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Connecting
August 9, 2022
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Colleagues,
Good Tuesday morning on this Aug. 9, 2022,
It’s no surprise to me that Connecting has received some great stories about our colleague Marcus Eliason in the aftermath of his death last Friday at the age of 75.
He was a remarkable man, a remarkable journalist who will be remembered for years to come. If you would like to join your colleagues in sharing a favorite memory, please send it along.
Our congratulations go out to colleague Jon Rust, an AP board member for nine years and longtime Missouri newspaperman, on his election to the Missouri Newspaper Hall of Fame. And to Tom Young, a former AP broadcast journalist who was elected commander of the National Press Club's American Legion Post 20 at its annual election of officers in June.
Losing your first pet is one of the most difficult things to face as a pet owner. It happens, it's life. Our colleague Kristen Hare of Poynter tells the story of her family's loss in The Final Word today. Got a memory of your own loved fur ball who was your first pet? Share the story.
Here’s to a great day – be safe, stay healthy!
Paul
Memories of an AP legend
There was no one, anywhere, remotely like Marcus Eliason
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Marcus Eliason (center, under unexplained coat hanger), clad in Superman T-shirt, sings happy birthday to Mason Anthony, 3. (AP Senior Editor-At-Large Jerry Schwartz, also in Superman shirt, is to his immediate left.) Photo by Ted Anthony, June 25, 2006.
Ted Anthony - There was no one, anywhere, remotely like Marcus. He was a lion, endlessly curious, always optimistic even in his cold-eyed realism, always encouraging and generous to me, even when he was shouting. I learned something from every conversation with him. He was wonderful to my kids, kind to my parents and understood intuitively what my wife had to deal with daily. As much as almost anyone, he was responsible for my success as a journalist. I will miss him deeply.
To a writer, Marcus the editor was counselor and prison warden all at once. He brooked no flab in the copy he edited, and he insisted of his writers that we write compellingly and not let our quirks consume us. He controlled our adjectives, counseled us out of our adverbs, berated us about run-on sentences. And we were better for it. His guttural histrionics about words like “infrastructure” were entertaining but, on a far more elemental level, bequeathed to us an unforgettable message: Writing is meant to be understood and inhaled and taken aboard, not to be worn like a loud tie that will hide spills from a messy lunch.
By the time I first met him, in 1994, I had been a fan of his byline for years, having watched in awe as he filed diligent Urgents through Scud missile attacks on Tel Aviv during the 1991 Gulf War. I was visiting Hong Kong with my father, and I walked into the old bureau at Telecom House in shorts, drenched in sweat from a day walking around Kowloon. I was 26, working in the Philadelphia bureau and desperate to be posted to Asia. Marcus, the news editor, looked me over and told me to sit.
He was editing a story out of Taiwan about Lee Teng-hui, the island’s president at the time, and how his relationship with the United States was a delicate one. I said something like, “Yeah, I heard he’s having trouble getting to his college reunion at Cornell because of this.”
This imposing, bearded man rose suddenly from his chair. His eyes wide, he clapped me on the shoulder. “THAT’S THE LEDE!” he bellowed.
It was the beginning of a nearly 30-year friendship. We covered the Hong Kong handover side by side, explored the Meadowlands on foot, watched “The Simpsons” together countless times, met in a small town in Pennsylvania for a sci-fi convention called “Blobfest” and collaborated on I-can’t-remember-how-many stories in which he made my copy sing and curtailed my wordier instincts.
Marcus the reporter and writer, and Marcus the editor, are well-chronicled. I want to tell you a bit about Marcus the emigrant to the United States.
He adored America – both the idea and the reality – and found it endlessly fascinating, even as he saw its fissures and flaws. I saw signs of this early: For much of the four-week runup to the handover in 1997, he wore a black Route 66 T-shirt around the office, and I had to explain just what “Route 66” was to people who passed through.
When he first considered moving to the States later in 1997 to work for Bruce DeSilva in AP Newsfeatures, we talked for hours. He wanted so badly to live in what he saw as an amazingly pluralistic nation with people interacting who never would have otherwise. And when he did move here, he loved it.
As the years passed, I learned to see my country through his emigrant eyes. Where I sometimes found discord and self-indulgence, he saw streets still paved with the gold of potential understanding. “Imagine,” he said once. “I go to the supermarket in this city, and I see Arab talking to Chinese, African talking to Hispanic, Jew talking to Hawaiian. Where else do you find this? NOWHERE.” The America he saw, and rhapsodized about for so long, is the America that America should be.
We would go on long walks around the New York area and, when he lived there, Montclair. Once he, his son and I were hiking in the Meadowlands of northern New Jersey when we came through a thicket of brush and, suddenly, could see the New York City skyline rising before us. "I need a minute," Marcus said, and just took it all in.
Somewhere, I think, I have a photo I took of him looking up at it all. But I don’t need it, really. Marcus Eliason, citizen of the world, gazing up at America in wonder from the swamps of Jersey is something I will never forget.
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From left: Bill Foley, Elias Antar and Marcus Eliason sipping his drink. Belly dancer behind us with the amazing smile.
Bill Foley - I was saddened to read the stories about Marcus Eliason's recent passing at 75. I was a young photographer working in the AP Cairo bureau, where many AP correspondents would visit to cover Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and his quest for peace with Israel. On one of his many Cairo visits, Marcus was treated to an evening at the Sahara City nightclub by the late AP Cairo bureau chief Elias Antar. COB Antar appears to not be terribly amused as Marcus sips his drink while a smiling belly dancer poses behind us. Sahara City was one of a number of "Night clubs" that dotted the desert around the pyramids in the late 70's. The attached 1979 photograph was taken by the Sahara City photographer.
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Monte Hayes - The news that Marcus Eliason had died after developing Alzheimer's and then pneumonia came as a shock. As recently as a year ago, we were exchanging emails initiated when he congratulated me after Indiana University's Media School honored me as a distinguished alumnus for my 30-year career as an AP foreign correspondent and bureau chief in Latin America.
With his strong letter of recommendation, Marcus had played a big role in the honor bestowed on me. His emails last year reflected the warmth and wit that I came to know during his years as AP's top editor of international enterprise and features.
I held Marcus in high esteem as a wordsmith and editor, but more than that as a friend. I didn't always agree with the changes he made in my stories, which, truth be told, were few. But he was so respectful, almost apologetic, when he called to explain his reasons that I could not get upset.
He respected good writing. There was no one else like him in his treatment of writers. He will be long remembered.
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Bill Kole - Marcus was a writer’s editor, and he had a Midas touch.
He added innumerable flourishes to my copy, always vastly improving it. He did this dozens of times, but one particular memory jumps out. It was April 2001; Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic had just surrendered to police after riots that overthrew him; and I was on assignment in Serbia for the first time to take stock of a republic in ruin.
The local currency was so devalued, taxi drivers were tinkering with the meters in their claptrap '70s and '80s Zastava sedans so they could make a few more pennies. I was struggling to describe what that looked like when Marcus came to the rescue. Grasping the scene instantly, even though he was an ocean away, he added that the cabbies were rigging their meters “to make the fares spin like the bars and cherries in a slot machine.” Perfect.
I’ll miss his finesse, his friendship, his plummy accent and his irreverence.
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Brad Kalbfeld - When I think of Marcus, the word that comes to mind is playfulness. Whether covering stories together in Israel when I was a radio reporter, seeing each other daily as colleagues in the London bureau, or in our occasional encounters after I transferred to the Broadcast News Center in Washington, humor and mischief were always on the agenda.
Case in point: I am in Jerusalem. It's the early 80s. I've just arrived, am unpacking. There is a sudden hammering on the door, bust-the-hinges-off loud, and then, louder still -- so loud that everyone on the floor must have heard it -- that distinctively accented voice: "Brad Kalbfeld! This is the Mossad! Open this door immediately! We have questions for you!"
I yanked open the door, mortified, expecting every other door on the floor to be open with curious guests peering out. There stood Marcus, quite proud of himself.
He once told me he was from southern Africa only because his parents, thinking they were sailing to New York, got on the wrong ship. Were they surprised when they found out where they'd landed!
He was funny and he was generous, and when I think of him, I think of that sly smile of his. Sure, the man could write. More than that, he was a mensch.
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Mike Precker - I'm sure you're being deluged with these, but here's what I wrote for his retirement scrapbook. One note of explanation: After some terrible terrorist attack, Marcus wrote a recap with an uncharacteristic misstep that somehow got through. Something like "police sirens mixed with the groans of the dead." The New Yorker spotted it for one of their snarky agate fillers. RIP, Marcus. I trust there's a great yomit out there for you every day.
The first time I encountered Marcus Eliason was as a vacation relief staffer in New York, the bottom-rung guy handed the phone to take dictation. It was Marcus, fresh off the plane from Israel with Menahem Begin, who had just become prime minister.
Barely pausing for breath, he rattled off a smooth, flawless story, with perfect pacing and syntax, and nothing for an editor to do but push the send button. I foolishly asked when he’d had time to write it. He hadn’t, of course. It came straight out of his head. I couldn’t believe it, but luckily, I would get the chance to become a believer.
The second time I encountered him I was fresh off the plane in Tel Aviv, an eager, overwhelmed intern finally getting to hang with real foreign correspondents. And there was Marcus: lumbering, unshaven, profane, hilarious, decked out in a t-shirt that proclaimed “I Dig Coal.”
He alternately yelled, joked, most likely tossed in a few Nate Polowetsky imitations, insightfully dissected the day’s news, swore at the Israeli phone system that served up busy signals when he tried to call Jerusalem, and vowed to finish the night lead in time to make it to a yomit. That’s the Hebrew word for a late-afternoon movie matinee, but not just any matinee. For Marcus, a yomit had to be a specific cinematic genre: “massive atrocity, massive revenge.”
He made the yomit, of course, and surely won the play the next morning. Forget Michael Jordan. How could you not want to be like Marcus? Surely, he inspired a long list of people as he did me: Great journalist, classic iconoclast, keen sense of when to goof around and when to get serious, and the best combination of speed and eloquence that ever pounded a keyboard.
It’s hard to imagine this business without him. And one more thing: no matter what The New Yorker thought, I always knew that “groans of the dead” was just your remarkable foresight of the zombie phenomenon to come.
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Mort Rosenblum – (Charlie) Hanley captured Marcus with such grace and detail that Richard Pyle, our much-missed obitmeister, is probably looking down (or sideways or up) and nodding approval. Marcus and I worked together as reporters, close or at a distance, since the 1970s. When he took to editing, we all knew that he could have covered and written our stories better. Partly, that was because of his sharp eye and deftness on the keys. More, it was his outsized brain and his empathy for the human condition.
I remember his series when the Iron Curtain rusted away. Marcus brought to life the individuals and families too often lumped into faceless generalities. As Putin’s vicious onslaught plays out, those dispatches should be required reading for young journalists -- and anyone else who wants to understand the depths of what is now in play.
In 1978, when a spot opened in the Paris Bureau, I badgered NY with phone calls and letters until the 4th and 7th floors made their call. We got Marcus.
Yes, Lord Copper. Old hands carried battered copies of Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop next to our Stylebooks. (No one I knew of had any cleft sticks.) In recent years, I occasionally lunched with Marcus and lovely Eva, and we dissected our beloved trade. It has its failings, all right. But Marcus did as much as anyone I can name to take it to its heights.
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Chris Sullivan - The big world he covered so well is a smaller, grayer place without Marcus Eliason.
When a change of jobs took me to New York to work side-by-side with Marcus editing enterprise, I was thrilled because, though we’d never met, his byline had been long been a gold standard for me. A story he wrote from Northern Ireland about the mistaken-identity killing of a violinmaker in the sectarian conflict began with an unforgettable word picture of the man’s workshop hung with graceful, half-completed instruments. Close and sensitive observation; wise, understated, lean and poetic writing: That was Marcus as a correspondent.
As a colleague and friend he was just plain fun. As others have said, he was among the best-read people anywhere, bringing up pieces you’d never read from Mark Twain or maybe his beloved Spectator. Moving to the U.S. late in his career, he noted that he’d had a sense growing up that this was a basically orderly country of shopping malls and housing developments – but was amazed to discover that alligators regularly appeared in Florida swimming pools, that entire homes sometimes disappeared into sinkholes, and other odd American realities. Always curious, always original: That was Marcus.
Yes, he was a curmudgeon, never hid his opinions – notably about writing. “Bedsheets of prose,” he bellowed as he launched into the edit of one overlong Newsfeatures story. He was loud, especially on the phone, where he sometimes spoke in French or Hebrew when a shift was needed from his more-or-less British English. In a raucous phone interview he conducted with Garrison Keillor, the jokes and laughter still echo in my head.
Charlie Hanley’s obit beautifully sketched the enormous impact of the happy, humane force that was Marcus Eliason. But no remembrance can capture what his loss means to those of us who treasured him. My deep sympathy to Eva and the family.
Jon Rust served 9 years on AP board
Rust Communications president selected for state newspaper Hall of Fame
By Rick Fahr
Southeast Missourian, Cape Girardeau
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Publisher of the Southeast Missourian and president of Rust Communications Jon K. Rust will be a 2022 inductee into the Missouri Press Association Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Hailed as an industry innovator and community stalwart, Rust and two others will join the hall during the association's annual convention and trade show Sept. 16 in Lake Ozark.
During his career, Rust has served in a number of national leadership positions with organizations such as The Associated Press and Local Media Association.
Thomas Curley, former president and CEO of AP, said Rust served on the group's board of directors from 2006 to 2015. He rose to vice chairman of the board and chaired the group's technology committee.
"In very short order, Jon rose to fill one of the most pivotal roles in AP board history by helping win over some of the nation's largest publishers on a digital strategy for AP," Curley noted.
Tom Young, author and combat flight veteran, takes command of Club's American Legion Post 20
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Tom Young, left, Post 20 commander, receives congratulations from Jim Noone, previous commander. Photo: Rex Stucky
Ken Dalecki
National Press Club
Tom Young, author, commercial airline pilot and retired Air National Guard flight engineer, was elected commander of the National Press Club's American Legion Post 20 at its annual election of officers in June.
Young, an 11-year member of the Club and former Newsmaker Committee member now serving on the Broadcast Committee, succeeds Jim Noone, who served as commander for five years.
Other officers elected are Brian Gray and Kevin Wensing, first and second vice commanders, respectively; Dick Thompson, adjutant; Evelyn Moy, sergeant-at-arms; Ken Dalecki, membership; Myron Belkind, finance officer and Easter Thompson, historian.
Young served in Afghanistan and Iraq, flew combat missions in Bosnia and Kosovo plus flights to Latin America, Africa and Asia on C-5 and C-130 cargo planes. His decorations include three Air and three Aerial Achievement Medals earned during 20 years serve before retiring as a senior master sergeant.
Young spent 10 years as a writer and editor with the Associated Press broadcast division and currently is a commercial airline captain based at Reagan National Airport. A native of North Carolina, Young has a B.A. and an M.A. in mass communications from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Read more here. Shared by Bill McCloskey.
More memories of your favorite broadcasters
For Cubs games, it was Bert Wilson on AM radio station WIND. "I don't care who wins, as long as it's the Cubs!" He was twice nominated for the Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick award for baseball writers and broadcasters. He died shockingly in 1955 of a heart attack, at age 44.
At the radio mike for the White Sox, it was Bob Elson, who did Sox games for 40 years on WCFL. In contrast to many of today's screamers, Elson had a laid-back, minimalist style, which probably caused him to be overlooked for several plum network post-season network assignments.
As you twisted the AM radio dial, you always could tell when you had found the Sox game, because all you would hear was crowd noise. A typical Elson call: "And a ball. [Prolonged silence] The bases....[More crowd noise]...are loaded...[More silence.]...at Cleveland." Bob, in fact, is in the Hall of Fame with the Frick award.
And finally, one sponsor of White Sox games on radio was White Owl cigars. Here we are, more than 70 years later, and I still have the jingle in my head:
"I'm Whitey the White Owl, woo-woo-woo.
I'm a very, very wise owl, woo-woo-woo.
For a smoke that's milder all the time,
Smoke a White Owl,
Just a dime."
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Steve Hendren - On great baseball announcers, another vote for Harry Caray in St. Louis. I remember him having a fishing net with him in the booth to snag foul balls that were hit his way. It was rare but I think he succeeded a few times. Rumor had it that he had a relationship with Gussie Busch’s daughter-in-law that may have led to his exile to Chicago. Drinking a Schlitz during his farewell press conference was a clever, if bitter dig at the Busch beer empire.
Closer to home, he was instrumental in my adoptive parents’ budding romance. My dad was a telephone man with Southwestern Bell and my mom was an operator. He wired my mom’s headset so she could listen to Harry announce the Cardinal games between her tasks of connecting phone calls. Guess he was somewhat of an ‘operator’ in those days, too.
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Dave Tomlin - For the sportscaster shout-outs, I have a soft spot for Michael Kay and his trademark yodel, “The Yankees win! Theeeeee Yankees win!” At a neighborhood Yankee merch store, I got myself a bottle opener that would play it every time I popped the cap on a beer.
A Walsh wedding
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AP alum Kevin Walsh and his wife, Lisa, celebrated the wedding of their son, Zach, to Kate Price recently at the Price family home and cherry orchard in Parkdale, Oregon. From left, Kevin's sister, Peggy, brother Tim, Lisa, Kate, Zach, Kevin, daughter Samantha and son-in-law Chris Diercksen. Peggy and Kevin are both former AP bureau chiefs.
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Connecting wishes Happy Birthday |
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Stories of interest
Axios Media purchased by Cox Enterprises (AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — It’s an old and new media marriage: Axios Media, the digital news site known for its to-the-point blurbs on politics, tech and business, is being acquired by Cox Enterprises, the media conglomerate that owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Kelley Blue Book and major broadband internet services.
Cox said Monday that it plans to push the online news provider into new markets while broadening its coverage “into more cities, covering more national topics and more premium niches for professionals.”
Axios, citing sources, reported that the deal is worth $525 million. In a story about the deal, Axios used its trademark “Why it matters:” section to explain the companies’ motives behind the acquisition.
Read more here. Shared by Sibby Christensen.
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Opinion | Why does the New York Times prosper while Gannett struggles? Here are four reasons (Poynter)
By: Rick Edmonds
The juxtaposition was striking.
Wednesday, The New York Times Co. reported typical net growth in its various digital subscription offerings of 180,000 and an operating profit for the second quarter of $76 million.
Thursday morning, Gannett, whose holdings include USA Today and more than 200 regional outlets, reported digital gains of its own – 120,000 more paid digital-only subscribers than the previous quarter. But it posted an operating loss of $54 million. Wall Street responded by taking the value of Gannett’s already battered stock down by roughly a quarter Thursday and Friday.
The companies are roughly the same size – Gannett actually somewhat larger with $749 million in revenues for the second quarter compared to the Times’ $556 million. So why the diverging fortunes?
Of course the Times has a national and international market, reachable by readers in digital format with no paper or delivery expense. CEO Meredith Kopit Levien likes to say that the Times “addressable” market of English speakers totals 135 million.
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David McCullough, Best-Selling Explorer of America’s Past, Dies at 89 (New York Times)
By Daniel Lewis
David McCullough, who was known to millions as an award-winning, best-selling author and an appealing television host and narrator with a rare gift for recreating the great events and characters of America’s past, died on Sunday at his home in Hingham, Mass., southeast of Boston. He was 89.
The death was confirmed by his daughter Dorie Lawson. No specific cause was given.
Mr. McCullough won Pulitzer Prizes for two presidential biographies, “Truman” (1992) and “John Adams” (2001). He received National Book Awards for “The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal” (1977) and “Mornings on Horseback” (1981), about the young Theodore Roosevelt and his family.
Deep research and lively readability were hallmarks of his books, and so was their tendency to leap off the shelves. “Truman” topped The New York Times’s best-seller list for 43 weeks; “John Adams” was No. 1 in its first week and has since gone through dozens more printings.
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For decades, Ed Donnelly put the Advance to press as Staten Island slept. Beloved news editor dies at 83. (stadvance.com)
By Eddie D'Anna
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Edward J. Donnelly of Sunnyside, a retired news editor at the Staten Island Advance who for decades served as the dean of the overnight shift, crafting headlines and overseeing page layout and story placement before sending the newspaper to press, died on Tuesday.
He was 83.
During a career at the Advance that spanned nearly four decades, Donnelly was beloved by colleagues for his calm and gentle demeanor, even as breaking news forced pages to be scrapped and redone under the tightest of deadline pressure.
He served as a mentor to generations of journalists in the Advance newsroom.
“Ed embodied everything a news editor should be. Tough, but kind. A lightning-fast decision-maker. Excellent news judgement. Not a hint of bias,” said Brian Laline, the executive editor of the Advance/SILive.com.
Read more here. Shared by Paul Albright.
The Final Word
Denzel, our first family dog, died at 10
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By Kristen Hare
Tampa Bay Times staff
Denzel the rescue poodle, who loved the slowest walks, the squeakiest part of his toys, every single meal and anytime someone forgot to close the trash can, died July 31 of prostate cancer.
He was 10, and he was my family’s first dog.
We were not dog people.
Growing up, I had parakeets and fish and hamsters whose names I remember but whose lives I’ve forgotten. My husband’s family raised a parrot and a turkey, which is another story. We both liked the idea of a family dog — the walks, the snuggles, the tail wagging hello. And we wanted our kids, then 10 and 6, to have the responsibility of caring for something other than themselves.
Colleagues – remember your first pet? Share his or her story…
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Today in History – Aug. 9, 2022
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Today is Tuesday, Aug. 9, the 221st day of 2022. There are 144 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Aug. 9, 1974, Vice President Gerald R. Ford became the nation’s 38th chief executive as President Richard Nixon’s resignation took effect.
On this date:
In 1854, Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden,” which described Thoreau’s experiences while living near Walden Pond in Massachusetts, was first published.
In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order nationalizing silver.
In 1936, Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal at the Berlin Olympics as the United States took first place in the 400-meter relay.
In 1944, 258 African-American sailors based at Port Chicago, California, refused to load a munitions ship following a cargo vessel explosion that killed 320 men, many of them Black. (Fifty of the sailors were convicted of mutiny, fined and imprisoned.)
In 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, a U.S. B-29 Superfortress code-named Bockscar dropped a nuclear device (“Fat Man”) over Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74,000 people.
In 1969, actor Sharon Tate and four other people were found brutally slain at Tate’s Los Angeles home; cult leader Charles Manson and a group of his followers were later convicted of the crime.
In 1982, a federal judge in Washington ordered John W. Hinckley Jr., who’d been acquitted of shooting President Ronald Reagan and three others by reason of insanity, committed to a mental hospital.
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan nominated Lauro Cavazos (kah-VAH’-zohs) to be secretary of education; Cavazos became the first Hispanic to serve in the Cabinet.
In 1995, Jerry Garcia, lead singer of the Grateful Dead, died in Forest Knolls, California, of a heart attack at age 53.
In 2004, Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, addressing a court for the first time, asked victims of the blast for forgiveness as a judge sentenced him to 161 consecutive life sentences.
In 2014, Michael Brown Jr., a Black 18-year-old, was shot to death by a police officer following an altercation in Ferguson, Missouri; Brown’s death led to sometimes-violent protests in Ferguson and other U.S. cities, spawning a national “Black Lives Matter” movement.
In 2016, at the Rio Games, Michael Phelps earned the 20th and 21st Olympic gold medals of his career as he won the 200-meter butterfly and anchored the United States to victory in the 4x200 freestyle relay. Katie Ledecky earned her second gold in Rio by winning the 200-meter freestyle. The U.S. women’s gymnastics team won gold for a second consecutive Olympics.
Ten years ago: The United States began a landmark project to clean up dioxin left from Agent Orange at the site of a former U.S. air base in Danang in central Vietnam, 50 years after the defoliant was first sprayed by American planes on Vietnam’s jungles to destroy enemy cover. At the London Games, Usain Bolt won the 200 meters in 19.32 seconds, making him the only man with two Olympic titles in that event. The U.S. women’s soccer team won the gold medal, avenging one of its most painful defeats with a 2-1 victory over Japan.
Five years ago: North Korea’s army said it was studying a plan to create an “enveloping fire” in areas around the U.S. territory of Guam with medium- to long-range ballistic missiles. Prosecutors in Florida said golfer Tiger Woods had agreed to plead guilty to reckless driving and would enter a diversion program that would allow him to have his record wiped clean; he’d been charged with DUI in May when he was found asleep in his car, apparently under the influence of a prescription painkiller and sleeping medication.
One year ago: Officials said the Taliban had taken control of two more provincial capitals in Afghanistan, as U.S. and NATO forces finalized their pullout from the country. Testifying at his Los Angeles murder trial, Robert Durst denied killing his best friend, Susan Berman, at her home in 2000. (Durst would be convicted of first-degree murder; the real estate heir died in January 2022 at age 78 while serving a life sentence.) The authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that Earth was getting so hot that temperatures within about a decade would probably blow past a level of warming that world leaders had sought to prevent. Canada ended its prohibition on Americans crossing the border to shop, vacation or visit, but the United States kept similar coronavirus restrictions in place for Canadians.
Today’s Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Cousy is 94. Tennis Hall of Famer Rod Laver is 84. Jazz musician Jack DeJohnette is 80. Comedian-director David Steinberg is 80. Actor Sam Elliott is 78. Singer Barbara Mason is 75. College Football Hall of Famer and former NFL player John Cappelletti is 70. College Football Hall of Famer and former NFL player Doug Williams is 67. Actor Melanie Griffith is 65. Actor Amanda Bearse is 64. Rapper Kurtis Blow is 63. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., is 62. Hockey Hall of Famer Brett Hull is 58. TV host Hoda Kotb (HOH’-duh KAHT’-bee) is 58. Pro and College Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders is 55. Actor Gillian Anderson is 54. Actor Eric Bana is 54. Producer-director McG (aka Joseph McGinty Nichol) is 54. NHL player-turned-coach Rod Brind’Amour is 52. TV journalist Chris Cuomo is 52. Actor Thomas Lennon is 52. Rapper Mack 10 is 51. Actor Nikki Schieler Ziering is 51. Latin rock singer Juanes is 50. Actor Liz Vassey is 50. Actor Kevin McKidd is 49. Actor Rhona Mitra (ROH’-nuh MEE’-truh) is 47. Actor Texas Battle is 46. Actor Jessica Capshaw is 46. Actor Ashley Johnson is 39. Actor Anna Kendrick is 37.
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Connecting is a daily newsletter published Monday through Friday that focuses on retired and former Associated Press employees, present-day employees, and news industry and journalism school colleagues. It began in 2013 and past issues can be found by clicking Connecting Archive in the masthead. Its author, Paul Stevens, retired from the AP in 2009 after a 36-year career as a newsman in Albany and St. Louis, correspondent in Wichita, chief of bureau in Albuquerque, Indianapolis and Kansas City, and Midwest vice president based in Kansas City.
Got a story to share? A favorite memory of your AP days? Don't keep them to yourself. Share with your colleagues by sending to Ye Olde Connecting Editor. And don't forget to include photos!
Here are some suggestions:
- Connecting "selfies" - a word and photo self-profile of you and your career, and what you are doing today. Both for new members and those who have been with us a while.
- Second chapters - You finished a great career. Now tell us about your second (and third and fourth?) chapters of life.
- Spousal support - How your spouse helped in supporting your work during your AP career.
- My most unusual story - tell us about an unusual, off the wall story that you covered.
- "A silly mistake that you make"- a chance to 'fess up with a memorable mistake in your journalistic career.
- Multigenerational AP families - profiles of families whose service spanned two or more generations.
- Volunteering - benefit your colleagues by sharing volunteer stories - with ideas on such work they can do themselves.
- First job - How did you get your first job in journalism?
- Most unusual place a story assignment took you.
Paul Stevens
Editor, Connecting newsletter
paulstevens46@gmail.com
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