This obituary is a part of a collection about individuals who have died within the coronavirus pandemic. Examine others right here.
Jack Schwartz, a lifelong newspaperman, knew early that he was finest suited to the sorts of jobs which might be valued in a newsroom however largely invisible to the studying public.
Within the fall of 1959 he landed a job out of faculty as a reporter for The Lengthy Island Press, primarily based in Queens, and some months later discovered himself protecting his first large story, a lodge hearth on Atlantic Seashore, on the South Shore. However he by no means truly went to the scene; as an alternative he pieced the story collectively from phone interviews and wire service copy.
“I discovered that I might visualize one thing a lot better in my head by not being there,” he deadpanned 55 years later in “The High-quality Print: My Life as a Deskman,” a memoir.
“Fortunately,” he added, “most reporters didn’t share my inclinations, however it was clear to me that my proclivities had been for indoor duties: rewrite, enhancing, shaping the work of people that beloved to exit and scramble, bang on doorways and run with the pack.”
It was in these forms of behind-the-scenes jobs that Mr. Schwartz turned a well-recognized and mentoring determine to a number of generations of New York journalists, primarily by way of his lengthy stints at Newsday and The New York Occasions.
At The Occasions, the place he was first employed in 1973, he was a mainstay on a collection of desks, enhancing for the Week in Evaluate (now the Sunday Evaluate part), the Sunday Journal and Arts & Leisure and on the tradition and metropolitan desks. Earlier than becoming a member of The Occasions he had been a reporter and editor at Newsday, and in 1988 he returned to that paper as e-book editor. He later crammed the identical position at The Each day Information earlier than returning to The Occasions to complete out his profession.
“Jack was such a masterly editor, realized and literary, with a twinkling humorousness that infused the headlines he wrote and polished,” wrote Jan Benzel, certainly one of dozens of former Occasions colleagues who posted tributes on a Fb alumni group. “And, as all are saying, a remarkably good man.”
Mr. Schwartz’s spouse, Dr. Nella Shapiro, mentioned he died of problems of Covid-19 at a hospital within the Bronx. He was 82 and lived in Chappaqua, N.Y.
Mr. Schwartz credited Stan Asimov, a Newsday editor and mentor often called Azzy, with imparting a defining lesson.
“From Azzy,” he wrote in his memoir, “I realized to soak up abuse from above with out inflicting it on these beneath.”
Jacob David Schwartz was born on Might 9, 1938, within the Bronx to Isadore and Pauline (Bonnick) Schwartz. His father was a produce supervisor, his mom a homemaker.
As a scholar at Metropolis School of New York, Mr. Schwartz labored on The Campus, the school newspaper. One in every of its editors on the time was Edward Kosner, who would go on to edit Newsweek, New York and Esquire magazines and The Each day Information.
“He would have been a favourite professor of literature at any school,” Mr. Kosner mentioned of Mr. Schwartz in an e-mail, “however he caught a continual case of journalism these first days on The Campus, and he by no means recovered.”
A excessive level of Mr. Schwartz’s time with The Campus got here in 1956, when he wrote an article a few fellow scholar, Herb Stempel, who was a contestant on the NBC quiz present “Twenty-One.” The article conveyed the slightest suggestion that not all the things on the present was because it appeared. NBC went ballistic, demanding a retraction. Quickly after, the present was certainly revealed to be mounted, with Mr. Stempel the principle whistle-blower.
Whereas nonetheless a scholar Mr. Schwartz labored as a duplicate boy concurrently for 2 New York papers, The Each day Mirror and The Submit. He graduated in 1959 with an English diploma and was drafted into the Military in 1961. After mustering out in 1963, he was employed as a reporter at Newsday in 1964 and later promoted to metropolis editor.
Along with his spouse, whom he married in 1977, Mr. Schwartz is survived by two kids, Max and Molly Schwartz, and two grandchildren.
After retiring in 2005, he continued to write down and in addition taught, together with at Columbia College. Ari L. Goldman, a journalism professor there, had skilled Mr. Schwartz’s instructing talents firsthand at The Occasions.
“I used to be a younger reporter on metro and wrote an obit on deadline,” he mentioned by e-mail. “Jack was on the copy desk. Most copy editors didn’t take a look at me, however Jack known as me over and requested me to sit down down.”
“He went over some primary type errors after which he added: ‘And also you don’t should make the man a hero.’ He took out my adjectives. ‘Simply inform his story.’”