The Times Stages a Field of Dreams

11/22/2014

Fern Turkowitz, second row, center. Photo by Barton Silverman. Who Else?

It was straight out of the movies. We could hear James Earl Jones intoning: If you throw a party, they will come.

The occasion was the retirement of Fern Turkowitz, the administrator of the Sports Department, after a mere 47 years at the Times.

She has been compared to Derek Jeter and Radar in M*A*S*H and others who made it happen, whatever it was.

The Sports Department set up a toast at 5 PM on Friday, Fern’s last day at work. People said they have never seen a crowd like this -- the corn fields opening up, the old players emerging from history.

I won’t try to re-produce the praise for Fern. Maybe it stays in house. Maybe it’s out there in the social media. How would I know?

What touched me were the faces filing through the corn field – starting with current masthead names like Sulzberger and Baquet and Chira and maybe others I did not spot. That was gracious of them, indicating the respect for Fern throughout the building. Dozens and dozens of current Times employees were there, too numerous to mention.

Then there were the old-timers, who keep in touch, but never so many in one place, some visiting the “new building” for the first time since the Times moved from 43rd St. to Eighth Avenue in 2007.

Just off the top of my addled head, what a thrill to see Alex Yannis, who covered World Cups, and Barbara Lloyd, who wrote about sailing, Gerry Eskenazi. Dave Anderson. Lawrie Mifflin, who wrote and was a deputy sports editor. Susan Adams, one of the great copy editors. Ray Corio, ditto. Neil Amdur. Bob Lipsyte. Arthur Pincus. Paul Winfield, another favorite editor. And Paul Belinkie, who could dunk a basketball, he said. I know I’m forgetting some.

Then there were younger people who moved on to other jobs for good reasons but remain part of the team, and always will. Malcolm Moran. Judy Battista. Greg Bishop. Pete Thamel. Howard Beck. Joe Sexton. They just came back. It seemed so natural, so right.

Some came in from Seattle or Indiana or Boston or the East Side, for goodness’ sakes. Waves of all-star teams. All of us in our time had pestered Fern for credentials, or submitted sloppy expense statements, or lost rental cars, or lost ourselves. Fern straightened it out, part Mother Teresa, part Nurse Ratched, but always indispensable to eight sports editors from Jim Roach to Jason Stallman.

The party continued down the street. May still be going on.

These are “interesting times” for print journalism. I came away from this party for our colleague, our friend Fern Turkowitz, feeling the core pride in ourselves, in each other, and mostly in The New York Times. We have lived by the credo: If we print it, "they" will read it.

* * *
Two things I should add:
Terri-Ann Glynn did a great job putting the party together.
And some of the usual suspects in the office gave terrific speeches and put together a 7-page journal about Fern, which Melissa notes in her nice comment below. I think the journal fits into the clubhouse slogan of "what you see here, stays here," but it reflected Fern's impact on all of us. GV

10 Comments

Melissa Hoppert

11/22/2014 10:46:44 am

Agree 100 percent, George. A great family to be a part of. Thanks for writing this and your lovely bio of Fern. Big congrats to her on a distinguished career. Happy trails.

Brian Savin

11/23/2014 12:17:45 pm

Nice frat/soror.... It means to me the editors respected the writers and the writers respected the editors. Yells out that teamwork was a shared goal to get things done. (Hard to believe in this day and age where each ego reigns supreme, but really nice to hear.) My only serious question is whether you folks got fed and whether the stuff was any good. If yes, yes, then management is pretty good, too. That's life as good as it gets.

Happy Thanksgiving!

George Vecsey

11/23/2014 01:37:28 pm

Brian, it's like a ball team. When you come back, all or most of the old stuff is good. Trades, benching, platooning, contract disputes? Old business.
There was cake and something bubbly in the office, and a nice buffet at the pub....and celebrating our friend, who never lost a reporter or messed up a budget. Getting to chat with all your mates who put out the best paper any of us know, many of them in the office, without bylines but a whole lot of talent.
Happy Thanksgiving to you.

Amazon.com link

11/24/2014 10:41:13 pm

It has proven work and knowledge that assisted in a much better way. Like this strategy!

Altenir Silva

11/25/2014 11:11:17 am

Dear George,
It seems different but it's not. The movie Field of Dreams (book by
W.P. Kinsella; written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson) have inspired an idea about the match soccer of the century: Brazil of the World Cup 1970 versus Brazil of the World Cup 1982. Who would win?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Altenir (from Rio)

George Vecsey

11/25/2014 12:38:26 pm

Dear Altenir:
My answer is:
Rossi, Zoff and Gentile....(facetiously)

My best to you for a Happy Thanksgiving in Rio. I know at very least you will be thinking about your "other home" up north.

Best,
George

Altenir Silva

11/25/2014 01:17:36 pm

Wonderful response. I think after this 2014 World Cup, our problem is not more with Italy, but Germany. 7X1 will be unforgettable.

Best - Altenir

Brad T.

12/30/2014 07:23:56 am

While I never met Fern, I came to know of her wonderful working relationships with many of the Sports Editors, including Jim Roach with whom I had the privilege of serving while we both were in state government. Jim told me that when he needed to get something done quickly and accurately, he would only have to call, "Fern, Baby".
I guess that says much about her ability and dedicated service to the Times.

Paul Turkowitz

3/5/2015 12:43:10 pm

Fern is my sister.I am so proud of her.I helped her in her career.Lets just say I opened a door by meeting someone from the Times at a Giants game,way back.The rest is history.Good luck,Fern Baby.

Heather Walt link

3/9/2021 02:16:38 am

Great ppost thankyou

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QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

The Times Stages a Field of Dreams

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