Society of the Silurians LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD BANQUET The Players Club 16 Gramercy Park South Wednesday, December 10, 2014 Honoring Sandy Socolow Drinks: 6 p.m. • Dinner: 7:15 p.m. Published by The Society of The Silurians, Inc., an organization Meet Old Friends and Award Winner (212) 532-0887 of veteran New York City journalists founded in 1924 Members and One Guest $100 Each Non-Members $120 NOVEMBER 2014 Sandy Socolow: A Lifetime of Setting the Standard BY MYRON KANDEL said the organization’s board cited Socolow nightly newscasts for Mike Wallace on anford (Sandy) Socolow was the for a journalistic lifetime of excellence, in- the Dumont network and later that year brilliant journalist behind the tegrity and outstanding accomplishment, as joined CBS News, where he remained for Sscenes for the “most trusted man well as for his leadership in upholding the more than three decades, serving as a in America,” as the executive producer standards of the news profession. writer, producer and Washington and Lon- for many years of “The CBS Evening Socolow, now 86, started his journalism don bureau chief, as well as Cronkite’s News With Walter Cronkite.” But his dis- career at Stuyvesant High School and then executive producer. When Dan Rather tinguished news career extended far be- edited the City College newspaper The took over that anchor’s seat, Socolow was yond that highly honored program, in the Campus. He joined The New York Times asked to stay on for more than a year to process earning him the accolade from as a copy boy in 1949, and then accepted lead a smooth transition. He later worked his colleagues as the conscience of the Uncle Sam’s invitation to join the Army dur- with Cronkite on various projects and also network. ing the Korean War. He went to Officer spent two years heading a new TV project For the entirety of his work, Sandy Candidate’s School and wound up in To- for the Christian Science Monitor. He has Socolow has been named to receive the kyo producing United Nations Command continued to maintain a fierce devotion to 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award of the broadcasts aimed at Chinese and Korean protecting the standards of broadcast jour- Society of the Silurians. The first such audiences. Upon completing his military nalism. (Socolow on the current state award was given to Cronkite in 1969, and service, he managed to get discharged over of journalism, page 3.) it has gone to five other CBS news stal- there and was hired by the International (For a more detailed account of Sandy’s warts: Fred Friendly, Joseph Wershba, News Service (which later became the “I” storied career, see the full-length profile Don Hewitt, Mike Wallace and Charles in UPI) to be a roving war and foreign cor- of him in the March 2014 issue of The Osgood. respondent in the Far East. Silurian News available on our Web site Silurian president Allan Dodds Frank Back home in 1957, he began writing Sanford (Sandy) Socolow at Silurians.org.) The Decline and, Like, Fall of American English BY CLARK WHELTON trouble finding talented, literate students n the mid-1980s, American English from Columbia, NYU, Pace University, was overwhelmed by a linguistic and the senior colleges of New York’s City Imutation that transferred the bur- University system. But suddenly it be- den of verbal communication from came difficult to recruit articulate speaker to listener. This semblance of undergrads who could write. Even En- speech substituted sound effects and self- glish majors from an Ivy League campus quotations for vocabulary, clarity and had withered vocabularies and a hazy grammar. Its shapeless syntax defended grasp of grammar. Many didn’t know a those who spoke it against the risk of say- noun from verb. ing something insensitive or socially in- Strangest of all, they struggled might- correct. It was a mode of non-expres- ily to avoid expressing thoughts directly. sion that jumped from campus jargon to In place of plain speech they employed national discourse with astonishing speed. various forms of verbal evasion, such as Without fear of contradiction, I can say, run-on sentences, facial tics, self-quoting like, wow, this new way of speaking was and playbacks of past conversations. “He so, like, you know, whoa! l mean, it was asked if I wanted to go the movies and I like, omigod, totally awesome, and stuff. said yes,” became, “So he goes, like, ‘You This rapid descent into verbal bedlam want to like go to the movies’ and stuff, came to my attention in the 1980s when I and I’m like, ‘Yeah, O.K.’” Uptalking, an was interviewing intern candidates for interrogative rise in vocal inflection that Mayor Ed Koch’s speechwriting office makes statements sound like questions, in New York City. Until 1985 I had no added another element of imprecision to the mix. The would-be interns seemed to be defending themselves against their own words. I called this elusive dialect “Vagueness.” At first I wondered if Vagueness had escaped from the zoo of post-hippy slang. For example, the overuse of “like” as a speech particle goes all the way back to the hipster-beatnik days of the 1950s. But slang usually has a sharp edge. Vague- ness was amorphous, almost impossible to pin down. Operating as a kind of gram- matical anti-matter, Vagueness camou- flaged meaning with vocal intonations and Robert Grossman ambiguity. It had to be decoded by the listener. Nonetheless, by 1987, juvenile speaking standard American English but, with a lack of verbal skill, intern candi- speech patterns that had once been for some perverse reason, had decided dates in the late 1980s displayed serious drummed out of kids in junior high school not to. Extended interviews revealed that shortcomings in composition. They sim- Remembrances of Arthur Gelb, were not only in control in college, they most of the students had no idea how to ply didn’t know how to write. The basics by Ralph Blumenthal. Page 3. were in vogue. It wasn’t as though City carry on a lucid conversation. of sentence structure and punctuation Hall intern candidates were capable of There was another problem. Along Continued on Page 2 Silurians PAGE 2 SILURIAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2014 President’s Report Fall 2014 The Decline and, Like, Fall of American English BY ALLAN DODDS FRANK Continued from Page 1 eluded them. Such a puzzling diminution obust. That’s the word to describe in communications skills could not have the year the Society of the simply appeared out of nowhere. If col- RSilurians is having. Our speakers have been terrific, our treasury healthy, our lege students were not embarrassed newspaper and website reinvigorated, and about speaking gibberish at a job inter- for the first time since at least 2005, our view, if young women were not self-con- paid-up membership has hit the 300 mark. scious about using fashionably rasping Planning for the next round of Silurian voices (technically known as “vocal fry,” Awards for Excellence in Journalism also is but which is probably a contemporary already underway, with the aim of exceed- ing last year’s number of entries and record version of baby talk), they had obviously award’s dinner attendance. Members are reached voting age without being cor- encouraged to help us make the upcoming rected for writing and talking like chil- contest and next spring’s dinner bigger and dren. Vagueness, in other words, must better than ever. To volunteer, please con- have been incubating for years. tact Awards Chair and board member Carol But when did this decline in commu- Lawson by emailing her at cl7688@aol.com. nication skills begin, and why? In 1988, The contest should be much easier to judge this year, now that we have figured out how a professor at Vassar told me that by the to conduct it with entries submitted online. time they arrived on campus, his incom- Please read this excellent issue of the ing freshmen had already been Silurian News cover to cover, then cogitate “juvenilized.” He blamed their poor lan- about how you might contribute a story to guage ability on high schools that, for editor Bernard Kirsch, who is now in his some mysterious reason, had stopped Ahhh, those S.A.T.’s second superb year at the helm. Many teaching grammar and speech. His stu- thanks also go to our webmaster Fred Herzog for his stalwart work in getting mes- dents had no idea how to even diagram who possess excellent verbal skills.” high schools, not the other way around.” sages to all members and keeping the a sentence. But why, I wondered, would There it was: the Vagueness microbe If Steven Cahn is right, then the un- website looking better and better. Board secondary schools do something so self- in focus. Interns with “excellent verbal dergraduates I interviewed in the late member Barbara Lovenheim has stepped up destructive? Why make it harder for skills” had become harder to find in the 1980s - who were born after 1964 - were to oversee soliciting news items about mem- their students to get into college? It late 1980s because there were, in fact, educated in the era of plunging S.A.T. bers for the website in tandem with board wasn’t until two decades later that an far fewer of them. Something, it appeared, scores, the era when colleges radically member Bill Diehl, who is coordinating the answer began to emerge. really had gone wrong in American high downgraded the difficulty of getting a aggregation of news items about the world of journalism. Many thanks also go to In 2009 I came across an article that schools. bachelor’s degree, the era when high board member Wendy Sclight, who has had been published in The New York I decided to call Steven Cahn. Cahn, schools reduced their standards accord- done a terrific job in her first year as dinner Times 22 years earlier, just as Vagueness a professor of philosophy at the CUNY ingly, the era that gave rise to Vagueness. chair for the December program honoring was morphing from fringe dialect into Graduate Center in Manhattan, has writ- Forty years later, the long-term effects Sandy Socolow. mainstream speech. The front-page story ten at length about the “eclipse of excel- of an easier college curriculum are caus- Our twins of indefatigability, former Presi- reported the unexpected failure of 1987 lence” in American education. Cahn re- ing educators to wonder if the changes dents Mort Sheinman and Myron Kandel, Scholastic Aptitude Test (S.A.T.) scores called his 1987 exchange with Owen and went too far. Richard Arum, co-author have helped up the membership to 300 strong with their yeoman work recruiting to rise above the level of 1986, even Teasdale and the precipitous 20-year drop of the book “Academically Adrift,” criti- new Silurians. Linda Amster has been an though the 1987 test takers had more high in S.A.T. scores that preceded it. Citing cizes colleges for treating students like impeccable record keeper and producer of school credits. In response, David R. research by David Riesman, Cahn still pampered consumers and clients, of the board minutes as Secretary of the Owen, a professor of psychology at wonders about one of the most peculiar whom little is required. Arum points out Silurians. Thanks too to the nominating Brooklyn College, and T.W. Teasdale, a elements in this decline. “Women had al- that a typical college student studying one committee: chairman Ben Patrusky, Linda research fellow at the University of ways done much better than men on the hour a day can easily attain a 3.2 aver- Amster, Linda Goetz Holmes, Anne Roiphe Copenhagen, wrote a lengthy letter to the verbal S.A.T.s. But just as the women’s age. How is that possible? At Harvard and Kandel for bringing us four new ca- pable and enthusiastic board members: editor, which the Times published on Oct. movement was finding its voice, women the most frequently awarded grade is an Ralph Blumenthal and the aforementioned 14th. Owen and Teasdale assured Times gave up their lead in the verbal abilities.” “A.” Professors at Harvard and at other Lawson, Lovenheim and Sclight. readers there was no need to worry about “The decline must have started in high universities worry that giving out lower My hat is off to First Vice President Betsy disappointing test scores. school,” I said. grades will result in their courses being Ashton and Treasurer Karen Bedrosian “...Such changes could come about, “No!” Cahn replied. “The decline be- shunned by a student body unaccustomed Richardson for their dedication and flaw- for example, because of economic cir- gan in the 1970s when colleges made their to hard work. less handling of the luncheons, including cumstances, influencing more or fewer curricula easier. Typically, colleges used Did Vagueness begin when college stu- the introduction of credit cards and PayPal to our events. Robbin Richardson and her students to consider attending college and to require 60 hours of core courses for dents taking easy courses ended up staff at The Players also deserve our grati- therefore willing to complete the steps graduation. In the 70s, all that changed. speaking easy English? Wherever it came tude for helping make our events go necessary to take the S.A.T.... Other No more required courses in math, sci- from, the linguistic revolution is over. smoothly. things being equal, we should not be sur- ence, English composition, speech, or for- Vagueness won. In 2008, Caroline For members who missed one or more of prised to see scores drop when there is eign language. Brown University became Kennedy Schlossberg showed how far our outstanding speakers, I am happy to increased access to college (and the the new star of the Ivy League. Why? It Vagueness has moved beyond the cam- report that we now have a policy of record- marginal sub-group is included in the av- wasn’t the city of Providence! It was pus when she said “you know” 168 times ing videos of the events and that the speeches are archived on our website and erage) and rise when access to college because Brown’s open curriculum - stu- in a 30-minute interview. Today, Vague- available for viewing. Since my last decreases...” dents could take whatever courses they ness is even more firmly embedded in President’s Report in May, we have enjoyed Something didn’t add up. In the 1980s wanted — made it easier to get an Ivy American English. Its prospects would Wall Street Journal Editor Gerard Baker, I’d been told that faculty advisers only League degree. When other colleges and seem to be bright. But don’t be too sure. former ABC star (and biographer of astro- recommended top students for intern universities followed suit and lowered the For better or worse, language defies pre- naut Sally Ride) Lynn Sherr and former UPI/ positions. Average S.A.T. scores might bar, so did high schools. The virus of lower diction or restraint. Its future is forever NYT reporter turned author Lucinda Franks be falling, but if college intern candidates standards moved from colleges down to vague. Morgenthau. Our one dose of reality from the other side of the aisle came from our were among the best of the bunch, why November speaker, Robert B. Fiske, Jr. a fas- did it suddenly become harder to find un- cinating pillar of the legal establishment who dergraduates who spoke and wrote En- is a former prosecutor, Whitewater Special glish fluently? Tentative Dates for Future Silurian counsel and eminent defense attorney. On October 29, 1987, the Times pub- Our members also continue to be aston- lished a startling reply from Steven M. Luncheons & Dinners ished by the sensational ongoing reporting Cahn, then serving as Provost and Vice generated in The New York Times by Walt President for Academic Affairs at the Bogdanich about Florida State’s Heisman 2014 quarterback Jameis Winston and the CUNY Graduate Center: university’s handling of his frequent pec- “(Owen and Teasdale) urge us not November 20 - luncheon cadillos and more serious alleged offenses. to be concerned about the fall of Scho- December 10 - Lifetime Achievement Award Dinner Walt’s first story ran April 16 and the fol- lastic Aptitude Test scores since the low-ups keep coming. When I introduced 1960s because decreased scores may him last February, I saluted his legendary result from increased access to higher persistence, sustained indignation and ex- 2015 traordinary journalistic chops. As usual, I education. But in1966-67, of the approxi- under-estimated his impact. mately 1.4 million students who took the January 13 - luncheon Next year, we will continue to build on verbal portion of the S.A.T. a score of February 17 - luncheon the enthusiasm and support of our mem- 700 or higher was attained by more than bers as the board and I strive to continue 33,000 students. In 1986-87, over 1.8 March 17 - luncheon the Silurian tradition of bringing world- million students took the test, and a score April 21 - luncheon class speakers and conviviality to our great of 700 or higher was attained by fewer celebrations of journalism in New York. May 19 - Excellence in Journalism Awards Dinner, presentation Please stay with us and bring a new mem- than 14,000. No appeal to increased ber or two into the fold. access should blind us to this astonishing of Peter Kihss Award and of Dennis Duggan Memorial Prize decline in the absolute number of students NOVEMBER 2014 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 3 Working Harder to Find the Real News BY SANDY SOCOLOW ways been White House attempts to ma- available on uncountable internet chan- t’s a paradox. I am an old fogey in nipulate coverage. Presidents going back nels. the business of journalism. And, More journalism does to Kennedy and even earlier have never “Live television” was cumbersome, Iwhen asked by younger practitio- not necessarily mean been shy about calling reporters and pub- expensive and technically difficult. Viet- ners what I think about the state of the lishers to explain their concerns or com- nam, known popularly as “the Living Room business today, my answer? It’s great. better journalism. plaints (mostly the latter). Most infamous, War,’’ is misnamed. The usual film (as There is more good quality news avail- of course, was President Kennedy’s bra- opposed to videotape, not yet in wide use) able today, in print and broadcast and the zen attempt to suppress The New York story had to be shipped to the U.S. devel- internet than ever before. More than even casions intercepted pool reports before Times “scoop” about the impending inva- oped, and edited, so that the vast majority in the heyday of Edward R. Murrow, distribution and challenged the particular sion of Castro Cuba. of those stories did not air for four, five, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David reporter on the substance of his/her re- Today’s media universe is massive, di- or six days. Brinkley. The downside is that for the port. This is a sea change for the arrange- verse beyond the imagination of practi- “Live Television” today is so easy it is news consumer, it is relatively hard to find. ment wherein the White House acted as tioners like me. When I started there was ubiquitous, and, I submit, unnecessary to The news consumer has to dig, search, a transmission organ with no interest in no cable, no internet, no satellites. When the substance of the story. On all-news otherwise manipulate devices to find it. subject (until after widespread publication I started, an overseas telephone call was cable and satellite channels reporters are Surrounding such gems, however, is an or distribution). The pool report used to expensive enough to require permission often forced to air stories with little avalanche of trivia, gossip, titillations be distributed to a small group of report- from a supervisor. Then one had to con- thought. The same can now be said about aimed to entertain first, not inform. And ers who regularly covered the White tact an international operator, who as- print reporters, who are forced to go to on the serious side of the craft, there are House. They used to pick printed copies signed you a date and time (sometimes a print, if you will, on 24-hour blogs oper- pressures which try to manipulate the from a bin in the press room. Now the day or two ahead) and instructed the ated by so many newspapers. product. pool report is distributed to thousands of caller to stand by the phone for a call- That said, let me repeat: There is more I’ve just learned that the White House recipients, mostly persons with no rela- back or lose your place in the line. quality news and information available press office (why isn’t it more accurately tionship to news distribution. There were only three American wire today than ever. Just look, dig for it. It is named the media office?) on several oc- Don’t misunderstand. There has al- services. Today the equivalent service is worth the search. The Arthurian Legend: Gelb of The Times BY RALPH BLUMENTHAL one good eye (the other was shot out in he Arthur Gelb I remember from Korea) would make it all clear. You were the 1960s would have been sus- had by Arthur, again. Tpicious of the glittering crowd He had a vision for the story he wanted that packed Broadway’s Eugene O’Neill to run. All you had to do was get the facts Theater for his memorial on Sept. 9. The to back it up. irrepressible New York Times editor and When Vice President Spiro Agnew devoted O’Neill biographer who died May resigned in disgrace in October 1973 af- 20 at 90 used to grow uneasy whenever ter pleading no contest to income tax eva- he saw his reporters dressed a little too sion, Arthur was sure Agnew’s fellow well. He feared they were sneaking off Greeks were mortified. He wanted a to a job interview. quick reaction story. I headed for Astoria, Where anyone would want to go then Queens. from the World’s Greatest Newspaper To my surprise, the Greeks I inter- wasn’t clear but that didn’t stop him from viewed were outraged and indignant, in- worrying about it. He had his insecurities, sisting Agnew had been scapegoated. although it was mostly we whom he made One quoted what sounded like a Greek meshugge, not the other way around. But proverb: “Who has the honey and doesn’t we loved him for it, mostly. taste?” I had my lede. Arthur (not to be confused with pub- Arthur was apoplectic. How dare I slur lisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, known as the Greeks? He spiked my story. Punch) was our daunting Walter Burns I remember seeing him pitch a story to — indeed, he consciously modeled him- one of the funniest writers on the paper, self after the wily and roguish icon of “The Israel Shenker. “This is made for you, Front Page.” Sometimes life even imi- Shenk,” Arthur importuned. “Only you tated art (or Artie). The Times one-two punch: Arthur Gelb with A.M. Rosenthal. have the touch for this...” Shenker shook On rewrite one night, as I struggled his head. He was jammed up with other with a story about a breaking investiga- When I started as a copyboy in June fuming, “That shows how immature you stories Arthur had assured him only he tion that grew out of a Times scoop, Arthur, 1964, after an earlier stint as the City are!” I went. could do. Whereupon Arthur dismissed all six-foot-two of him, hung over my College stringer, Arthur was in his first Consistency was not one of Arthur’s him and summoned another reporter. shoulder, shouting suggestions. When I got year as deputy metro editor under his vices. I recall a deputy’s once asking “This is made for you...” he began. around to crediting the paper’s role, he slightly senior alter ego and fellow CCNY Arthur at the metro desk whether a cer- John Darnton, another erstwhile couldn’t contain himself. “Can’t you get dropout, Pulitzer-winning foreign corre- tain reporter should be assigned to a par- copyboy who later succeeded Arthur as The Times in the lede?” he demanded. I spondent A.M. Rosenthal. They were well ticular story. “Don’t interrupt me with metro editor, remembers it was Frank protested, “It’s in the second graf.” He matched. In old salesmen’s terms, if Abe every detail!” Arthur exploded. Later Prial, later to gain fame as the Times’s snorted in disgust. “Nobody reads the sec- was the inside man, keeping a steely eye Arthur was looking for that reporter and preeminent oenophile, who was once sum- ond graf.” on the stock, Artie was the outside man, was reminded he was still out on the ear- moned to Arthur’s windowless cubicle Wow, I remember thinking, right out of brilliantly drumming up business and lier assignment. “Don’t you check these of an office beside the newsroom mail the movie! schmoozing up a storm. things with me?” he complained. desk. As he told it in his deliciously atmo- Eager to catch their eye, I scratched He was known, as Gay Talese recalled Arthur seated Frank facing a large wall spheric memoir, “City Room” (Putnam’s, around for features and covered Sunday at the memorial, for sidling up to report- map of the city and lovingly traced the 2003), he had started as a $16-a-week sermons at 50 cents a paragraph. My ers, curling his arm over their shoulder, contours of the five boroughs. “Wherever copyboy in May 1944, a 20-year-old City break came when two of my overheld and trying to sell them on a story by whis- the land meets the sea,” he intoned, “will College dropout and Army reject (bad stories landed on the second front the pering in their ear, “There’s a great deal be your domain.” eyes) who quickly drew attention by in- same day. Without a byline (only staffers of interest in this.” The reporter was left The horrible truth began to dawn on novating a house organ called Timesweek got bylines), the mysterious unsigned to believe that Punch himself was behind Frank. “Arthur,” he asked “are you of- that celebrated the reporters and stories pieces drew Abe’s attention and got me the assignment. fering me shipping news?” behind the paper’s stories. promoted to the reporting staff. Of course, reality often struck at the That was exactly it, Arthur said proudly. He got not only his job but also his wife I previously told the story (The Educa- end of the day when the reporter, clutch- Frank resisted. It was not at all what he at The New York Times — newsroom tion of a Timesman: Silurian News, De- ing what were sure to be notes for a page wanted to be doing. Arthur pressed him, clerk Barbara Stone, who happened to be cember, 2012) how Arthur decided one one story, lined up at the desk of night saying that was a big mistake, a career the stepdaughter of one of his idols, play- day to move me to the White Plains bu- editor Sheldon Binn for a space alloca- breaker. But Frank held firm. In that case, wright S.N. Behrman. Soon Arthur was reau, insisting, over my objections, that the tion. “Half a buck, kid,” Shelly might de- said Arthur, since Frank was the first be- a junior critic, discovering up-and-coming job required what he repeatedly called my cide, consigning you to 500 words if you ing offered this plum, he should not men- stars like Barbra Streisand and Woody kind of special maturity. I was young, yes, were lucky. If you weren’t, you’d end up tion it to anyone else. As Frank walked Allen, and embarked on a dazzling career but oh so mature. When I continued to with an M-hed, 350 words, or worse. But out of Arthur’s office, a reporter asked, that would take him from the metro desk protest, worrying that I might get stuck in if you were tempted to blurt, “Arthur “He offer you shipping news?” to the masthead as managing editor. the suburbs, Arthur ended the discussion, said...,” Shelly’s amused squint out of his Continued on Page 4 PAGE 4 SILURIAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2014 The Arthurian Legend: Gelb of The Times Continued from Page 3 tration and had heard that Deputy Mayor presided over the metro desk. Once chew over Big Ideas. But they usually But Arthur was not easy to turn down. Robert W. Sweet, a Yalie, was at the known as the fastest of Times rewrite men degenerated into nit-picky sessions about He was intimidating, from his towering game. Dick needed to find him and get a and a boulevardier who squired the ladies editing goofs and other irrelevant minu- stature to his flashing eyes and waving quote. Dick made his way through the in his own Rolls Royce, George had a tiae. I felt bad for Arthur. arms that columnist Maureen Dowd at 64,000 fans, searching for Sweet, to no definite cachet. But for all important de- He himself once told of coming out onto the memorial service compared to a blink- avail. To make mat- cisions, he called Broadway in 1971 to find the streets ing slot machine and whirling helicopter ters worse, Harvard Arthur at home. I mobbed with religious protesters de- blades. lost, 24-20. Dick often thought, nouncing the new musical “Jesus Christ Back in the 60s, he once corralled me soon quit the politi- He had a vision for the watching the pro- Superstar” as blasphemous. He quickly in the office waving a copy of the Daily cal beat for aviation cess, that George called the metro desk to send a reporter News with front page wood screaming reporting. story he wanted to run. would be better off and photographer. “They wouldn’t do it,” about a state no-show scandal in Albany. You couldn’t phoning Arthur he recalled ruefully, shaking his head in We needed to match it. Match a make an offhand All you had to do when he got in, bafflement. “I told them who I was.” At competitor’s investigative series? On remark to Arthur placing the re- the time, he was metropolitan editor. deadline? “Get up there right away,” without risking a was get the facts to ceiver down on the He got angry at me once for writing, Arthur commanded. federal case. One back it up. desk and just shout- in a 1995 article about music, that the I took the bus up to Albany. When I morning, coming off ing into it whenever Sony Music Entertainment mogul Peter walked into the bureau they told me, the elevator, I he had a question. Gelb was a son of Arthur Gelb, a former “Arthur called, looking for you.” I called bumped into him, Long after he managing editor of The New York him back. “What’ve you got?’” he asked. and more in the way of making conver- left the culture desk for the masthead, Times. He thought it implied that Peter I told him I had just arrived. “Ahh,” he said, sation, mentioned that a line had been Arthur relished his standing as the Times’s hadn’t come by his position on his own. “forget it, you’ll never match them.” He dropped out of my story. Arthur drew him- arts czar emeritus. I once heard a rumor I tried to explain that if I hadn’t men- told me to come home. Next day the News self up to his full height, announced I had that architecture critic Paul Goldberger tioned the relationship, readers would broke a second installment. Arthur called been grievously abused and took me by would be named the new culture editor have complained I was trying to hide it. me in again. “Maybe you’d better get back the arm to confront the offending editor, and asked Arthur if it was true. His an- We made up. to Albany,” he said. I happened to look over my embarrassed protests notwithstand- swer was surprisingly candid. “Yes,” he Yes, we joked about his foibles. But and saw Shelly, doubled over and clutch- ing. Did I really want to start a blood feud said, “but it doesn’t matter.” Frank Rich at the memorial put it best: ing his sides in hysterical laughter. with someone who would be handling my But for all his bluster, Arthur could also “Those of us who loved Arthur will carry For Arthur, no task was too impossible copy in perpetuity? be touchingly vulnerable. him in our hearts forever. But it still feels for his reporters. Richard Witkin, then an On weekends, when Arthur was not in He came up with the laudable idea of as if the North Star has vanished from ace political reporter proudly dyed in the office, the debonair George Barrett weekly meetings of metro reporters to the sky.” Harvard crimson, was at the 1967 Harvard-Yale game in New Haven with his family when, to his astonishment, he heard his name booming over the loud- speaker. “Richard Witkin of The New Agent of a Foreign Government York Times, call your office.” To the mor- tification of his young sons, Gordon and BY MYRON KANDEL as non-threatening a country as could covered the Justice Department and Tom, the Yale Bowl erupted with boos. uring the long newspaper strike be). And also, what if I ever wanted to the Supreme Court. They unanimously (The boys thought the crowd was booing of 1963-64, a number of publi- run for public office? My opponent agreed, Max said, that I should sign the their father.) Dcations and other organizations could legitimately label me as an agent form. And so I did. Maybe I imagined Dick hurried to the press box and called tried to help out some of their income- of a foreign government. it, but I always felt they both had a in. Arthur was on the phone. Metro was challenged friends by assigning them So I wrote to my friend Max good laugh over the “problem” I had running a story on the Lindsay Adminis- freelance writing projects. The New Frankel, who was then the State De- presented them with all the way from York-based public relations firm Ruder partment correspondent for The Times, Bonn, Germany. & Finn asked me to do a piece on one and outlined my dilemma. Max (who But now it’s on the record. I’m a of its clients, the Caribbean country later won a Pulitzer Prize and became self-admitted agent of a foreign gov- Society of the Silurians Curaçao, for the Pan American World the executive editor of The Times) ernment. Fortunately, I never had to Officers 2014-2015 Airways cargo newsletter. The piece wrote back that he had taken the mat- write about Curaçao again, so I never would deal with Curaçao as a good ter up with his colleague Anthony Lewis faced any conflict of interest and I President place to do business. The firm said it (another Pulitzer Prize winner), who never did run for public office. ALLAN DODDS FRANK would provide me with the information First Vice-President and would pay me $75. I agreed, gath- BETSY ASHTON ered some additional material and Second Vice-President BERNARD KIRSCH knocked off the article in less than a day. Since I was making about $40 a Treasurer KAREN BEDROSIAN day as a full-time copy editor on the RICHARDSON City Desk of The New York Times, Secretary that was a pretty good rate of pay. LINDA AMSTER About a year later, while I was the Board of Governors correspondent in Germany for The RALPH BLUMENTHAL New York Herald Tribune, I received JACK DEACY BILL DIEHL a letter from Ruder & Finn saying that GERALD ESKENAZI under a new law, I was required to reg- TONY GUIDA LINDA GOETZ HOLMES ister as a foreign agent. The firm en- CAROL LAWSON closed a form on which to do so. I BARBARA LOVENHEIM wrote back, saying that I had received BEN PATRUSKY ANNE ROIPHE the payment from the firm and not the WENDY SCLIGHT country, so I didn’t think I needed to MORT SHEINMAN register. Besides, I pointed out, it was Governors Emeriti only $75. GARY PAUL GATES Despite my protestation, Ruder & HERBERT HADAD ROBERT McFADDEN Finn said its lawyers maintained I did LEO MEINDEL indeed need to register. I felt that

Committee Heads wasn’t fair (although I thought that if I Advisory did need to be labeled a foreign agent, MYRON KANDEL the island-nation of Curaçao was about Curaçao flag. Dinner WENDY SCLIGHT Legal KEN FISHER Membership BOOKS BY SILURIANS MORT SHEINMAN Nominating Gerald Eskenazi has published, on Ira Berkow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning niscences of the people to whom this great BEN PATRUSKY Kindle, “Class of 1950: How a Bunch of journalist, has written a tribute to “Wrigley place has meant so much. Notable fans Silurian Contingency Fund Trustees Smart Kids From a Brooklyn Ghetto in Field,” which coincided with the 100th an- interviewed include Barack Obama, Scott LARRY FRIEDMAN, CHAIR niversary of “the one and only.” “Wrigley Turow, Joe Mantegna, Sara Paretsky, Jim NAT BRANDT the 1940s Set Out to Change the World!” JOY COOK It is $3.95 to download. The book’s about Field” documents the stadium’s entire ca- Bouton, and George Will, among others. MARK LIEBERMAN what happened to us, about the old East reer through a decade-by-decade account With a foreword by former major leaguer MARTIN J. STEADMAN New York neighborhood and how it and a collection of historical photographs Kerry Wood and a preface by former Su- Silurian News BERNARD KIRSCH, EDITOR shaped us. and memorabilia, and vivid first-person remi- preme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. NOVEMBER 2014 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 5 Two Different Paths to Tell a Story BY ANNE ROIPHE spin words without checking with journalists have no business ovelists and journalists are sources, without searching for double mucking around with symbols twins in a most Siamese kind confirmations, without actually setting and their nebulous meanings. Nof way. Both are witnesses to foot on the deck of any boat, or taking They better tell it is at is, as I the world we live in. Both are after some- any risky journey other than the one in need to know it. I don’t want thing true, if not immediately apparent. the brain which can, it is true, lead to my newscasters, either early Both are curious about the flow of time some rather dicey places. The fiction in the morning or late at night, and human event through all the turns writer is not hobbled to the actual real- waxing metaphorical. I want of the earth. But when it comes to the ity of a stranded ship, many days late them to tell me the facts. I method to achieve these goals, the two to port, on which a spiritual crime has don’t want those facts sugar- kinds of writers (sometimes it’s the been committed, and retribution taken. coated or slanted. I might same writer using only one of her or his But the fiction writer has other goals. need them explained. But the available masks) are drastically differ- He or she must hold our attention, carry explanations should be as ob- ent and when they confuse identities, us across the barriers of doubt, “Oh jective as possible and when forget their place, the work itself come on, all he did was shoot a bird, a opinion is expressed it should trembles and tumbles. short-lived creature with no memory of be clear that it is opinion I am But let’s start with the common mo- his mother, a bird like we regularly eat hearing. If I don’t like the opin- tive. The journalist wants to tell a story, for dinner.” The fiction writer has to ion I am apt to turn the chan- a real story, not necessarily the one that shape his story so that we the reader nel, or put down the paper, or appears at first glance. The novelist also don’t put it down (rubbish, really, why go to bed with a good novel. wants to tell a story. But here the two is this thing included in the anthology There are characteristics separate. The novelist tells a story that anyway?). The fiction writer has to grab novelists and journalists share. is not real; by definition it is made-up, us and hold us much like the Ancient Both pay attention. Both re- but it too must float down, fly up, reach Mariner himself, must keep the wed- member the clues that lead to to a level where it speaks the truth, not ding guest from joining the throng in- the less obvious fact. Journal- the truth of facts but the more elusive side the church. ists must be ever curious. A truth of human experience. The jour- The journalist can tell his story as writer of fiction, poetry or nalist may be political and report on the briefly as his editor wishes or he can prose, who does not also have President’s speeches or the failures of stretch it a bit with some color; the a real love of the telling de- Congress to do such and such or the sailor’s shoelaces were untied, the top tail, the revealing silence, the demonstrations in the streets and the of his head where he had lost his hair Anne Roiphe moment when something crimes of the back ally and the crimes was burned red from the sun, etc. But breaks or mends, or soars, is of the boardroom, or the corruptions of those pieces of color should be accu- a writer impoverished, soon to those we want to trust like men of the rate; if they are not there is danger that times the entire village, sometimes the turn to another profession, perhaps ac- cloth, or ball players, or schoolteachers. the smallest of falsehoods will render entire nation. And what they see in that counting. The novelist wants to hold the reader suspect even the facts that are accu- mirror is not just a made-up story. If it A journalist, even a tired journalist, will rapt. The novelist, like the Ancient Mari- rate. There might be a contamination in lasts, if it is good, if it is worth passing stare out the train window at glimpses ner, grabs the wedding guest by the the piece by the temptation to exagger- on to your friend, it is about the hard of life in the passing field, the windows sleeve and must tell the tale of how the ate, to surmise, to assume what cannot choices of living. It is about the failure of folks living near the tracks, in the fig- soul was moved, fallen, crushed, re- be fact-checked. of love. It is about the chaotic and de- ures huddled under the station’s protec- deemed perhaps, or not. The journalist termining ways of sexual life, identity, tive hood. A weary novelist, a dreamy will describe accurately the ship on experience. It is about morality and poet stares out the window of the mov- which the Ancient Mariner sailed, how crime, guilt and innocence, joy received ing car: who is out there, how are they many canons on each side, how many We need to trust that and joy delayed, and a million other mat- living, what will happen to them tomor- rations rotted in the hold, how much ters large and small that may be obscured row? A science journalist must love the drinking water remained on Day 4 or the journalist has not in the thicket of facts, but can be re- facts, and the facts under the facts The 45 and what the dying men whispered invented his facts. If vealed in the imagination, unveiled by the difference between journalist and nov- to their absent mothers, their soon to be power of verse, or made clear by the elist or poet lies in what next. The jour- orphaned children: that is if they can they are not true, he line of a plot. nalist registers the scene. The writer get a survivor to give them a quote. The Journalists can be a moral force in the takes his or her own pulse. What has journalist will tell us the biological con- should be punished, world for good or bad. But the Nazi’s this made me feel. How can I write about struction of that Albatross so unfortu- had journalists too and dictators every- what I know if I don’t know what I feel? nately shot by the hapless Mariner. The fired, banned. where stack their presses with those who For many journalists, the “I “ is com- journalist will be at his or her best if will tell their untruths as they wish. But pletely submerged, invisible to the reader. actually aboard the ship, embedded with we also have hero journalists who dare In bad journalism the appearance of the the sailors. His or her report will cover We need to trust that the journalist to challenge the political powers and end “I” may signal that we are about to read the scabies sores in the mouths, the has not invented his facts. If they are up in cages and prisons around the a piece as interesting as that “How I smell of dead albatross rotting in the sun, not true, he should be punished, fired, world. We have journalists who put their spent my summer” essay of the sixth the last of the bottles of wine lying empty banned. We need to know as citizens in lives on the line in war-torn places and it grade. Some journalists can turn the “I” in the crow’s nest. this modern world far more than our does happen they may lose their heads into a mirror of us and when they do that, The journalist will be interested in the own eyes and ears can tell us and so as barbarians hold them captive. These well, they push journalism right to the failure of the ship’s home company to we rely, deeply rely, on the journalist, are men and women of extraordinary edge of invention. If they don’t do it well provide enough food for an emergency. his radio, TV, newspaper, blog, to tell courage and as a nation we need them we get self-absorption, irrelevance. It will question the business decision to us what we cannot know by ourselves. to persevere as believers in free speech When it works, that journalists “I” is send the ship on such a long and dan- Who is killing whom and why. Who is and free expression. glorious, but when it doesn’t: we recoil. gerous voyage. The journalist will in- taking the lion’s share of the economic Poets are not much use to the As a novelist, when I write journal- vestigate the profit of the company, was spoils. Do they deserve it? Who is try- Peshmerga nor do we need them beside ism, I am tempted to color the sky a bet- it at the expense of human life. He or ing to stop them and what is happening the dams of Mosul. They would not have ter, more dramatic color, to put a few she will hint at further matters to be un- in private homes in suburbs, in huts in helped us end the war in Vietnam or words in someone’s mouth I didn’t hear covered at a later time, when full ac- foreign lands, in places where bombs taught us to despair over the mayhem in but am pretty sure might have been said. cess to the ship’s log is made available have fallen, or disease has struck. The Cambodia. But what they can do is I resist. The line between fact and fic- to a curious and suspicious public. The journalist is responsible to bring us re- struggle with our moral corruptions, our tion must remain a third rail, a life-sav- journalist will ask why, why is it taking ports of inventions, doctor’s secrets, deep hope, our belief in a better world to ing third rail. When I write a novel I sink so long for the company spokesperson lawyers foibles, actual justice done or come, here on this earth or on a distant down into my memory. I lie and lie and to come forward with a truthful expla- undone. We need the journalist: what star just now burning its way to a place never worry about the factual truth. I nation for the disaster at sea? The jour- pleasure lies in a home run if no one in some new solar system. Poets can worry about the emotional truth. That nalist will quote from the sailor who knows it soared up over the bleachers? write lines that comfort us in bad times. takes enough energy for any hard work- was so drunk the night the boat set sail We need the journalist, not just the way Poets can bring us closer to whatever ing twin. The Ancient Mariner is a poem, he missed it and in the morning the ship we needed the town crier in simpler we consider holy, perhaps a field of daf- a prayer perhaps, a moral story and a itself was just a small glint on the times, but the way we urgently need to fodils or perhaps as Gerard Manley ghost story. But the protagonist, he is a horizon’s edge so he went back to the know, where is the high ground, when Hopkins put it, ‘— my heart in hiding novelist, turned to poetry, given no choice tavern and promised himself to give up is the flood coming, what is the tyrant stirred for a bird, — the achieve of; the but to repeat his story over and over. He drink, which he will do, one of these planning, who is the most selfish of them mastery of the thing!” Or Emily is a writer, like his creator. He doesn’t days. all and who is wearing what to the ball. Dickinson, “Hope is a thing with feath- tweet, or text, or instant message. He The poet and the novelist, both of But fiction writers (poets, too) are ers.” grabs the wedding guest and holds him them,will tell the story of the boat be- up to something else. They are holding So is the Albatross a symbol for Christ, with his words. That is what all writ- calmed and ghostly without ever leav- a mirror to the face of human experi- or is the hapless bird a symbol of nature, ers, journalists or novelists, poets or ing their desks, and each of them will ence, sometimes just their own, some- nature that God protects? At any rate, sportswriters, do. It’s our fate. PAGE 6 SILURIAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

Credit Mort Sheinman Credit Bill Diehl Lucinda Franks was the guest speaker at the October Silurians luncheon. Lynn Sherr at the Silurians September luncheon. The Reporter and the D.A. Lynn Sherr: Still Going Strong It was, Lucinda Franks freely ad- stolen Holocaust art, and led one of Lynn Sherr may have ended a 30-year movement, NASA opened its doors, so to mitted, an odd pairing - her affair with the most sweeping criminal prosecu- run as one of ABC News’s most signifi- speak. She was one of 35 people ac- the austere Robert Morgenthau: “He tions ever: the multibillion-dollar inter- cant journalists, but she’s not finished talk- cepted, six of them women. She went into was steeped in enforcing the law and national fraud case involving the Bank ing-or writing. space in 1983, at 32 the youngest Ameri- I was breaking it,” she said at the of Credit and Commerce Interna- Alternately tart, witty and funny, she can to have done so. Silurians’ October lunch. tional. helped open the Silurans’ fall season in Sherr recalled some of the questions When they met in the 1970s, Franks But Franks’s talk was mostly on a September with a discussion that centered Sally Ride had to answer before and af- was a not-quite-hippie, sometimes pot- personal level, how two people so dif- around her latest book - “Sally Ride: ter: “Aren’t you afraid of being in orbit smoking 26-year-old reporter for ferent found and loved each other. America’s First Woman in Space.” Sherr with all those men?” was one. Another also used the book as a springboard to reporter asked if she would cry if some- United Press International and She was a Gentile from New England; talk about her own career, and especially thing went wrong. Ride kept her compo- he was a scion of a German-Jewish Morgenthau was the District Attorney the hurdles and the expectations women sure-Sherr described her as always tamp- of Manhattan-a role he was to hold family (and his grandfather was faced back in the ancient 1970s. ing down her emotions in public. for 34 years. Besides, he was almost Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of “People talked about the Golden Age “Sally became an icon, an inspiration,” twice her age, a widower with five the Treasury). “I learned about Jew- of journalism in the Ed Murrow era,” she claimed Sherr, citing the fact that more children. ish holidays,” she said. “and how to said, and added, “but not when we didn’t than 50 other women have flown in space Yet, it became a love story she has make a seder.” have minorities and women in the field.” since. described in a highly acclaimed mem- Also, at home he was not the arch As for herself, she said she had a simple Ride was always honest and available oir, “Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and figure he appeared to be in public - as response when someone once asked her to Sherr, who once was able to see her Me.” They married, and had two chil- a campaigner, she said, he was “very why she became a reporter: “For a very during a period just before a flight when dren. stiff.” But he enjoyed cooking for her. corny reason—to tell the truth.” astronauts were quarantined. Sherr also Franks, who went on to win a And unknown to the public, she said, Her distinguished career included those spoke of being able to juggle her role as a Pulitzer Prize and a stint at The New he also suffered from post-traumatic ABC years that included reporting on “20/ reporter with her friendship with the as- York Times, spoke about Morgenthau’s stress disorder. He served on a de- 20” and, more significantly perhaps, her tronaut. Ride died of pancreatic cancer stint as the network’s anchor on much of in 2012, and her partner called Sherr and virility in their bedroom as well as the stroyer that was hit by a kamikaze plane during World War II, severely the space program. It was during that time suggested she should be the one to write significant role he played in law en- that she met Sally Ride. a book about her. forcement. Indeed, she claims that he affecting his hearing in one ear. Sherr described how NASA had been “We now have a generation of kids had information about terrorist plots But if those at the luncheon wanted an all-male club (the first astronauts all who can be just like her,” said Sherr in aimed at New York City-but that the to know more about her famous hus- were test pilots, a role closed to women). her concluding remarks. “Will we ever Government ignored it. band, Franks said, “you’ll have to buy But then, Sally Ride became one of 25,000 have a woman on the moon? Oh yeah!” Morgenthau also was an interna- the book.” women to apply when, in response to the tional figure, involved in uncovering — Gerald Eskenazi burgeoning awareness of the women’s — Gerald Eskenazi May 2014, the Silurians Awards Dinner

Left: Jim Fitzgerald, who has spent a lifetime at The Associated Press, was honored with the Peter Kihss Award. And with this award, he said, “I have made it to the big time.” The award honors a journalist who has helped mentor younger people in the business.

Gerard Baker, of the Wall Street Journal Right: Rosa Goldensohn, a student at the CUNY Graduate At our June luncheon, Mr. School of Journalism, in accepting Baker, editor in chief of the the Dennis Duggan award, said it’s Journal, spoke about the chal- “really special and kind of strange to lenge of giving his newspaper receive an honor at the beginning of your career before you’ve actually a “more modern digital sensi- done very little, so I’m going to bility” while still “embracing interpret this as a promise to honor print journalism.” the work that all of you do.” NOVEMBER 2014 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 7 The Sports World’s Living Encyclopedia

cast and wrote about a sport he loved, A SILURIAN PROFILE including broadcasting bicycling at the Olympics. Arlene, a talented decorator BY GERALD ESKENAZI who somehow figured where Frank’s n my first assignment covering voluminous file cabinets could be placed boxing at Madison Square Gar without preventing people from moving Oden, Frank Litsky was the slot- about, passed away 10 years later. They man at The Times. were married 48 years. It says something “Make sure you mention the names of about Frank that Charlie’s widow, Mary, the fighters, that it was at Madison Square remarried, had children, and Frank con- Garden, what weight class they were in, siders them his grandchildren. the fact it’s on national television, the at- He met the accomplished Zina Greene tendance, and who won and how. In the six years ago, and they travel the north- first paragraph,” Frank Litsky told me. east corridor, either at her place in West I think that encapsulates so much of Stockbridge, Mass., or his longtime home Frank and his career as a newspaperman. in Edgewater, N.J., or Zina’s other home First of all, he was helpful to - no, looking in Washington, D.C.-not to mention trav- out for - young reporters. And he was the eling to see Zina’s kids and grandchildren. most thorough newspaper guy I have ever Frank also stops by to join fellow Silurians run across. Besides, his obsessions - facts, at luncheons. He has been a member more and more facts, leavened with color and than a dozen years. rich background - made him the ideal The numbers in Frank’s résumé are New York Times reporter. quite remarkable: He has covered eight Frank, now 88, had been at the paper Frank Litsky Olympics, about 15 Super Bowls (includ- only for one year when I started as a copy ing the first three). He was president of boy in 1959, but he already was a legend. 6,100 bylines are among the highest in the Frank off the copy desk and made him its the New York Track Writers Association He even had a nickname, “Splash,” be- history of The Times (only about 1,500 track writer - where he has flourished and for more than 40 years (thanks Frank, for cause, if you needed to know a swim- behind me, but those advanced obits of starred since. He also found time to cover those $6 luncheons at the weekly meet- ming stat, Frank was your man. And when his haven’t appeared yet). Don’t forget the New York Jets’ football team for three ings at Leone’s). he wasn’t around, the other copy editors his eight books and numerous stories and years. In recent years, Frank has been a bul- rooted around his drawer, because Frank citations in various encyclopedias. Frank also did a significant stretch as wark in supporting sports at UConn, his had every tidbit of information you’d need Actually, I forgot about the early years. the Sunday sports editor, and brought the alma mater. Although Charlie went to USC, back in the day before computers. Thus, There was Frank’s paper out of its predict- Frank established the Charles Litsky Me- if someone won an 880-yard race by 1.3 picture in the local pa- able past and into a morial Scholarship Fund at Connecticut. seconds, why, Frank had a chart, Scotch- per, under the headline brighter present by Typically, Frank can tell you all the rel- taped to a pull-out drawer, that translated “Boy Wonder.” It was A man of statistics, freshening the paper evant facts about the scholarship, which that drab number in time to the actual a story about 8-year- with outside writers and has raised about a quarter-of-a-million number of feet. old Frank and his en- statistics and even great features. In fact, dollars: they have come from winners of No wonder The Times has kept him cyclopedic knowledge he brought the Sunday two Pulitzer Prizes, winners of three around so long. He didn’t formally retire of sports. In a one- more statistics. sports section the Emmys, one Super Bowl-winning coach, until 2008, when he was 82. He celebrated week stretch, he ap- country’s first op-ed one Super Bowl-winning team, 10 Olym- by showing up a week later in Eugene, peared on three radio page devoted to sports. pic gold medalists, five contributors in Ore., and writing — at a track meet, of stations talking about sports. And when And one of his important free-lance hires various sports halls of fame, and winners course. He still writes, about the living and, he was all of 10, a radio station asked him was James Michener, who agreed to write of seven Tours de France. You think often, about the dead. For Frank has 125 who would win the Kentucky Derby in about his beloved Philadelphia Phillies. Frank knows some people? advance obits that haven’t run. 1937. Frank predicted the order of the first “Paid him $150, too,” crows Frank. Of course I also was curious and won- “I don’t really know how I picked track three finishers (War Admiral won, if you He also got a fellow named Arthur dered recently about all those files he used and field and swimming as a young man,” must know). Ashe to write about the false lure of sports to have. For some reason, when he was said Frank. “Maybe it was because I only As a precocious young man, he spent for young black men, and for $100 col- 8, he started keeping files on football play- lived 25 minutes from Yale, in Waterbury, 10 years with United Press, sandwiched lared his friend, the artist leRoy Neiman, ers (“even though I didn’t know anything Conn., and a high school coach used to around a stint in the Korean conflict, and to draw original pictures to go with many about football”). I also remember Frank take me there.” made a name for himself writing copy for of the articles. Frank’s Sunday sports sec- clipping stories all the time when I was a Well, Frank went on to the University the UP’s radio outlets. But Frank believed tion received the Associated Press’s first copy boy. Well, what about all those clips, of Connecticut, graduated at the age of UP was a dead end, and applied to The editors’ award in 1977. Frank? 19, and has spent much of the next 70 Times, where it turned out the guy in My wife and I became friends with “I’m glad you asked,” he said. years writing. He is in the writers’ wing charge of hiring went to....yes, you Frank and his wife, Arlene, and son, “Everything’s very neatly filed in cardboard of the Swimming Hall of Fame (a few guessed it...Waterbury High. Frank be- Charlie - wonderful people who left us drawers - 70 feet of them.” He’s the only feet away from plaques belonging to came a Timesman. And when the 1964 too soon. Charlie died in 1993, an almost- guy I know who measures his stuff. And Johnny Weissmuller and Mark Spitz). His Olympics were held, the paper plucked iconic figure in bike-racing who broad- why not? It’s a great collection.

BACK ON TV (FOR 60 SECONDS) — This was the scene in 1st Vice President Betsy Ashton’s studio this fall when a PBS film crew followed her around for two days. They were shooting a 60-second “planned giving” spot that will air on public television stations nationwide beginning in January. It will be titled “Betsy’s Story” and speaks to why, as a journalist-turned-artist, she has actively supported public TV for many years. PAGE 8 SILURIAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

Bios of New Board Members A Memoir: My First Byline Ralph Blumenthal was a New York Times staffer from 1964 to 2009, covering city BY MYRON KANDEL had a fair share of pieces published, mostly tor of the editorial page. and suburban government, West Ger- of the one-to-three-paragraph variety, but Every evening, at around 5, the edito- many, South Vietnam, Cambodia, orga- y first byline was unusual in nized crime and political corruption, the the sense that it was prob- a few lengthy ones as well. Because I rial department would leave for the edito- arts, and Texas and the southwest. He Mably noticed by only one per- was not a full-fledged staff member, none rial page make-up editor a handwritten led the Times team that won a breaking son - me - and never saw the light of print. of the longer pieces carried my byline. list of the editorials being set in type that news Pulitzer for the 1993 truck bombing I was working as a copyboy at The New The idea of joining that august body of day or held over from previous days. Next of the World Trade Center, and received York Times during the summer of 1951. ivory tower thinkers who inhabited the to the title of each editorial was the last a Guggenheim fellowship to write a book It was in the middle of my senior year at quiet ring of offices surrounding the tenth- name of the writer. How I scanned that on a reformist warden of Sing Sing prison, floor library added a totally new dimen- one of his five non-fiction books. After re- Brooklyn College, from which I was to single sheet of lined yellow paper each tiring from The Times, he was named a graduate the following January. In the sion to a budding journalistic career. night! I yearned to see the name Kandel Distinguished Lecturer in journalism at midst of running copy, sorting mail, sharp- I immediately set to work. The coun- show up. No luck. Baruch College. He grew up in New York, ening pencils, carrying stacks of paper up try was embroiled in the Korean War. It It finally dawned on me after a few attended Music and Art High School for from the pressroom and assorted other had to be ended, and I had some ideas luckless nights that The Times was not art, City College, and the Columbia Uni- mundane activities, I learned that any about that. When my copyboy shift was depending on copyboy Myron Kandel for versity Graduate School of Journalism. He member of the Times staff was eligible to finished, I found an unused reporter’s desk the solution to the Korean War, so I de- and his wife, Deborah, a writer of and typewriter in the city room and got to children’s books and young adult novels, write editorials. Write an editorial for The cided to set my sights lower. I wrote an have two grown daughters. New York Times! My mind boggled. work. I worked on my editorial for parts editorial on the need to give blood to sup- Now, writing for The Times was not a of two days and nights, producing God port the war effort. The day after I sub- Carol Lawson was a reporter and editor totally new experience for me. I had knows how many drafts before I was fi- mitted it, I rushed up to the composing for The New York Times for 23 years. She served the previous year as the paper’s nally satisfied and sent it off through the room to look at that yellow sheet of pa- began her career with The Times as an Brooklyn College correspondent and had inter-office mail to Charles Merz, the edi- per hanging from a spike and — joy of editor in the Arts & Leisure section (and joys! — there it was: “Give Blood — as the only woman on the staff). Eager to become a reporter, and despite some in- Kandel.” ternal impediments, she persisted and fi- But that didn’t mean it was certain to nally got the chance to join the Culture be published. Those “filler” editorials department, for which she wrote the New Members sometimes hung around for days or even weekly Broadway column and produced weeks and then, having grown stale, a steady stream of news and feature ar- Daniel Bases is a New York-based global investment correspondent for Thomson Reuters. He covers financial markets, business and foreign policy, and has reported and taught business and economic journalism from Asia, were deleted from the list. It seemed like ticles on the performing and visual arts. Europe, Latin America and the U.S. Prior to joining Thomson Reuters in 1997, he was a producer at CNN Business forever, but a few days later it ran. My The birth of Carol’s daughter inspired the News. He is a former president of the New York Financial Writers’ Association. editors to give her a new assignment: cov- editorial on the editorial page of The New ering family issues for the Style depart- Kathleen Brady was a reporter at Women’s Wear Daily in the 1970s and 80s before spending a decade reporting York Times. Wow! (I also received a $15 ment. Over the years, Carol contributed for Time magazine and writing for Newsday. Recently, she has been researching long-form articles on a project basis payment; for someone making $27 for a to other sections of the paper, including for Time. She is the author of “Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker” and “Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball.” full week’s work, that was a welcome Sports, Travel, Science and the Book Re- windfall.) view, and has also freelanced for a vari- Douglas Clancy is assistant managing editor of The Bergen Record. He joined The Record in 1976 and has held So that was my first professional by- ety of magazines. For the past 11 years, various reporting and editing posts, including special projects editor and business editor. From 2007 to 2011, he was also executive editor of The Record’s sister publication, The Herald News. line — even though I was the only one Carol has been teaching the class “Pro- fessional Writing with Power “ in NYU’s who noticed it. In my 12-year span at the Donna Cornachio is a journalism professor at SUNY Purchase. Her track record as a journalist goes back to 1981, paper, I received many genuine bylines School of Continuing and Professional when she was an assistant producer at WCBS-TV. She later became a freelance writer whose work has appeared Studies. Carol serves on the Advocacy in The New York Times, The Daily News, Newsweek, salon.com and The Washington Post. on articles I wrote, first as a freelancing Council of the Citizens’ Committee for Chil- copy editor for many sections and then dren of New York. She has B.S. and M.S. Mary Cronin was a senior correspondent for Time magazine from 1969 to 1991. She is the author of numerous as a financial reporter. But the penciled- degrees from Northwestern University’s cover stories and wrote everything from celebrity profiles to pieces on modern prison design. in “Kandel” on that sheet of yellow paper Medill School of Journalism. Frank DiGiacomo, a senior editor at Billboard magazine, was a columnist and editor-at-large for The New York was the most memorable. Barbara Lovenheim is founder and edi- Observer. His previous positions included contributing editor and writer at Vanity Fair magazine and assignments at The New York Post and The New York Daily News. tor of a three-year-old website,“http:// nycitywoman.com/”NYCitywoman.com, Mike Eisgrau is a broadcast news veteran who launched his journalism career in 1963 as a news writer and for women fifty +. Previous to this ven- reporter for WLS/ABC radio in Chicago. He was a reporter, editor and news director for WNEW Radio News from In Memoriam ture, she worked as a print journalist and 1967 to 1991 and is now in public relations. author for 20+ years. From 1979 to ’80, Nancy Dunnan, a veteran business writer and she covered the arts in London for The Howard M. Epstein is the former editor and publisher of Facts on File, and had a direct hand in writing and editing the editor and publisher of TravelSmart, a news- International Herald Tribune. Upon her many of its publications. Facts on File’s reference and news service databases provided an important research letter with a financial spin on the world of travel, return to the US, she wrote regularly source for newspapers all over the country in fields ranging from history to health. He left Facts on File in 1990 died in July. She was the author or co-author of for The New York Times, The Wall Street and has since been a freelance writer and publishing consultant. He is the translator of Serge Klarsfeld’s “French more than 30 books, including “The Dun & Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial.” Journal, New York magazine, McCalls Bradstreet Guide to Your Investments,” “Never and other national magazines for twenty Jill Freedman is a freelance photojournalist and the author of seven photo collections. Her work is part of the Call Your Broker on Monday & 300 Other Finan- years, often interviewing celebrated fig- permanent collections of major institutions that range from New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the International cial Tips You Can’t Afford Not to Know” and ures, including Katharine Hepburn, Center of Photography to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. “How to Invest $50 to $5,000.” Arianna Huffington, Hillary Clinton, Rob- ert Redford and Gregory Peck. She is the John Martin was a national correspondent for ABC News from 1975 to 2002. He shared a George Polk Award for Fred T. Ferguson, 82, died on Aug. 22. A second- author of three books: Survival in the reporting on the tobacco industry’s manipulation of nicotine; he shared an Emmy for reporting on public subsidies for generation Silurian and a former board member, he Shadows: Seven Jews in Berlin (Peter H. Ross Perot’s private projects; and he won an Award for Excellence from the National Association of Black Journalists for describing the role of 18,000 black sailors in the Civil War Union Navy was a reporter and editor at UPI for 27 years, Owen/London and Random House/ Ger- starting in 1956, before embarking on a career in many), Beating the Marriage Odds (Will- . Betsy Osha was a television producer for 30 years prior to retiring. From 1979 to 2009, she produced segments public relations, primarily for PR Newswire. iam Morrow), Breaking Ground (Hudson in the news departments of NBC-TV, ABC-TV and WCBS-TV, including stories for “Dateline NBC” and for ABC’s Hills). She earned a BA from Barnard and “20/20.” In addition, she produced documentaries for WCBS, and from 1972 to 1979, she was the book editor at John Mack Carter, 86, died on Sept. 26. He a PhD in English from the University of the “Today” show. Rochester. She started out as an assis- was the trailblazing editor of McCall’s, Ladies’ tant professor of English at CUNY, where Graciela Rogerio was a producer and writer at WABC-TV’s “Eyewitness News” from 1981 to 2012, producing Home Journal and Good Housekeeping who mod- she taught from 1966 to 1975. daily reports and special features on medicine for the nightly newscasts for much of that time. Now retired. ernized women’s magazines in the Sixties to re- flect concerns of the feminist movement. Wendy Sclight retired in 2008 after 31 Andrea Sachs retired this year as a senior reporter at Time magazine, where she had spent the last 30 years, most years at The New York Times, where she of them devoted to covering the book publishing industry. Isabel Mount, 86, a long-time Silurian who was served in a variety of editing positions. actively involved in helping to promote some of Jane Sasseen is the founding executive director of the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the CUNY New York’s leading cultural institutions, died on The last 15 years of her career were spent Graduate School of Journalism. She was an editor and writer at Business Week from 1994 to 2009, Washington in the newspaper’s Culture Department, bureau chief for Yahoo! News from 2010 to 2011, and has taught financial reporting at Tsinghua University in Sept. 26. She was the widow of Murray where first she was the deputy editor of Beijing. Schumach, another veteran Silurian, who was a the Weekend section and then edited the reporter at The New York Times for 48 years. work of the paper’s architectural and art Rita Satz was an Emmy-winning writer and producer for WNBC-TV and the “Today” show for more than 20 years. Mount worked for such organizations as the Mu- reporters and critics. She began her ca- She also won an investigative-reporting award from the Society of Professional Journalists. After she retired, she seum of Modern Art, the Museum of Primitive reer as an editing intern at The Washing- taught a course called “Inside TV News” at the Center for Learning and Living. Art, the American Museum of Natural History, ton Star and worked for 5 years at a National Medical Fellowships, and Teachers Col- Knight newspaper in Ohio before joining Stephani Shelton has a background in radio and television that began in 1973, when she was an on-air reporter for CBS News. She has worked as a TV reporter and producer for such organizations as Financial News Network, lege at Columbia University. The Times. She is a native New Yorker, WNBC-TV, WWOR-TV and WPIX-TV. Currently, she freelances as a radio anchor, producer, writer and segment but lived for many years in Europe and producer at CNBC. the Washington, D.C. suburbs as a child of a military officer. She now resides in Martha Weinman Lear has been a freelance writer since 1982 and the author of “Heartsounds” and the just- Greenwich Village and Water Mill, L.I. published “Echoes of Heartsounds” — two autobiographical books about heart attacks among men and women, and Society of the Silurians Since retiring, she works as a volunteer why the symptoms often differ. She was with The New York Times Sunday Magazine from 1958 to 1964 as a for an organization producing audio writer and articles editor and from 1964 to 1980 as a staff writer and a contract writer. Earlier in her career, she PO Box 1195 books for the visually impaired and was an assistant editor and writer at Colliers magazine. Madison Square Station serves on the Advisory Council for the New York, NY 10159 Marvin Siegel, now a freelance editor, was with The Times from 1966 to 2000. When he retired, he was an Bridgehampton Historical Society and assistant to the managing editor. Before joining The Times, he worked for The New York World-Telegram and The 212.532.0887 Museum. Bergen Record, among others. www.silurians.org