Donald Trump: Press Siren by ALLAN DODDS FRANK Avenue — Was Cordial and Only a Little Overing Donald Trump Has Combative
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Society of the Silurians EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM AWARDS BANQUET The Players Club Wednesday, May 18, 2016 Drinks: 6 P.M. Dinner: 7:15 P.M. Meet old friends and award winners Published by The Society of The Silurians, Inc., an organization (212) 532-0887 of veteran New York City journalists founded in 1924 Members and One Guest $100 each Non-Members $120 MARCH 2016 Donald Trump: Press Siren BY ALLAN DODDS FRANK Avenue — was cordial and only a little overing Donald Trump has combative. But even then, it was obvious always been a challenge. his relentless self-promotion generated C The one aspect of his behavior waves of overstatements, exaggerations that constantly tests reporters is that his and misrepresentations. Fact-checking credibility is always suspect. There is him clearly was going to be a nightmare. never a guarantee that anything he says As an owner of the New Jersey or asserts can be taken as absolutely true. Generals, Trump had flashily signed Being completely truthful is not and has some big stars, including running back apparently never been part of Trump’s Herschel Walker, who lent the new modus operandi. U.S.F.L. enough appeal to garner a $15 Thinking about the thousands of million contract from ESPN to broadcast people I have interviewed during my football in the spring. four decades as a newspaper, magazine Some U.S.F.L. owners thought the and television reporter, I am hard- league –- by creating a bidding war — pressed to think of anybody like him. could stockpile enough talent to force I have been following Trump and the N.F.L. to create two or more new his business adventures since I first always relished publicity. And he with a rich father and a burning desire franchises in exchange for collapsing the interviewed him 32 years ago for a story knew that if an investigative reporter to be more than a regional celebrity. U.S.F.L. and absorbing its star players. in Forbes. was sniffing around, the best way to His first big national play was his grand That deal -– split among the U.S.F.L. His media savvy was apparent to all understand the challenge and control the plan to drive the U.S. Football League owners –- would have generated huge even then, long before he polished his damage was to call the journalist back to greatness and take a bite out of the profits or even better: stakes in N.F.L. close-ups for 14 years as a television right away. National Football League. franchises that might now be worth game-show host. Unlike other executives In 1984, he was a hyper-ambitious My first interview with him – in more than $1 billion each. who were terrified by reporters, Trump young developer active in local politics his office at the Trump Tower on Fifth Continued on Page 4 From the Southeast Corner BY BETSY WADE challenge Europe to war or peace and uys who insist on the last word left the world breathless for the moment, usually pound on desks or the new German army crossed the Gslam doors. Nothing like that military frontier, which hitherto had fits Theodore Bernstein. But at The New separated it from France, and occupied York Times between 1948 and 1969, the demilitarized Rhineland zone created the last word was his. He stood over in the Versailles treaty and reaffirmed at the composing room stone and told the Locarno. makeup when to let page 1 go. Of many To see what you could find 22 years final words, that was the last indeed. later on page 1, here is the lede of a It was said that printers all recognized police report by Alexander Feinberg on his writing and when a correction in that Aug. 11, 1958: script went to the copy cutter, the page Thieves broke into two display would not lock up without the new slug. windows at Tiffany’s, on Fifth Avenue at In this period, when Bernstein Fifty- seventh Street, early yesterday and was news editor and then top-ranked lifted out jewels valued at $163,300. assistant managing editor, he goaded, Their timing was as perfect as goosed and dragged the newspaper, the exquisite diamonds they stole. paragraph by paragraph into the 20th A patrolman who normally is in the century. His boss and ally, the managing neighborhood from midnight to 8 A.M. editor Turner Catledge, a Southerner, was relieved at 5:45 A.M. He was sent put it more gently, saying that Bernstein to reinforce a guard detail for Soviet sought to bring “a new element of daring Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko on to editing the paper.” his arrival in New York. To understand “daring,” you should I met Bernstein in 1956, when I joined know that one of Bernstein’s precepts the Times. He was in his early fifties, was “one idea to a sentence.” Pretty probably at the height of his power, and Jeff Roth/The New York Times radical, eh? I was 27. I had passed all employment Ted Bernstein at his desk, with a map of the world as his backdrop. But peek at what Bernstein was hurdles, and it was my final vetting. struggling against. It was brief. They pointed me into the “So,” he said. “I have always thought Ted himself, and I did eventually As a sample of the old model, here corner office, where he sat at a desk in women would be good copyeditors.” I call him that, must have also had an is the lede on a Times page 1 dispatch front of a world map covering the entire had no idea what to say. He resumed: interesting first day as a Times employee by the Pulitzer Prize correspondent Otto wall. He looked then as he almost always “You’d better be good.” Almost a smile. in 1925, although he was younger than I D. Tolischus. It was carried on March did to me later: wearing a four-in-hand I said something about hoping so, and and perhaps had bigger dreams. 8, 1936, the day after Hitler’s troops tie and a business shirt, usually with a that was that. Out I went into that block- Theodore Menline Bernstein was marched into the Rhineland: monogram, with the sleeves carefully long newsroom to fulfill my dream: born Nov. 4, 1904, to a well-off New BERLIN -- Germany today resumed folded, in eyeglasses and holding a copyediting at The New York Times, the York family. He was the younger son her “watch on the Rhine” when, with cigarette. His expression was calm and place that had never had a woman on the of a lawyer, Saul Bernstein, who was a an astonishing bravado that dared possibly friendly. copydesk. Continued on Page 2 PAGE 2 SILURIAN NEWS MARCH 2016 President’s Report From the Southeast Corner BY BETSY ASHTON We got off to a grand start this year with Continued from Page 1 a room-capacity crowd for our January graduate of City College, and his wife, lunch featuring Met Opera General Manager Sarah Menline Bernstein, who had been Peter Gelb. Son of legendary New York a high-school teacher until she married. Times editor Arthur Gelb, he seemed quite Family lore says that they enjoyed at home with the crowd of journalists and wide contacts in the city’s professional was open about the challenges of dealing with difficult divas and financing the world’s community, receiving visits from the most expensive art form, He included video likes of Bernard Baruch. Ted’s older clips of operas, adding great music and high brother, Marshall, was a lawyer. drama to our opening lunch. If you missed Ted went to Columbia College, where it, go to our website, he was editor of the Daily Spectator, the www.silurians. org, where we have links campus paper. After an A.B. in 1924, to our recent speakers. he went on, despite his parents’ wishes, Our next speaker, in February, Jane Bryant Quinn, was also enthralling, as she to the Columbia School of Journalism, spoke about money money money. And which had opened in 1912. He earned I made sure I bought a copy of her latest the degree the school was then awarding, book, “How to Make Your Money Last: The the B.Litt., in 1925. Indispensable Retirement Guide.” Then he encountered Columbia’s We also have a new board member, dark side. In addition to endowing the Michael Serrill, formerly president of journalism school, Joseph Pulitzer, the the Overseas Press Club; he accepted the board’s invitation to fill the seat left vacant Hungarian Jew who made the New by Linda Goetz Holmes, who served the York World great, had also provided, as prizes for the top graduates of each Silurians exceedingly well for so many In the late 1940’s, Ted Bernstein at the Columbia Journalism School years. When not co-chairing our Awards class, money for traveling fellowships. Program with Ralph Blumenthal, Mike is Ted was one of the three top students with a page 1 markup of the students’ page on the blackboard. assistant managing editor of Bloomberg in ’25, he later told his niece, but who announced himself as “the Jewish criticisms to the seventh circle of Markets magazine. Columbia’s anti-Semitic undertow kept Bernstein.”] worthlessness. The Wars of the Roses Ralph and Mike have done an exemplary job in revising our Awards the award from him. It is not impossible This promotion put Bernstein in were never more bitter than struggles Program by reducing and refining the that Nicholas Murray Butler himself, control of the paper’s language and its between Times reporters and editors.