A newspaperman you should know

The man who transformed Newsday and made it distinctive, admired and synonymous with Long Island, and later boldly created New York Newsday, was David Laventhol. Once Newsday's editor and publisher, afterward the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, he ultimately was the president of the Times Mirror Co., which then owned both newspapers. He died last week and readers ought to know something about him as he set Newsday's destiny and character.

Dave's accomplishments and ambitions were always on behalf of the newspapers he led and their readers. His manner and means were rare, not in the central casting mode of those who built great newspapers. Gentle, unpretentious, even diffident, his force and ideals came from his editor's heart and practical imagination, a devotion to detail, unwavering determination, clear intelligence, and an intimate understanding of every cog in the enterprise of newspaper life. And a sly, shy humor, he often turned on himself. You could walk past him unnoticing if you never knew him, but never again once you did.

Bill Moyers, a former publisher of Newsday, brought Dave from The Washington Post where editor Ben Bradlee had chosen him to fashion a new section called Style. There was a certain irony because Dave was the anti-hero of personal style. The section he created became a lodestar of agile and imaginative feature writing, giving zest and a new idiom to newspapers. Dave remembered his days at the New York Herald Tribune where he was city editor, and how the likes of Tom Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin gave its pages verve.

Once at the editorial helm of Newsday, Dave was resolute that Long Island deserved a modern paper of content, caliber and stature equal to those whose names were defined by big cities across America. He saw the whole of Long Island needing a cohering daily report and point of view, its own voice, separate from the newspapers in the City, but equal in aspiration.

Dave's leadership made Newsday's daily coverage of schools and police and local politics complete, its columnists tuned to what and who made Long Island life, and its wider connections to Albany, Washington and the world alert and award-winning. The ties to Long Island were always marked. The newspaper's tone and manner were in sync with its readers, yet Dave was always seeking to stretch the paper and its readers, to face issues of the Island's growth and governance, its economy, to know more and thus ably face civic problems that needed remedy. He felt the paper ought to stir the conscience on race and other matters of sensitivity and consequence. He wanted Newsday to illuminate and celebrate Long Island, yet never to be bound by insularity. His highest calling was that Newsday would become indispensable to every home and institution on Long Island. Newsday became extraordinarily successful, providing the wherewithal to build and expand its journalism. It won its readers' trust and reliance.

Dave was a leader and an inspirer; he was principled, without sanctimony. Despite being a well-known mumbler, his directions were clear. His resolve was unflagging. He never forgot the paper's highest obligations and in a corporate world he kept the flame of independence lit.

Perhaps you didn't know him. I wish you had. Yet you know this paper, once in so many ways his. He said for those in our business, the proof was in the pudding and the pudding was what the newspaper had in it each and every day. Because of that readers shared something precious with him. He stands as tall as the most celebrated in the pantheon of newspaper leaders, and a step ahead in being so wise and wry, and close in spirit to his readers.

Steven L. Isenberg is a former publisher of New York Newsday and is chairman emeritus of Adelphi University.