MARCH 2013

Published by The Society of The Silurians, Inc., an organizationof veteran New York City journalists founded in 1924

Society of the SiluriansEXCELLENCE IN

JOURNALISMAWARDS DINNER

The Players Club16 Gramercy Park South

Wednesday, May 22, 2013Drinks: 6 p.m.

Dinner: 7:15 p.m.Meet Old Friends and Award Winners

Reservations:(212) 532-0887

Members and One Guest $100 EachNon-Members $120

A Roundtrip, From Artist to Journalist to Artist

Continued on Page 4

BY BETSY ASHTON

Those who remember me as theconsumer editor of WCBS-TVand CBS News may well won-

der how I made the switch from journal-ist to professional portrait artist. It’s notthe typical move from the newsroom. ButI was an artist before I ever picked up amicrophone.

From the time I was old enough to holda pencil, I sketched things — mostlypeople — especially my teachers. “Betsy,what are you doing? Bring that up here,”the teacher would scold. When I walkedthe paper up to her desk, her tone wouldchange. “Oh! May I keep that?” Andso I figured that I had potential as an art-ist. I also grew to love history, politicalscience, debating, and international rela-tions, but I majored in art in college. Myfirst job involved illustrating ads for theG.C. Murphy Company — not exactlygreat art — so I quickly switched to teach-ing art in high school. But overcrowdedclassrooms filled with kids who took artmainly to escape music or shop or have a“play period” prompted me to go back tograduate school for a Master of Fine Artsdegree, with the intention of teaching artin college and painting.

My timing was terrible. In 1969, theart world was totally enamored with Mark

Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and people whothrew balloons full of paint at the wall. Iwas not an Abstract Expressionist,Minimalist, or looking to do the next shock-ing thing. People interested me: their char-

acter, stories, motives, how they changeor are changed by the world around them.I had already painted dozens of portraitsof fellow high school teachers and theirfriends, and had done more than a few

cartoons for various publications. I foundmyself having the wrong skill set in an artworld that I thought was going bonkers.In the summer of 1970, Gene Davis,

Continued on Page 4

BY ANNE ROIPHE

You could say a memoir writeris a reporter whose assignmentis herself. But that is only

partly true. A memoir writer is a journalist with a

point of view that cannot be purely ob-jective. There is always an agenda inthe writing which would spoil decentjournalism but serves as the fuse that firesmemoir with its energy, its passion, itsintensity.

A good journalist needs to tread withcaution and listen with a degree of skep-ticism, and check the facts. A memoirwriter on the other hand needs to aban-don caution, confront the dangers, exposethe very things that we are trained tohide from others, our flaws, our greed,our excessive egos. The good journalistlearns to keep himself still, like a guarddog at the doors of hell, seemingly asleep,large head lying still on his front paws, histail barely twitching, but ready neverthe-less to devour what may came his way.

A memoir however requires a lettingdown of the guard, a willingness to be un-comfortable, to rush around and bite ifnecessary, to growl, if you must, to admitto longings that might bring shame or re-gret to yourself and others. Memoirtherefore risks the anger of those who,like unwilling dandelions, get caught in the

rotary blades of your lawn mower.A journalist is committed by profes-

sional ethic to finding the truth of an event,a past story, a present calamity, a socialcondition, to ride a political wave until itcrashes on the shore and then to exam-ine the spray, the sand, the dents it madeor is making on its way. A journalist is akind of Paul Revere riding through thepages calling out, the English are coming,

and they are always coming. The jour-nalist is committed to bringing news tothe public, news of hunger, news of war,news of fashion, news of human folly andgreatness and always to report on whatis, what really is. Which is why we get soupset when stories surface of journalistswho fake, or pretend to have interviewedor report on distant affairs from their arm-chairs at home. Those are the journalists

who have betrayed their profession andall the rest of us who depend on the trustof our readers.

But a memoir is written with other goalsbesides the literal truth. Memoir may bean act of revenge against a parent whofailed or a world that betrayed the hopesof a child, or a family. A memoir can ac-cuse a whole culture, a world of slavery,or poverty, or oppression, or colonialism,or just the common meanness of the hu-man heart. A memoir can be written, andoften is, out of hate for someone orsomething, and at the same time it cancontain a hidden recipe for avoiding thepain that was. A memoir can report ona battlefield or of sickness or of loss. Itcan be a complaint against God or againstnature. It can be a story of survival or ofdefeat. It can be a political statement ora revelation of personal pain or both atthe same time.

Memoir is never written as an inten-tional lie, although surely there are lies anddistortions in our memories that makememoir writers falsify even when theyare most intent on telling the truth. Thememoirist has no fact checker and so canslide or slip away from the facts and some-times the facts themselves are not enoughto tell the tale and the memoir writer mayhave to add, imagine, conjure what mighthave been in order to reach the truth of

Anne Roiphe is a novelist and journalist and the author of two memoirs and a footballstadium’s worth of personal stories included in fiction and non-fiction, and bald opinion.

The Memoirist: A Journalist With Creative License

A pair of oils on canvas: The author Louise Erdrich and the actor Hal Holbrook.

PAGE 2 SILURIAN NEWS MARCH 2013President’s Letter

I’m pleased to report thatthe Society of the Siluriansis on a roll. Dues paymentshave come in earlier thanever, and many of themhave included a little – andsometimes a lot – extra.Thanks to all those whohave helped get us on a solidfinancial footing. It wasn’t solong ago that we were tee-tering on the brink.

Our luncheon programshave been great, with terrificspeakers and good audi-ences. And the LifetimeAchievement Award Dinnerwas a winner. Not only wasGloria Steinem a most wor-thy honoree, but her re-marks were special. If youmissed them – or just wantto hear them again in theirentirety — go to our Website, Silurians.org, which, bythe way, is filling up withgood material.

Our Web chairman, JoeVecchione, has been doingsplendid work in sprucing upour Web site and providinglots of new features. One ofthose is a report on interest-ing achievements by ourmembers — books, majorarticles, promotions, etc. Ifyou have any such tidbits –plus any new ideas for theWeb site – send them to himat joelizv@comcast.net He’sbeen working with our greatwebmaster, Fred Herzog.

Bernie Kirsch, after an aus-picious start with his firsttwo issues as editor of theSilurian News, is hard atwork on the next one, whichwill appear in time forour Awards Dinner onWednesday, May 22. He wel-comes ideas for future ar-ticles as well. He’s atbernardkirsch@mac.com

I can’t repeat too oftenthat one of the most impor-tant services of our societyis the one provided by ourContingency Fund. It standsready to give financial helpto members who may havefallen on hard times. Re-quests for assistance areheld in strictest confidenceand can be relayed to me,myron.kandel@turner.com,or to committee chairmanL a r r y F r i e d m a n a tlfbef@aol.com.

We’ve also been addingsome distinguished newmembers. You can see thelisting elsewhere in this is-sue. But we’re still on thelook-out for more. The re-quirement is 12 years injournalism. An applicationblank can be downloadedfrom our Web site.

– Myron Kandel

(This is the first in a series of articleson notable Silurian members.)

BY MYRON KANDEL

The oldest member in every or-ganization is a special person.But the oldest member of the

Society of the Silurians, George B.Bookman, who turned 98 last December,is much more than that. He’s exceptional— due to a remarkable career in news,wartime service, public relations and acommitment to improving journalism.

George started his professional jour-nalistic career in the dark days of theGreat Depression, when as a student atHaverford College he obtained a paidsummer internship in the financial depart-ment of the New York World-Telegram.But his taste for journalism went evenfarther back: as a young teen-ager hewrote a social column for a newspaperon the Jersey shore, where his familyspent its summers.

He subsequently spent more thanthree-quarters of a century in communi-cations — as a magazine and newspa-per reporter and editor in Washington andNew York, as public information chief atthe New York Stock Exchange and theNew York Botanical Garden, as anauthor and as an active participant in anumber of journalistic organizations.

Nowadays, he’s showing some of his98 years. His step is a bit slower, hismemory not as keen as it once was(whose is?), and his hearing is not as goodas he would like. But his mind is sharp,his sense of humor is always evident, andhis genial nature is still as enviable as ever.Send George an email, and you’ll get areply within the hour. And he’s still thenews junkie he’s been most of his life.

Until very recently, he was present atmost Silurian luncheons and dinners. Andit was a treasured presence, especiallybecause he was often accompanied byRuth Bowman, his lady love for the lastdecade. He alsohas a distinctionthat many of hisfriends — in-cluding thiswriter — can at-test to and envy.They’ve neverheard a negativeword expressed about him. He has le-gions of devoted admirers.

George showed his talent early on.Following graduation from Haverford asa member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1936,George sold a lengthy magazine articletitled “Life Begins at Graduation” to theLadies Home Journal. It appeared whilehe working at The Villager, a GreenwichVillage weekly, where, in addition to writ-ing and editing news, he sold ads. After ayear there, he created, together with twoequally young friends, an “ultra-progres-sive” newsletter for students and thenstarted a newspaper feature service,which ran out of money after a fewmonths. Next came a stint with theMcClure’s Syndicate.

His big break came in 1939 whenDavid Lawrence, the columnist andmagazine publisher, hired him as a cubreporter for U.S News to cover a num-ber of New Deal government agencies,particularly those involved with theeconomy. He then moved to The Wash-ington Post, where he covered the WhiteHouse among other assignments. WithWorld War II looming, he joined whatlater became the Office of War Infor-mation, with a recommendation fromPresident Roosevelt’s press secretarySteve Early that supported his desire to

George Bookman: Distinguished Silurian at 98

The oldest member of the Society of the Silurians,George B. Bookman

be sent over-seas.

Utilizing thelanguage he per-fected whilespending his jun-ior college year inParis, he was as-signed to a post inBrazzaville, inwhat was thenFrench EquitorialAfrica, the onlyterritory in thewestern worldthat flew the FreeFrench flag.Among other du-ties, he madebroadcasts inFrench and En-glish that wereshort-waved toNorth Africa andSouthern France.After spendingtime in Beirut,Lebanon, Georgemoved to Italy,following behindAmerican troopsas they liberatedthat country. Hewas responsiblefor all the newsand propagandain the forward

to someone who was. George gave themto his parents’ long-time housekeeper,who was thrilled with the gift.

After he and Janet bought a Revolu-tionary-era house in Millbrook, NY, ad-joining a sprawling arboretum owned bythe New York Botanical Garden, Georgereceived a job offer he couldn’t refuse –heading public affairs at the Garden,which involved spending two days a weekat the arboretum. So he left the bulls andbears of Wall Street for a more bucolicsetting. Among other achievements there,he broadcast a program on gardening thatran on WCBS radio for two years.

Then in 1979, the NYSE asked him tohelp out again, and George decided to cre-ate his own consulting business, with otherclients, including the Dreyfus Corp., TimeInc., the Business Roundtable and the U.S.Dept. of Energy. He remained busier thanever, at an age when many of his contem-poraries were retiring, and he continuedworking until he was nearly 86.

He has also maintained his love forthe news business, having been active ina number of journalistic organizations inaddition to the Silurians. He served aspresident of the Deadline Club (the NewYork chapter of the Society of Profes-sional Journalists); headed the Admis-sions Committee of the Overseas PressClub for many years, and appeared in theFinancial Follies show of the New YorkFinancial Writers’ Association, amongother activities. “I like the company ofother news people,” he told me recently.

In addition to writing hundreds ofnewspaper and magazine articles,speeches, broadcasts and reports, Georgewrote his autobiography, “Headlines,Deadlines and Lifelines,” largely at theurging of his children. It was publishedfour years ago and is filled with personalletters to and from his wife dating backto his World War II days, and to his par-ents even before that. It’s a fascinatingaccount of a remarkable life.

“The book,” he explained, “hasbeen written for personal reasons, notto become a New York Times best-seller, but if that should happen, I couldlive with it.”

area as the Allied troops advanced andthe Germans retreated.

After two and a half years overseas,he was granted home leave, the highlightof which was his marriage in December1944 to Janet Schrank Madison, who wasto be his bride of 57 years before her deathin 2002. Janet had a stint as a Washingtonreporter for the United Press. They hadtwo children; the first, a daughter, arrivedwhile George was back overseas, in Aus-tria. Even though the war in Europe was

over, he couldn’tget back to seeher until she wasnearly threemonths old. Heand Janet thenhad a son,and George nowalso has four

grandchildren and five great-grand-children.

The Post offered George his old jobback — but only at his old salary eventhough he now had a family and it wasfour years later. So he went back to DavidLawrence’s magazine and later moved toTime’s Washington bureau. Next cameFortune’s board of editors in New York,and when that proved a bit dull, he wentto Wall Street in 1962 as public relationschief of the New York Stock Exchange.

At the NYSE, George won the respectof a bunch of often-cynical Wall Streetreporters, who found him trustworthy andknowledgeable. He helped the exchangepresident Keith Funston popularize the slo-gan “Own Your Share of American Busi-ness,” which attracted a new generationof investors to the stock market.

Along his journalistic path, George metand interviewed some of the world’s mostfamous people. Among them, Franklin andEleanor Roosevelt, the Shah of Iran, theDuke and Duchess of Windsor, NelsonRockefeller, Ludwig Erhard, Wild BillDonovan, Jimmy Hoffa, Jean Monnet,William McChesney Martin and Pope PiusX11, to name a few. When the Pope of-fered him rosary beads he hadblessed, and George said he was not aCatholic, the Pope suggested he give them

A lifetime of journalism,from the U.S. News to the

Botanical Gardens.

MARCH 2013 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 3

BY BEN PATRUSKY

Science writers, like scientists, occasionally have “eureka” mo-ments of their own. For this sci-

ence writer, two spring to mind, each apersonal game-changer.

The first came in the in the mid-‘60swhen, as the research reporter for theAmerican Heart Association, I spentmuch of my time roving the nation’s labsfor features on what investigators wereup to. What I wrote, for the most part,were procedurals, process-en-route-to-discovery stories. I had come to an insti-tution affiliated with Case Western Re-serve University to report on efforts tobetter define the rudiments of kidneyfunction as prelude to the developmentof new disease therapies. Interviewconcluded, my host removed my overcoatfrom a hook on his office door. Beneaththe coat, tacked to the door, lay whatlooked to be a map, crudely penciled, onsketch paper.

As we said our goodbyes – and moreout of courtesy than curiosity, thinking ita child’s doodle – I asked about the draw-ing. “That’s Yugoslavia,” he said. “WhyYugoslavia?” “Long story,” he said.“Want to tell me?” Reluctant at first, hesoon relented.

As a renal specialist, he had been re-cruited to investigate a chronic kidneymalady that had affected inhabitants ofsmall, discrete communities situated alongthe Danube River and its major tributar-

BY MERVIN BLOCK

I’ve obtained an interview with theauthor of a new book about an-chors’ bloopers and blunders: me.

But is it proper for me to interview my-self about my book? Of course. I, me andyours truly are all of one mind. No con-flict. The title of my book is “WeighingAnchors: When Network NewscastersDon’t Know Write from Wrong.”

Q. What does the book say about an-chors?

A. Plenty. It documents deceptions, dis-tortions and delinquencies.

Q. How did you come to write thebook?

A. I kept hearing anchors making mis-takes, some serious, some startling, someapparently deliberate — like fiddling withfacts. I figured the mistakes would addup to a good read.

Over the years, I’ve read a lot aboutanchors’ wardrobes, their hairdos, andtheir delivery. Yet rarely about what theydeliver. I poked around on the Internet,but I couldn’t find any article or book thatexamined scripts delivered by networkanchors. Some faulty scripts are writtenby anchors, and some are written by staffwriters. There’s no way for an outsiderto know who wrote what. You might callit a scriptease.

Q. How did you go about your project?A. I listened to the networks’ evening

newscasts. When I heard something thatwas wrong or questionable, I noted it ona clipboard. I didn’t just hear newscasts;I listened. In a day or so after noting aboo-boo, I’d visit a database (Factiva orLexisNexis) and check a transcript of thenewscast in question. And I kept at it.

I started by writing articles for my Website (mervinblock.com). At the outset, Ididn’t identify any culprits. No names, noblames. But a friend urged me to usenames (though not his). So I began usingnames, and my articles seemed stronger

— and more interesting.Q. After you ran across an anchor’s

mistake, did you talk to the anchor andget his side of the story, his explanation,for what went wrong?

A. No.Q. Why not?A. I had the goods — really, the bads

— on him. What would the anchor tellme, assuming I could get him (or her) onthe phone? Would the anchor say, “I neverwrote that”? I would have asked, ”Well,why did you read it on the air? You’re themanaging editor of the newscast. Andyou’re responsible for every word utteredon your newscast.” So why talk to an-chors before using their names? Say, domovie and theater critics phone actorsbefore lambasting them in a review?

Q. How did you proceed?A. After I collected a fistful of faulty

scripts, I’d try to find a theme, then writean article for my Web site. After a while,it occurred to me that I had the makingsof a book. When I assembled all the ar-ticles, I reorganized the material, tried tosharpen it and added a lot of new mate-rial.

Q. What were some of the most com-mon problems in the scripts?

A. Inaccuracies, grammatical errors —mangling and strangling language — andcarelessness with the truth. In many suchcases, exaggerated efforts to use “tonight”even when the story broke many hoursearlier, even the previous day. Although Idid identify the culprits in my book, I hesi-tate to mention them here. After all, I tryto focus on the sin, not the sinner. Youknow the names: the evening stars, whodon’t always shine.

Here’s one misrepresentation: On a6:30 p.m. newscast, an anchor said therewas news “tonight” that an attack on aprison in Iraq had occurred at sundown.The sundown was in Iraq, but never mind.On the next night in Manhattan, 24 hourslater, that anchor said the attack occurred

“overnight.” In fact, Reutershad moved a story the daybefore at 2:47 p.m. ET;Reuters said the attack hadbegun around 10 a.m., ET.That was 32 hours before theanchor called it an “over-night” attack. That’s why Icalled that account “TheOvernight Life of Brian.”

Another irregularity alsosticks in my mind: an ABCcorrespondent was anchoring“World News.” The fill-inanchor, Jake Tapper, whoseregular day job was cover-ing the White House, begana story this way: “We’relearning more tonight aboutan unusual story of survivalin Wisconsin.” But the story

language — which they do night afternight — thank goodness there’s MervBlock to perform the autopsy. No one hasa better ear or sharper pencil than MervBlock. He’s a one-man quality control de-partment for the broadcast news busi-ness. His wise and witty dissections ofTV’s highest-paid poobahs and their ver-bal blunders are both hilarious and ap-palling. After reading his collection ofspot-on critiques, you’ll never watch TVnews the same way again.”

I didn’t know Robert Feder; now Ithink the world of him.

As for the anchors, they all have theirstrengths. But to borrow from the Book ofDaniel and the Book of Block, the anchorshave been weighed and found wanting.

Mervin Block wrote news for WalterCronkite on the CBS Evening News, forFrank Reynolds on the ABC EveningNews, and freelanced at NBC News. Blocktaught broadcast news writing part-timeat Columbia’s journalism school for morethan 30 years. He’s a former Chicagonewspaper reporter.

When Anchors Are Weighed Down by Facts

of the man who slipped in waist-high snowand was buried under snow for severalhours had occurred earlier — more thanfour and a half days earlier. Tapper didn’ttell us when the accident happened, theman’s age, occupation or even the nameof his town.

A section of my book about a CBS an-chor is titled “When Exclusive News is NotExclusive — and Not Even News.” No won-der I call one section, “Alas, Poor Couric.”

I also write about anchors at CNN.One head reads: “Blitzer Cries Wolf.” AndI write about a CNN anchor who’s also a“60 Minutes” correspondent, AndersonCooper. He almost automatically intro-duces his CNN newscast by saying, “Hap-pening now.” Or “Breaking news.” Usu-ally, the story is neither. And he often says,“Keeping them honest” — but doesn’tidentify them. Honestly.

Q. What do you think of your book —honestly?

A. I’m not a disinterested party, soplease let me quote Robert Feder, themedia critic of TimeOutChicago:

“When network anchors murder the

Eye-Openers Are Not an Exact Sciencenavigable. It being the rainy season,the constant downpour made theordeal all the more onerous. Thecollection effort took several miser-able weeks to complete.

Done at last, he made his wayhome, but not before a stop in Lon-don, there to deliver his cargo foranalysis by another member of theinternational medical-forensics team,a world-renowned toxicologist. Thevials had been packed in a carryingcase tailor-made for the task.Boarding the airport shuttle to thecity, my sleep-deprived host handedthe case to the driver for storage inthe bus’ luggage compartment. Dis-embarking at the city terminal, hewatched as bags were unloaded.The carrying case never appeared.Scotland Yard was alerted. A wide-spread search ensued. The sampleswere never recovered. Days later,and just weeks before my interview,

a dejected but stalwart Hall had no op-tion but to return and repeat the laboriouscollection process.

I wrote not the basic kidney story butof the unexpected hazards of researchand the trials and tribulations of a dedi-cated man of science. It received verywide play. And thus was born a serialperipheralist. From then on, a deliberatevisual sweep of the margins of myinterviewee’s office/lab surround and theserendipitous search for any unusual “ar-tifact” became routine practice for me,

and the catalyst, over the years, for aplethora of wonderfully surprising andenriching reveals.

The second “aha” (OMG or WTFmight be even more appropriate, given thecircumstance) came years later, when,now a fulltime freelancer, I was a fre-quent contributor to a magazine that spe-cialized in long-form narratives about sci-entific exploration. In this instance, I wasreporting on efforts to tease out details ofthe molecular choreography that allowsgenes to have their proper say. It was anintensely competitive pursuit, as is mostfront-line research. Among the string ofinvestigators I had arranged to interviewwere two at separate institutions, each theleader of a research team that had, usingdifferent experimental schemes, indepen-dently solved a major chunk of the puzzle,an achievement of seminal consequence.

One of the two was widely celebrated(let’s call him Dr. Palmer) and far moresenior than the up-and-comer heading theother team (designated here as Dr. Dou-glas). The record shows, indisputably, thatPalmer and his group were the first topublish on the discovery, beating the Dou-glas group to the punch by a few weeks.In science, priority — being first — is thebig enchilada; from such spring prizes,grants and tenure.

After interviewing Palmer about thelabors that underlay his team’s success, Imoved on to Douglas’s lab. There, I brieflyrecounted to Douglas what I had learned

Continued on Page 6

ies in what is now Bosnia, Croatia, Serbiaand Herzegovinia. There was reason tothink the culprit was a river-borne agent.For one, individuals of the same ethnicstock dwelling in mountain hamlets abovethe river were malady-free.

My host had traveled to the besiegedarea to oversee the collection of urinespecimens from ailing villagers and, sub-sequently, from healthy mountain dwell-ers, who were to serve as “controls.” Theroads were primitive; those to the higherelevations perilously steep and barely

A depiction of Archimedes Eureka moment.

PAGE 4 SILURIAN NEWS MARCH 2013

known for painting stripes, insisted I paintnothing but stripes on huge canvases —not that I have anything against stripes— but I didn’t want to spend the rest ofmy life laying down and ripping up mask-ing tape. And I was too ambitious to wantto pursue an aesthetic that would be dis-missed as passé or irrelevant by criticsand historians. I needed a new direction.

Opportunity came from a surprisingevent. A friend, whose portrait I hadpainted, invited me to draw cartoons thatwere filmed for an arts conference heldin Washington’s Mayflower Hotel. Then-F.C.C. Commissioner Nicholas Johnsonspoke there about his new book, “How toTalk Back to Your Television Set,” the the-sis of which was, if you don’t like whatyou see in television, don’t just sit thereand complain about it; come up with abetter idea and pitch it to the program di-rectors of your local stations. These arethe public airways, he explained, and youshould have a say in how they are used.

I took the book and inhaled Johnson’swords. Julia Child was teaching Frenchcooking on television, so I decided to teachart on TV, and spent the summer readingevery book I could find on television pro-duction. Fortunately, there weren’t many,so I quickly moved on to assembling aportfolio of projects that could be taughton TV. Two of Washington’s five localprogram directors gave me a chance toaudition. One immediately hired me todo a weekly segment on WTTG-TV’sdaytime “Panorama” program. (It hadthree hosts, one of whom was MauryPovich.) I earned $50 a week.

President Nixon, followed by a boredWashington press corps, spoke at that con-ference. I found the reporters far moreinteresting than Nixon’s speech and gotinto a hallway conversation with them.The conversation got around to the emerg-ing women’s movement, and someone

from Mutual Radio told me that a pro-ducer was looking for a woman to reporton it. Now that was interesting! I calledthe producer and was given a chance towrite a couple of 3:30 second reports onthe movement’s key issues, then go to thestudio and record them. I wrote one onthe use of the term “Ms.,” another on theconcept of equal pay for equal work.Three days later, he called back to say,“A, you can write; B, you have a voice,and C, you’ve got the job.”

A few weeks later, an activist I’d in-terviewed for the radio reports called tosay that she’d just learned that WWDCwas looking for its first full-time womannews reporter. “You should apply for thatjob,” she said. “But I’ve never taken ajournalism course.” “What the hell do youthink you’re doing?”

Thus began a wonderful 20-year runas a radio and television news reporter,sometime anchor and host, filled with thejoy of learning, while earning far moremoney than I’d ever dreamed possible.There was no time for art, except once.In 1977, assigned to cover the courts forWJLA-TV in Washington, I sat througha big trial with an artist who wasn’t verygood. I told my boss that I could do thesketches far better. And so I became theonly television news reporter ever to doher own courtroom sketches.

I retired from television at the end ofthe 1980’s, when I married the presidentof a major corporation, who lost his jobshortly thereafter. He soon convinced meto go with him to Antigua to restore hisold plantation house. That sounded at-tractive. And so I restored a house andgardens, traveled a great deal, and wrotean (unpublished) novel and memoir.Twenty years later, an unplanned divorcenecessitated a return to work. But whatwork? The networks weren’t hiring 60-year-old women who had been out of thebusiness for 20 years. And writing - atleast my writing - did not provide muchincome.

Quite by accident, I ran into EverettRaymond Kinstler, who had painted mythen-husband’s portrait as well as sevenU.S. Presidents and hundreds of dignitar-ies. Hmm! Maybe I could go back topainting people, do what I love, and pos-

sibly make enough money to survive andthrive in my dotage. Kinstler agreed tobecome my mentor, directing my studythroughout a two-year tune up that in-volved winning scholarships and study-ing full-time at the National AcademySchool of Fine Arts and the Art Students’League. What a thrill to find realism aliveand thriving amid the finest workshopsand instruction in the country. I joinedthe Portrait Society of America and theNational Arts Club and Salmagundi Clubs.Age was, thankfully, not an impediment.Kinstler was, and still is, painting in his80’s. Aaron Shikler, who paintedKennedy’s portrait, is 90 and still paint-ing. To them, I’m a kid.

Four years ago, I set up my own stu-dio next to the Silvercup Film Studios in

Long Island City. After painting a lot offolks for free to build up a portfolio ofsample work, I am now — thank God —getting paid. I did Myron Kandel as oneof my samples, and was invited to paintHal Holbrook for the Players’ collection(it’s at the top of the stairs on the secondfloor). It hasn’t been easy launching aluxury product at a time of deep reces-sion, but I’ve found work. You can seemy paintings on my Web site atwww.ashtonportraits.com.

Right now, I’m painting a portrait of aformer U.S. Ambassador to the Court ofSt. James that will hang in the U.S. Em-bassy in London. My work will be hang-ing next to Gilbert Stuart’s John Adamsand George Washington. Not too bad forstarting over at 60.

the material that is his or her story, his orher truth.

The good journalist never invents de-tails, tempting though it might be. The mem-oir writer may sometimes tell you the colorof the curtains or report on the fading ofthe sun when those facts may or may notbe correct. Details are needed so thereader can more easily enter the story andsometimes the little details are written tocapture emotion rather than reality.

The journalist is not allowed those smallleaps of imagination. The memoir writerneeds them because the emotions of thestory are crucial to the endeavor. Ofcourse the facts should be true but a smallallowance is made at the edge of thebedside of a dying father. For instance,it is possible to describe, by the oxygentent, a cup of coffee turning cold, whenthe author is not fully sure that the coffeewas cold or was there in the first place.The memoir writer will not fabricate thepain of the moment. The good journalistwill not describe the unknown or un-knowable, or invent the convenient tell-ing detail.

As journalists our responsibility to ourreaders is to add to the depth of theirunderstanding of the world we all inhabit.It is to report on political, calamitous ways

of man and nature, storm andwar, divorce and murder, elec-tion and firing squad, the gloryof science, the squalor and tri-umph of commerce.

As memoir writers our workis to mine our own stories forboth the truth of our private ex-periences, the moral implicationsfor others, and to explore the ter-rain of the private on the as-sumption that there is nothingunique under the sun and weneed each other’s most intimatetales to learn how better to sur-vive our own journeys.

Also memoir writers, unlikeour finest journalists, are oftenout for revenge against thecrimes of neglectful parents,cruel twists of fate, death itself.Memoir writers recognize Job,calling out God for his lack ofjustice, as a colleague in goodstanding. The journalist is morelike a spelunker down in thecaves. It’s risky business andyou better get your footingright but your eye is on the out-

PresidentMYRON KANDEL

First Vice-PresidentALAN DODDS FRANK

Second Vice-PresidentBETSY ASHTON

TreasurerMORT SHEINMAN

SecretaryLINDA AMSTER

Board of GovernorsIRA BERKOWBILL DIEHLGERALD ESKENAZIRICKI FULMANLINDA GOETZ HOLMESBERNARD KIRSCHENID NEMYMAX NICHOLSBEN PATRUSKYKAREN BEDROSIAN- RICHARDSONJOAN SIEGELJOSEPH J. VECCHIONE

Governors EmeritusGARY PAUL GATESHERBERT HADADROBERT D. McFADDENLEO MEINDL

Committee ChairpersonsAdvisory

TONY GUIDA

DinnerMORT SHEINMAN

LegalKEN FISHER

MembershipMORT SHEINMAN

NominatingBEN PATRUSKY

Silurian Contingency Fund TrusteesLARRY FRIEDMAN, CHAIRNAT BRANDTJOY COOKMARK LIEBERMANMARTIN J. STEADMAN

Silurian NewsBERNARD KIRSCH, EDITOR

Society of the SiluriansOfficers 2013-2014

Continued from Page 1

Continued from Page 1

The Memoirist: A Journalist With Creative License

side, no time for dreaming.Many of us are both journalists and

memoir writers. We use our tools in the

service of both disciplines. But we knowthe difference the way the sailor knowshis ropes.

Anne Roiphe: The memoirist has no fact checker.

A Roundtrip, From Artist to Journalist to Artist

Betsy Ashton: A Self-Portrait.

MARCH 2013 SILURIAN NEWS PAGE 5

Steinem:An Eveningof HonorsBY BILL DIEHL

Gloria Steinem received theSilurians Lifetime Achievement Award at a gala dinner

at The Players on Dec. 4. PresidentMyron Kandel presented her with aplaque inscribed, “In recognition of a life-time of excellence as a writer, editor, femi-nist, and activist, whose advocacy forgender equality has placed her in the pan-theon of civil libertarians everywhere.”

Steinem was introduced by TonyGuida, who noted that “Gloria has alwaysdefined feminism as a revolution, not areform. And we all know that revolutionsdon’t succeed overnight. Sometimes theydon’t succeed for years. Sometimes, Iguess, they don’t succeed at all. And sadlysexism is still rampant in this culture.”

Guida, the Silurians former president,quoted a remark that Steinem made in1962 in an article she had written for Es-quire: “I’ve never heard a man ask foradvice on how to manage a career andmarriage.” Her comments were prescientsince a year later, Betty Friedan publishedher groundbreaking manifesto, “The Femi-nine Mystique.”

Now, 50 years later, Gloria Steinem hasnot lost a step in fighting for the revolution.“This world of ours has always been ruledby men and what a mess we have madeof it,” she told the audience. “It isn’t thatwomen are going to do a better job lookingafter this world, if we do it by ourselves.No, it’s because we understand now thatif a group of men make a decision by them-selves, they are more likely to choose themost aggressive solution, even if it’s wrong. And a group of women are more likely tochoose the most conciliatory solution, even

if it’s wrong. But ifwe have a groupthat really repre-sents humanity as itexists, we are muchmore likely to havea full range of alter-natives.”

Explaining thatshe was honored toreceive the award,Steinem remarkedplayfully, “First ofall, it’s for a lifetime,which in my case isnow 78, a reminderof age and immor-tality which I defi-nitely need, be-cause I have adeep conviction

nalist here. She would have loved somuch to be in your company.”

Steinem went on to talk about the “Top10” reasons she loves journalism. Jour-nalism, she began, is a portable profes-sion, because you can do it almost every-where. “I once interviewed circus peoplewho told me that the sword swallower isthe most revered person in the circusworld because he, or she, doesn’t need ahigh wire or elephants or even a tent,”she said. “The sword swallower can workwherever it’s possible to attract a crowd.And I think the same is true of us andeven more so now that technology hasmade it possible for us to put words downin different places.”

As Steinem continued to enumerateher top 10, she said, “Writing allows youto say what you wished you’d said on thespot. For instance, the other day I spentthree hours waiting on the tarmac in aplane and finally the pilot offered a movieto pacify us. And the young man next tome said ‘I don’t watch chick flicks.’ Idon’t know if I could have challenged himon the spot but when I went home Ithought, how about prick flicks! For allthe movies that have glorified World WarII as the last time we could be both vio-

A Story of Capture and EscapeBY HERBERT HADAD

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter andcolumnist David Rohde told morethan 90 guests at the monthly

Silurian luncheon on Jan. 17 a rivetingaccount of his capture by the Taliban inAfghanistan in November 2008 and hisescape, seven months later, in June 2009.

While co-chief of The New York TimesSouth Asia bureau, Rohde arranged ameeting with a Taliban commander.“What frankly convinced me to go…wasthe competition,” he said in his remark-ably unassuming manner. “He was notthere, a car blocked the road, there weregunmen, rifles. It’s amazing how fast asituation can change.”

They had conspiracy theories that hewas a spy. “We will send a blood mes-sage to Obama,” they told him.

Rohde, now 45 and a Reuters colum-nist, was ultimately able to speak with hiscaptors. They called me a “golden hen”for the ransom he might bring. He wasnot beaten, he was given bottled water,he grew a beard, he taught them to sing“New York, New York.”

Rohde and a local reporter, who hadbeen abducted with him, were able to es-cape by climbing over a wall of the com-pound where they were being held. Hetold of how The Times and other mediakept the kidnapping quiet out of concernfor the men’s safety.

Rohde and his wife, Kristen Mulvihill,

photo editor for Cosmopolitan, wrote thebook “A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnap-ping From Two Sides,” He is now at workon another book, “Beyond War:Reimagining American Influence in a NewMiddle East.”

Fate in a way had prepared Rohde forhis tribulations. As a Christian ScienceMonitor reporter in 1995, he witnessed theaftermath of the Srebrenica massacre ofBosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs butwas secretly arrested and held for 10days. His coverage brought his firstPulitzer Prize, in 1996. The second, in 2009

Continued on Page 6

Membersin the News

Gerry Eskenazi had anarticle on the Opinion page ofThe Wall Street Journal (Jan.22) about the regard Brooklynfans had for the late StanMusial.

Linda Holmes was honoredby the Shelter Island townboard when they proclaimedDec. 27, 2012, “Linda G.Holmes Day in the Town ofShelter Island.” The honor wasin recognition of her eightyears of service on the SuffolkCounty Planning Commission,Town Planning Board, Chair ofthe Town Drug Abuse Preven-tion Council and several othercommittees over the years.

Evan Wiener’s new e-book,“America’s Passion: How a CoalMiner’s Game Became the NFLin the 20th Century,” about theorigins of professional footballin the coal mining countryof western Pennsylvania,came out recently onsmashwords.com and can bepurchased for $2.99

Polly Guérin has recentlyhad published “The Cooper-Hewitt Dynasty of New York,”a story of wealth and generos-ity, politics and integrity andfamily and community that un-folded in New York.

Silurians MemberBLOGS

• Arlene’s Scratch Paper: ablog of her writing, photog-raphy and random musings byArlene Schulman

• Grossblogger – The onlyblog you’ll ever need by LewisGrossberger

• Novelist Online Onpaper byKenneth Crowe

• PollyTalk From New York byPolly Guerin

• The Media Beat – a multi-media commentary by DavidTereshchuk

P.S. Please markthe following in your

2013 calendar:

• Luncheons: March 21, April 18 – both Thursdays

Awards Dinner:Wednesday, May 22

Players Club16 Gramercy Park South

(East 20th St betweenPark Ave S. and Third Ave)

New York City

that I’m immortal. And this causes meto plan poorly. Actually I did have anotherreminder recently when I was campaign-ing [for Obama]. I was on television a lotand I was trending on twitter, and peoplethought I was dead, because why elsewould I be trending on twitter.”

“What stirs me up,” Steinem contin-ued, “is the memory of my mother, who,when I was very little, began to show mehow to take a piece of typing paper, foldit into threes, so it was in columns. Youcould hold it in your hand like a reporter’snotebook, because there were no suchthings manufactured at the time. And in-deed when she tried to be a journalist hervery first writing had to be under a man’sname, otherwise she couldn’t be pub-lished. So I suspect that like many womennow, I am living out the unlived life of mymother. And this is a huge step forward.

“We should be proud of this, but it’salso true that we need to move forwardto a time when parents live out their owndreams. And children don’t feel that theyhave to carry on in order to make up forlost talents and lost lives. I think howeverthat the reason I’m really moved by this[award] is the big one—how much mymother would have loved it. She wantedso much to come to New York, be a jour-

as a Times reporter, was shared for cov-erage of America’s deepening involve-ments in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I had interviewed Terry Anderson ofthe AP for The New York Times afterhis seven years as a prisoner of terror-ists in Lebanon and asked him what kepthim strong. He said he thought about hisyoung daughter. Rohde, married for justtwo months when he was seized, wasasked the same question after his talk.”I thought of my wife,” he said. “My jobwas to keep alive, to give her the life shedeserved.”

Photo by Mort Sheinman

Photo by Mort Sheinman

For David Rohde, being held captive twice was enough; he is now a columnist.

Gloria Steinem is still fighting for the revolution.

PAGE 6 SILURIAN NEWS MARCH 20132012 2012

Society of the SiluriansPO Box 1195, Madison Square Station

New York, NY 10159212.532.0887

www.silurians.org

In MemoriamThomas Liggett, 94

Ed Wergeles, 93

Continued from Page 5

New Members

lent and right, I now understand that wehave spent more money making films andtelevision series about World War II thanwe spent on World War II. And all theseshoot-‘em-ups, with no dialogue to trans-late, and more interest in death than life,and [featuring] women, usually younger,and less clothed than men, is often moreappealing. So if I am guided by chickflicks, why not guide fans toward prickflicks, don’t you think?”

Moving to another topic on her list,Steinem cited an editorial meeting sheonce had at Ms magazine, which she co-founded in 1972 with Letty Pogrebin. “Wewere looking,” she said “for all the womenwho had slept their way to wealth andpower. . . and we found women who hadslept their way — to a nice house andcharge cards. But those who slept theirway to real power were sons-in-law. Andthen we made a list of families that hadthe disaster of not having a son, so they

Steinem: An Evening of Honorshad to find a son-in-law, and it was justfascinating how long this list was. Nowwe see that [wealthy] women are re-belling against [supporting their hus-bands] and instead giving millions towomen’s groups.

Steinem is still active as a feministand reformer. Several years ago shefounded the Women’s Media Centerwith Robin Morgan and Jane Fonda tomake women more visible and powerfulin the media and to provide a level play-ing field for men and women journalists.“We are beginning to see that there’s nosuch thing as women’s issues and men’sissues,” she continued. “We have thepower to change consciousness, changelanguage. How great is that. So I hopethat we stick together and provide a com-munity for each other, supporting this kindof exploration and purpose. I’m very,very proud to be in this room and I hopethat this is just the beginning of any sub-versive organizing cells.”

from Palmer. I then invited Douglas toelaborate on his group’s work, only to bestartled by what followed. No sooner hadhe begun than he hesitated and of a sud-den began to weep. After a while, gath-ering himself, he said, “What he told youis just not true” and, a beat later, added,“He already has it all, he didn’t have todo what he did.” He then proceeded totell me his version of the discovery story.

According to Douglas, he had beeninvited to give a talk about his team’s ef-fort to researchers at Palmer’s institution.Douglas was in a quandary. He under-stood that he was entering a rival’s lair;that the Palmer’s group was tackling thesame piece of the puzzle. He had con-cerns about disclosing in full measure as-yet unpublished data that had led his teamto its solution. Not knowing where thePalmer group stood in its hunt, Douglasworried about giving away too much.Maybe he should hold back some essen-tial details until the results were in print.Being first to publish new findings wascrucial, after all.

After deliberating with colleagues,Douglas decided to bare all. Palmer wastoo busy to attend Douglas’ formal pre-sentation. But, at Palmer’s behest, Dou-glas did join Palmer in his office afterthe talk for a private briefing.

A few weeks later the Palmer group’spaper appeared. To Douglas’ dismay, itoffered the exact same step-by-step de-lineation of the intricate molecular minuetand resultant construct that he had de-scribed to Palmer and his colleagues dur-ing his visit. But close examination of thePalmer paper convinced Douglas that thedata presented in it was nowhere nearsufficient to arrive at or justify the paper’sstated solution. To Douglas, the paper’sproposed solution was without question aclear rip-off of his team’s work, a caseof intellectual thievery, pure and simple.

But Douglas had no way of provingconclusively what he was alleging. Andhe recognized that going public with sucha charge, especially against so revered fig-ure as Palmer without unassailable evi-dence would almost certainly put an endto his — Douglas’ — career. But hedeeply resented and despaired over hav-ing been cheated out of primary credit forsuch a key discovery, was hard put to ex-plain why a person of Palmer’s reputa-tion and accomplishment would commitsuch an unconscionable act, and was ata loss as to what to do about it. As was I.

I drafted a 7,000-word story that cov-ered the research efforts of perhaps adozen investigators. The centerpiece was

a description of Palmer’s and Douglas’sparallel investigations. Being in no posi-tion to referee scientific squabbles and inthe absence of unimpeachable proof, Ihad little choice but to stay away fromDouglas’ allegation. But because I be-lieved Douglas, I had him “reporting” hisfindings first (technically true, if youcount his oral presentation at Palmer’sinstitution) and Palmer “publishing” first(also true), a subtle but, to my mind andto the knowledgeable readers of themagazine, a significant distinction.

It was the policy of the magazine togive scientists whose work was cited anopportunity to review the manuscripts, butonly for scientific accuracy. It didn’t takelong for Palmer to call my editor and takeissue with the reporting/publishing se-quence. He claimed that Douglas’ rec-ollections were off and that he had got-ten the timing all wrong, owing perhapsto major stresses in Douglas’ personallife. And since I hadn’t been an eyewit-ness to the events, Palmer told my edi-tor, I was in no position to judge. In theend, my editor asked me to back off.To my everlasting regret, I did.

I must admit to having once beenrather starry-eyed about science and itspractitioners, but hardly a total naïf. I un-derstood that donning a white coat didn’tsuddenly transmogrify researchers intoangels. And I had been exposed in thepast to questionable behavior that gaveme pause. But I had never been as im-mediately and directly involved in any-thing as shocking to me as this. If some-one of Palmer’s towering status couldplagiarize as alleged and get away withit, perhaps a lot more scientific skulldug-gery was afoot than I had imagined.

Disillusioning as it was, the episodeproved highly instructive, serving as it didto make me from then on a far warier,far more skeptical, more distrusting andmore vigilant – read savvier — sciencewriter, or so I’d like to think.

For the record: “Palmer” remains anOlympian eminence. “Douglas,” havingelected to keep mum, went on to enjoy adistinguished research career of his own.

As for my Cleveland kidney special-ist: he and colleagues never succeededin getting to the root of the disease, nowdubbed Balkan endemic nephropathy; itremains something of a mystery to thisday. But he continued to find consider-able solace in the notion that the putativethief had mistaken the purloined urine vi-als for samples of a precious slivovitz.

Ben Patrusky is executive directorof the not-for-profit Council for theAdvancement of Science Writing.

Continued from Page 3

Eye-Openers Are Not an Exact Science

BY GERALD ESKENAZI

Chuck Ramsey, the New YorkJets’ punter, was crying. It wasthe first time I had ever seen an

N.F.L. player in tears.“What’s wrong, Chuck,” I asked af-

ter the Jets had lost a Monday night foot-ball game in Seattle. “Was it that puntthey blocked?”

“How would you feel,” the kickerasked, “if the coach said to the entire team,‘I can fart farther than you can punt?’”

How, indeed?Now, my problem was how to get that

quote of a lifetime into The New YorkTimes. I failed.

The Times, that paper of record, was alsothe Old Gray Lady. Its style book was writ-ten in stone, like ancient commandments.Its mission, among many others, was neverto offend — even on the sports pages.

Thus, on my first horse-racing assign-ment at Aqueduct, a helpful editor toldme, “Remember, you can’t say a horsecame from behind in the stretch.” I won-dered, Is there some editor in an ivorytower on West 43d Street looking for dirtywords or double-entendres?

Soon after my immaculate debut at Aq-ueduct, I covered the Preakness, the sec-ond jewel in the Triple Crown of racing. Thehuge infield was packed with thousands offans, so many that management needed tohave portable toilets for them. So I dutifullydescribed the “Port-a-Potties,” as they werecalled. In fact, they were trademarked.

No way. All references to portable toi-lets were wiped clean.

Dirt, or words that sounded like dirt,seemed to be a no-no at The Times. Ionce asked Muhammad Ali whether heenjoyed Southern cooking.

“Does a pig like slop?” he replied, rhe-torically. “Slop” is a southern locution forfood fed to farm animals. But I guess ithas some other nasty connotations. Thequote was killed.

There were many other no-nos at thepaper. When Catholic schools playedeach other, certain verbs could never beused. For example, St. Cecilia could never“down” St. John’s. And of course, St.John’s could never “top” St. Cecilia’s.

And once, when I was en route toMadison Square Garden, my sports edi-tor told me not to mention the word“puck” in a hockey story. Seems theprinter’s union was in contract talks, andthe linotypers could not be trusted. So Iused the word “frozen disk” and “hardrubber disk” instead of “puck.”

Of course, those of us who work withwords are delighted when we can invigo-rate the language with a new phrase, orfind an athlete who has a new way ofsaying something old and tired.

I am grateful still to the old Mets man-ager, Wes Westrum, who remarked af-ter a close game, “Boy, that certainly wasa cliff-dweller!”

And Joe Gardi, a Jets assistant coach, isin my pantheon of wordsmiths, because hetold me, when discussing the team’s prob-lems, “We’ve got to nip it in the butt.” Per-haps so, but not in The New York Times.

Which brings me back to Chuck Ramsey.After he told me that Coach Walt

Michaels had used the word “fart” I calledthe paper. It was close to midnight in NewYork. I told them what I had. They told methey’d call me back, that it needed a com-mand decision. The response was fairlyquick—you can’t use the word, but youcan paraphrase it. So I dutifully quotedRamsey as saying that Michaels had yelled“I can spit farther than you can punt.”

However, one of the tabloids in the cityactually used the real quote. And thenNewsday, which had a media columnistthen, wrote a big story about how every

All the Words Fit to Printpaper in the city had approached that f-word. Newsday wrote that The Timesaltered the quote.

That embarrassed the powers at my pa-per, and an edict came down from on high:Never again is a quote to be altered forany reason. You can use brackets to showthat a word has been changed, but not ac-tually change a quote directly.

I mentioned that edict to Ramsey laterthat week.

Some years later I was at a game inNashville, with the Jets playing an exhi-bition. Ramsey had been retired, but Ihappened to spot him at the players’ en-trance, where he was visiting old friends.

“Hey, Jerry,” he called. “Over here. Iwant you to meet someone.” He intro-duced me to a friend.

“This is the guy,” he said to his friend,as he held my hand, “who made me fa-mous in The New York Times. Theyhave a rule about me there.”

I felt good for Chuck. Glad he couldlaugh about that odious moment. Still,some part of me wishes I could havemade history at the paper.

Puck? What Puck?And meanwhile, here was what was

happening at the Daily News. MortSheinman recalled that, in the late 1950’s,when he was a clerk in the sports depart-ment there, there was a also directivediscouraging the use of the word “puck”in reports of hockey games.

From Mort: “The hard round objectthe skaters kept banging with their stickswas generally referred to as ‘the rubber,’or ‘the disk.’ At the same time, the Yan-kees had a pitcher named Johnny Kucks.That’s how he’s listed in the BaseballEncyclopedia, but in our shop, he wasknown as Johnny Disks.”

Daniel Day: Twenty-one years with the AP, bureau chiefin Omaha, Seattle and San Francisco; now director ofnews and editorial services at Princeton University. Richard Esposito: Senior investigative reporter andGeorge Polk Award winner at ABC News, PulitzerPrize-winner at New York Newsday and a formerDaily News editor. Jane H. Furse: Formerly a reporter and writer at NewYork Post, Daily News (for which she still freelances)and contributor to New York Times special sections. Myron Farber: Investigative reporter at New York Timesfrom 1966 to 1993, and since 2001 a consultant with theCenter for Oral History at Columbia University.Clyde Haberman: With The New York Times since1977, as a metro reporter; City Hall bureau chief; foreigncorrespondent in Tokyo, Rome and Jerusalem; and col-umnist. Winner of the Silurians’ Peter Kihss Award in 2008. Julia Kagan: Award-winning editor who’s been an edi-tor and writer at many national magazines, includingLadies’ Home Journal, Back Stage, Consumer Reports,McCall’s, Psychology Today and Working Woman. Marsha Kranes: Former associate metro editor at NewYork Post. Frank Leonardo: Veteran New York Post photogra-pher, now with JE Photos, an online archive. Maralyn Matlick: Former Sunday editor of New YorkPost and former deputy news editor of Daily News. Tim Metz: Financial writer, editor and columnist forWall Street Journal, now a principal in Metz Group,specializing in corporate and financial communicationsand media relations. David Saltman: Veteran TV producer with CBS, CNNand CNBC; now head of Pinnacle Productions, pro-ducer of documentaries, films and books. Paul Steiger: Executive chairman and first CEO andeditor-in-chief of Pro Publica, former managing editorof Wall Street Journal, and winner of a Lifetime Achieve-ment Award from the Silurians. Terri Thompson: Director of the Knight-Bagehof Fel-lowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Co-lumbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.