losers. Mangano is now on trial for cor- haul the Long Island county’s always-con- ruption in a separate matter. Clark notes tentious property tax assessment system. that the new county executive, Laura Seven years later an enormously enter- Curran, has declared she will correct the prising Newsday reporter, Matt Clark, tax inequities, while her deputy has copies undertook to learn how the “reform” had of Clark’s stories hanging on the wall of worked out. Using the huge sorting pow- her office to remind her of the urgency to er of modern technology, he examined address the question. some 2.5 million tax bills and came to Clark’s reporting was overseen by some startling conclusions. According Martin Gottlieb, a former editor of The to Clark—and his findings have not been New York Times, ex-editor-in-chief of seriously challenged—over seven years The Record, and now “I-team” editor for the new assessment system resulted in Newsday. Gottlieb praised Clark’s ability a shift of $1.7 billion of the county tax to “digest enormous streams of data” in burden from its richest homeowners to PUBLIC SERVICE MEDALLION: THE NEW YORK TIMES his “relentless” pursuit of a story “that its poorest. had many twists and turns. It was one This happened because the county of the most exceptional efforts I’ve ever basically stopped fighting tax assessment The Making of a Meltdown been involved in.” appeals. Those who appealed their tax Clark was one of more than 30 award bills usually won, which meant their tax How Politics and Bad Decisions Plunged recipients in the Silurians contest, which bills increased $466, or just 5 percent, focuses on journalism from the tri-state over the seven years. Those that did not New York’s Subways Into Misery area of New York, New Jersey and Con- appeal—usually the elderly and minori- BY BRIAN M. ROSENTHAL, nine riders to the hospital. A crowded necticut. The biggest winners were News- ties—saw their property taxes increase EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS AND F train stalled in a downtown tunnel, day, which garnered five Medallions and an average of $2,748, or 36 percent. MICHAEL LAFORGIA leaving hundreds in the dark without air four Merit Certificates, and The Record of Moreover, while the county saved tens of conditioning for nearly an hour. As the northern New Jersey, which earned three millions of dollars, the firms that home- fter a drumbeat of transit disas- heat of packed-together bodies fogged Medallions and five Merits. owners hired to handle their appeals took ters this year, it became impos- the windows, passengers beat on the Also prominent was the New York in more than $500 million. Asible to ignore the failures of walls and clawed at the doors in a scene Times, which picked up three Medallions Matt Clark’s months-long effort, known the New York City subway system. from a real-life horror story. and two Merit awards. Other winners in- as database investigative journalism, A rush-hour Q train careened off the In June, after another derailment clude Bloomberg News, The Daily News earned him two of the top awards in the rails in southern Brooklyn. A track fire injured 34 people, Gov. Andrew M. and Vanity Fair. The suburban Journal Society of Silurians’ 2018 Excellence on the A line in Upper Manhattan sent Continued on Page 8 News also boosted a double winner. Re- in Journalism contest. Clark, 34, is the Continued on Page 4 Dennis Duggan Award: Peter Kihss Award: Samantha Maldonado – Winner Winner — David W. Dunlap BY JERE HESTER BY CLYDE HABERMAN he Society of Silurians selected avid Dunlap values precision, Samantha Maldonado as the and so one of the first things Twinner of the Dennis Duggan Dhe did after entering the Times Memorial Scholarship Award, given Gallery on a recent afternoon was to annually to a student at the CUNY Grad- make sure that the grandfather clock in a uate School of Journalism who excels at corner was properly wound. The gallery producing stories about everyday New is David’s realm these days. It is a small Yorkers. The honor, to be presented at New York Times museum and archive the Silurians’ annual dinner on May 16, that he is creating in a 15th-floor corner 2018, comes with a $1,000 honorarium. of the newspaper’s building on Eighth “Sam is a strong writer and a natural Avenue. Artifacts include typewriters reporter,” said Ellen Tumposky, a former (remember them?), a war correspondent’s Daily News reporter and editor who was helmet and bullet-proof vest, a bust of one of Maldonado’s first professors at Adolph Ochs and the writing desk of the CUNY J-School. “She has shown a Henry J. Raymond, who co-founded the sharp eye for stories that others might paper in 1851. overlook.” And there’s the grandfather clock, Tumposky said Maldonado is a smart SAMANTHA MALDONADO given to Ochs by the citizens of DAVID W. DUNLAP young journalist whose promising early Chattanooga, Tenn., in 1892. That was work evokes the spirit of Duggan, the late and the New York Herald Tribune, whose four years before he headed north, having crown for the last 43 years, with his Newsday columnist who long chronicled old headquarters building now houses the borrowed money to buy what was then elegant prose and with dogged reporting New York City and its people. Duggan, a CUNY J-School. indeed a failing New York Times. You that reflects the same precision he devoted past Silurians president, also worked for Maldonado, came to the J-School know the rest. to that clock. Readers may know him best The New York Times, the Daily News Continued on Page 2 David has been a jewel in the Times Continued on Page 2 PAGE 2 SILURIAN NEWS MAY 2018 President’s Report Peter Kihss Award: Winner – David W. Dunlap Continued from Page 1 probe. Some would reiterate drivel. He landmarks, city planning and land- for his meticulous chronicling of the would try once again.” use issues. That led to years in the physical New York—Lower Manhattan’s “Finally, signing off with his exquisite Real Estate section, where his editors, Hail & Farewell! rebirth post-9/11, political machinations manners and gentle tone, he would say, ‘I Michael Sterne and Michael Leahy, set BY BERNARD KIRSCH that make every square foot of develop- thank you.’ Then he would slam the phone him loose to explore the city as an ever- ment a battleground, architectural glories down, rise to his feet and shout: ‘Lying! evolving organism. He flourished in that ait. Before I start, I need and mistakes. Rat! Bastards!’ ” role, as he would as well helping start a minute to recuperate You don’t really need the byline to David might have been destined to the Times’s “Lens” blog and making his from listening to Andy recognize vintage Dunlap. Like this lede become a newspaperman almost from “Building Blocks” column for Metro W from April 2017: “New York, the city of the beginning, which for him was in San indispensable reading for anyone who Borowitz. Whew. OK. Now I’m ready. perpetual arrival, is getting three new Francisco in 1952. At age 12, his family cares about New York. I am so happy about our season gateways: diaphanous cable-stayed bridg- having moved to Chicago, he wrote and For two years in the mid-1990s, of speakers, and by our room-filling es that look almost too ethereal to bear the edited a neighborhood paper that he David also covered gay and AIDS turnouts. Thank you, Silurians. Our load of thousands of vehicles and people called the Daily Dunlap, which may have issues. Back when he’d started at the last three luncheons — with David each day.” Or this from May 2016 on a been Dunlap but was hardly daily. “A paper, “gay people were beyond careful Cay Johnston; Dan Rather & Gary repository of World Trade Center ruins: hamster’s death would be banner news,” in hiding who they were, and could rely Paul Gates; and last month with Andy “Hangar 17 at Kennedy International he said. only on each other for support,” recalled — were quite special. I watched every Airport is large enough to house a Boeing At Yale, Class of 1975, he majored in Richard Meislin, a former senior Times 747. For 14 years, however, it has held art history, but an interest in architecture editor and reporter. “David, of course, one of them a second time, on the vid- something much larger: the morning of and infrastructure was practically in his was one on whom you could always eo on our Silurians.org web page. And Sept. 11, 2001.” DNA. His father was an architect with rely.” now, in May, we have our Excellence For his talent and his nurturing of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

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