Newspaper tales from another era

Paul Chimera worked in Tonawanda for a short time back in the 1990s. Terry Shaw was editor. I was sports editor. My recollection is one day on deadline in Paul's third week or so, he blew up at Terry and said "I can't take your management style. I quit." Three hours later, he came back, apologized and Terry said something like "you quit. I was going to have to deal with HR and follow procedures because you weren't a good fit."

Paul wasn’t a bad guy, kind of arrogant but the drudgery of the newsroom grind was something beneath him. He didn’t understand, even in those days, everyone had to do everything all the time.

Terry let him clean out his desk and sent him on his way. Here’s what Paul published recently on Poynter.org, a site dedicated to truthful journalism. https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2024/journalists-must-leave-newsroom…

Meanwhile, another better story about newsroom drudgery. The late Charlie Hewitt, one of the two best editors I ever worked for (Terry was the other and they were completely different) brought on an 8th grader as an intern and assigned him to me. It was about 1993 or so. I was a reporter, not yet 30.

On his first day, I gave that intern "Do you remember" to do from microfilm. We needed one a day for 5 days. Three paragraphs or so from 25, newspapers of 50, 75 and 100 years ago.

An hour later, he said "would you like to check my work Mr. Genco." He had done it more quickly and better than I ever could. No typos, nothing even worth editing and good choices. "What can I do now?" he asked? "Can you do another week?" He did. I dubbed him The Natural, ala Robert Redford.

When he was a junior in high school I hired him full time as a reporter for summer because I couldn't find anyone for what we could pay. He was perfect at City Hall once they got over him being a child questioning how the newspaper could be hiring a teenage journalist.

Dave Levinthal never resented anything he was asked to do. He was the anti-Paul. He had great references and went to Syracuse for journalism schoo.

30 years later, he is editor-in-chief of Raw Story, one of the leading sites covering Washington politics. How Hewitt saw it at 13 I will never know.

I pulled this resume from Dave’s bio. Among his employers:

“Center for Public Integrity, Politico, OpenSecrets, the Dallas Morning News and the Eagle-Tribune.

“Dave's work as an editor and reporter won numerous honors, including the Goldsmith Prize, Edward R. Murrow Award, National Headliner Award, National Press Club's Arthur E. Rowse Award for excellence in news media reporting, the Society of Professional Journalists' Sunshine Award, EPPY Award and Radio Television Digital News Association Kaleidoscope Award.

“His writing has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic, Time Magazine, the Daily Beast and Slate. Dave also regularly provides political analysis on news outlets such as CNN, NPR, MSNBC and the BBC. He is a member of the Orato World Media Foundation board of directors.”

You can find his work at www.rawstory.com