William 'Bill' Goldschlag, 'newspaper guy' at Newsday, New York Daily News, dies at 73

William Goldschlag, a New York City newsman who captained some of the world’s biggest stories over six decades in the business, has died. He was 73.

He died May 27 at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, where he had been hospitalized for a day with pneumonia, according to his widow, Joan Paylo, of Manhattan. Goldschlag had been in home hospice for four months with inoperable brain cancer, she said.

Goldschlag, a Bronx native who went by Bill, retired from Newsday in 2024 after nearly 15 years at the paper, where he oversaw Long Island news, city politics and later co-wrote a buzzy newsletter chronicling the chaotic presidency of Donald Trump, a man Goldschlag had first covered decades earlier.

"Donald Trump said he would make America great," Goldschlag wrote, with the threat of impeachment looming. "Now, engulfed in escalating scandal, he is warning that if he is removed from office, it could make America break."

Before coming to Newsday, in 2010, Goldschlag was an editor, reporter, or both, for the United Press International wire service, Bloomberg News and the New York Daily News. He spent almost half his career at the Daily News, as an editor — for politics, the city, Queens, the nation — and in beats in the city and in Washington, D.C.

"Bill was the consummate wordsmith and could make any story one that you didn't want to put down," said Debby Krenek, Newsday’s publisher, for whom Goldschlag worked at the Daily News when she was its editor-in-chief. 

Goldschlag was a newspaperman out of central casting — wry, skeptical, with a quick wit, and brandishing a sharp approach to news that cut through spin and made a reporter’s work shine.

"Bill seemed gruff and irascible on the outside. He was actually thoughtful, and very witty, more so than people suspected," said Robert Shields, an associate managing editor at Newsday, who, like Krenek, met Goldschlag at the Daily News.

His life’s work was the news — big, small and in between. He managed reporters around the world. He helped reorganize and direct coverage after a crippling newspaper union strike. He covered Congress, federal agencies, the White House, the Clinton impeachment. He wrote a column taking an offbeat look at Mets’ and Giants’ statistics. He edited and generated column inches about the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which reduced tax rates and compensated by closing loopholes. He helped direct coverage of the early years of the Gilgo Beach serial killer.

Most of Goldschlag’s later work happened behind the scenes, and without a byline, wrangling a newsroom's big and sometimes sharp-elbowed personalities to perform the daily miracle of putting out a paper.

"He had such a great background — he could do anything," said Margaret Corvini, a retired Newsday business editor for whom Goldschlag was the deputy. "No learning curve at all for business copy. Our breaking news is the same as other breaking news in some ways. But he had a great eye for asking the right questions on the larger stories, really getting to the heart of what might be missing, just a real pro, a tremendous pro as an editor."

William Goldschlag was born in Manhattan on Nov. 14, 1952, the only child of Louis Goldschlag, a postal worker, and Sophie Goldschlag (née Russak), a housewife. Bill grew up in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx. His father died shortly after his bar mitzvah. Goldschlag graduated from New York University after attending the prestigious Bronx High School of Science.

"He often joked that half his classmates could save or heal the world, the other half could destroy it, while he could only write about it," Paylo said.

One of his first stints for a professional newsroom was working at "ABC Nightly News" while at NYU. Later, at UPI, he covered a range of news: fraudsters, a helicopter hijacking, abusive nursing home conditions, police shootouts, moribund railroads, the Mets and more.

"It was more fun than should be allowed — chasing fire engines and cops and whatever happened to be exploding that weekend," said Richard Sisk, who worked with Goldschlag at UPI and the Daily News and now writes about the military. 

Goldschlag married Paylo in 1997. The two met through coworkers at the Daily News, whom Paylo knew because she’d worked at the WMCA and WOR radio stations and had done public relations for state and city agencies. Paylo and Goldschlag’s relationship blossomed in 1990, when the two were in a Daily News friend group that shared a house on Fire Island.

Paylo said this week that she expects to hold a memorial service in early September on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where the couple lived. Goldschlag will be cremated.

Tony Marcano, who worked as a reporter for Goldschlag when he was Queens editor at the Daily News, recalled an everyman’s approach to the news.

"He was the epitome of the old-school newspaperman," said Marcano, who now oversees a collaborative of 14 affiliates in California of National Public Radio. "He would probably bristle at the term ‘journalist,’ like it’s too highbrow for him. He’s a  newspaper guy!"

Starting in the 1970s, that newspaper guy's byline topped thousands of articles, including this one from UPI, published around the country, including July 30, 1973, in the Daily Citizen of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, about an assemblyman in Goldschlag’s home borough of the Bronx. Headline: "Politician Seeking Honest Employment."

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.