Reporting Chappaquiddick Continued from Page 1 Told Me

SocietyLIFETIME of the Silurians EXCELLENCEACHIEVEMENT IN AWARDJOURNALISM DINNER HonoringAWARDS Steve GALA Kroft The National Arts Club The15 Gramercy National ParkArts SouthClub 15 Gramercy Park South Wednesday,Wednesday, October May 15,16, 2019 Drinks: 6 P.M. Dinner: 7:15 P.M. Drinks: 6 P.M. • Dinner: 7:15 P.M. PublishedPublished by by The The Society Silurians of thePress Silurians., Club, an an organization organization Meet old friends• and award winners [email protected] by Eventbrite or with ofof veteranveteran NewNew YorkYork CityCity journalistsjournalists foundedfounded inin 19241924 [email protected] NOVEMBERMARCH 2019 2019 ReportingFeminism: Chappaquiddick BY ANTHONY MARRO hen Newsday moved out of Now and its Melville plant back in WAugust, most of the pictures on the walls were put up for grabs. Rita Ciolli, the editorial page editor, grabbed Then and sent me one that showed me and Bob Greene and others standing on the bridge at Chappaquiddick a few days after Sen. Ted Kennedy had driven into the tidal pond, a July 1969 accident that resulted in the death of his passenger, Mary Jo Ko- pechne. It shows that, like most reporters on the job back then, I was wearing a suit and a tie. A few nights later I was back on the bridge again, but this time wearing only my underwear. I dove into the pond and touched bot- tom, which wasn’t difficult because the water seemed to be only about ten feet deep. I came up and then dove down again four or five times. Kennedy had said that he had tried to rescue Kopechne, but that A WOODSTOCKthe current had been too strong. Greene, who headed Newsday’s investigations team, wanted to know just how strong the current was. But as a man with a Sydney MEMOIRGreenstreet sort of bulk, he didn’t think he was the right person to test it. BY JACK DEACY bridgeIt was on such Chappaquiddick a dark night thatIsland I keptand Marro, left, and photographer Ken Spencer in front of the Harbor View Inn at Martha’s Vineyard in 1969. killed Mary Joe Kopeckne. During that n the sunny morning of memorable year, theContinued Vietnam Waron Page raged 6 Friday Aug. 15, 1969, motel on, Nixon was sworn in and Sy Hersh Oowner Jack Besterman and broke the My Lai massacre story. The I walked up the driveway of the Pine Black Panthers brought a militant new Recalling the Clattering of theMotel in KeysWhite Lake, New York where phase to the Civil Rights movement, the it meets Route 17B. What we saw Manson murders shook Los Angeles, BY BILL DIEHL and started using a computer toamazed write hisus. newscasts.As far as our eyes could see, New York’s Stonewall riots started a gay Recently I took an informal pollthe roadwayof some of was my a fellow vast sea of cars. All revolution, and the Beatles broke up. o many of us Silurians, it is a familiar mem- Silurians about their typewriterabandoned. memories. The Here only are things a moving on And on August 15 upwards of few of the responses. ory: the clackingAnne Roipheof 100, or (inset) 500, typewriters, and Katie Roiphe the road were the drivers Tas reporters and editors worked toward their Bert Shanas, who worked andat the passengersNew York Dailywho deadlines in open newsrooms. The sometimes deafening News for many years, recalled thathad whenabandoned the paper madethem, “I never seen nothing like this the switch from typewriters to computers, Jimmy Breslin noiseBY ANNE could beAND almost KATIE soothing. ROIPHE For some, theYork typewrit University.- She is the author of The all walking slowly west er itself became a crucial part of the writingMorning process, After: couldn’t Sex, Fear, handle and Feminism,it. He wouldn’t toward go near their a computer destination and before,” he said to me. “All this would dictate his columns to his secretary, who would and manyilurian were reluctantAnne Roiphe to give was it up one when The computer Violet Hour , and the forthcoming The five miles away: the then type them into the computer. for a concert? Who’s playing, word-processingof the most arrived powerful in the andearly best- 1980s.Power Notebooks. She has also written Woodstock Music and When WNEW Radio passed into history, veteran One reluctantknown feministconvert was writers longtime of theprint reporterfor The andNew York Times, Harper’s, Slate, Art Fair. In this pastoral Frank Sinatra?” CBSS commentator Andy Rooney. “I like beingThe a Paris writer Review, WNEW and other reporter publications. Mike Eisgrau landed a job as Com- last century. Her daughter Katie Roiphe setting, for at least a few munications Director at the Javits Center, which was butis one I also of thelike most writing,” prominent Rooney of wrotethis one. in his 2002 book days, the human foot using a computer system. Mike says he was able to CommonSilurian ‘Non’News Sense.editor “ MichaelThe only Serrilltime I feel inKatie control Roiphe: would overtake the combustion engine. 400,000 young people descended rescue an IBM electric typewriter from the storeroom ofasked my lifethem is to when have I aam conversation sitting at my about typewriter—com I wrote -a piece for The Guardian on Besterman, an elderly Jewish on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm for the and used it throughout his tenure at Javits. “I did use puterwhat now—typing.”has become known as the MeToo finding out that my male colleagues man who once ran a grocery store Woodstock festival. The country seemed the Javits computer system, but never mastered the me- movement, Like Rooney a vigorous and many debate of aboutus of athe certain were age, paid we more than me. When they got in Brooklyn, kept staring at the to be spinning out of control. But it was chanics very well, so I used the IBM to type addresses grewdiscrimination up with typewriters. and sexual In harassment high school Itheir needed job anoffers from the university they monumental scene. “I never seen a newspaper reporter’s dream. on envelopes,” he says. extrathat continues credit to graduate to plague and society took herea “touch and typing”negotiated class, and asked for more money nothing like this before,” he said to me. At the time I was writing a Daily News Silurian Clyde Haberman sent me an article from soaround it was theme andworld. 30 young The format women. is AsKatie the yearsand went when by I got mine my instinct was “All this for a concert? Who’s playing, column three times a week that covered 1999 that he wrote for The New York Times. A few andinterviewing I became herpart mother of some about big broadcasting how things newsrooms,just to say thank you. Since then I have Frank Sinatra?” music, politics, sports, government and excerpts: “Bit by bit—byte by byte?—computers have thathave, typing and haven’t, course becamechanged. important. I didn’tresolved have to ask for more money for my So began my five-day odyssey city characters. I was 25 years old and pushed typewriters to the same musty shelf where you’ll produceAnne, my a former copy memberby the “hunt of the and Silurian peck” methodwork. Havelike you ever asked for more covering the 1969 Woodstock Festival my cup runneth over. find buggy whips, bottles of cod-liver oil and, any day manyBoard of of my Governors, colleagues. is the I too author joined of theUp computermoney forbri -your work? Do you think this for the New York Daily News. I had In late May I began receiving releases now, New York City subway tokens,” he wrote. gade—notthe Sandbox, exactly 1185 parkkicking Avenue, and screaming, Epilogue butis a with feminist the issue? come to cover a music festival. But and materials from promoters of a three- Why do some diehards even to this day cling to an realizationand 15 other that Inovels had better and learn non-fiction computer skills or my it would morph into an absolutely day concert in upstate New York. It was obviously outdated technology? Haberman quoted Lois jobbooks. would She behas in written jeopardy. for New York Mag- Anne Roiphe: incredible weekend and one of the going to feature some of the biggest Gould, who said, “the perfection I see on the computer azine,Yet whenThe Newcomputers York Times,were introduced Ms., Elle, at CBS I Radio,do think this is a feminist issue or major stories not only of 1969 but of names in rock and folk music: the screen I find dangerous. It looks good, therefore you correspondentVogue, Cosmopolitan Reid Collins and rebelled. a variety The of dayat he least arrived a problem for feminists. I would the Sixties. Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater think it’s right.” inother the newsroompublications. and a computer was on his desknever instead dream of asking for more money And what a year 1969 was for news. Revival, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby Stills Another writer, Frances Whyatt, says the typewriter of aKatie typewriter, is the he director tossed theof machinethe Cultural into a wastebasketand I am sorry to say that I probably American astronauts walked on the Nash and Young, The Band, Janis and walked out. Collins was suspended. A short time “slows you down enough to make you better.” Reporting and Criticism program at New Continued on Page 5 moon, Ted Kennedy ran his car off a Continued on Page 3 later he went to CNN, where he later gave up his protest Continued on Page 7 CBS’s Andy Rooney at his beloved machine. PAGE 2 SILURIAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2019 President’s Report COPY BOY!!! BUT I WAS A GIRL Right Back At It! BY ROBERTA BRANDES GRATZ School’s back in session and we are off to a smashing Fall season as started at the New York Post in Silurians! March, 1963, when the Post re- Not that this summer has been I sumed publication after the four- wanting for excitement.

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