DWYER TO DAILY NEWS: TIMES' UP

By: Wayne Robins Columnist Defects In Competitive New York Market


Jim Dwyer, who at 44 is still by decades the youngest of the populist Irish-
American columnists that were once as common in New York tabloids as foam on
beer, is leaving the Daily News for a reporting job on the metro staff at
The New York Times.

"After 15 years of column writing I'm going into reporting mode," Dwyer said
Wednesday in a phone interview from his home in Manhattan's Washington Heights.
"I was a reporter as a columnist, so I don't find it that much of a stretch. I
won't mind for awhile a break from the three-a-week [of column writing]."

Dwyer's defection capped a week of tumult in the New York newspaper business
that revived hopes that maybe the days of "The Front Page" are not bygone after
all. Just the day before Dwyer's announcement, the Daily News crowed of
the return of Pete Hamill, the template for all such tabloid newspaper
columnists. He will write for the paper one day a week.

On March 1, the Daily News knocked the city's journalism and political establishment on their respective keesters by announcing the appointment of Richard J. Schwartz as editorial page editor. Those who "hoo-hah'd!" that news did so for two reasons. One, is that Schwartz, 42, has almost no newspaper experience, except for the period from 1994 to 1997 when he served as a senior adviser to Mayor Rudolph W. Guiliani. Two, during that period he shied away from reporters.

"Richard avoided newspaper people and seemed not to like them," Dwyer, a
Pulitzer Prize winner, told his future employer, The New York Times, on
March 1. "Now ... he may found out how right he was."

Pundits presumed that either the return of Hamill or the ascension of Schwartz
drove Dwyer from the Daily News into the welcoming arms of the
Times. Dwyer says that neither is true. "We've had a few twirls," he
said. "It's not the first time the Times has thought of me, nor I of
them." Then, in a voice that suggested he may soon work in Times Square but not
at one of Broadway's nearby theaters, he sang out: "Our eyes locked and at
last...it...was...love..."

More seriously, Dwyer said that his "departure plans" from the Daily News
were set long before Schwartz's announced arrival. And as for Hamill, Dwyer
said, "I love and treasure Pete. Pete should write a column as long as he can
type."

But it had been no secret that Dwyer was one of many Daily News staffers
frustrated by the managerial carousel operated by owner Mortimer B. Zuckerman
and his latest editor-in-chief, Ed Kosner. "Since I went to the News in
September 1995, there have been four editors, and I don't think that's been
healthy,'' Dwyer said, choosing his words carefully. "The News has this
very strong core of reporters, photographers, and editors, and their talent has
not been adequately respected. I think those people committed to working at the
paper were entitled to have confidence that the leadership and management would
be stable, within reason. And it just hasn't been. It's a mistake."

Dwyer had joined the Daily News after 10 years at New York
Newsday, where his energy, shoeleather, and writing skills put him in the
heart of a hall-of-fame lineup of columnists that included Jimmy Breslin and the
late Murray Kempton. One wondered if Dwyer had been in contact with
Newsday, which recently hired former Daily News editor Debbie
Krenek, and New York Post city editor John Mancini, all for the stated
purpose of solidifying the suburban paper's circulation in the borough of
Queens.

The shuttering of New York Newsday in 1995 broke Dwyer's heart, but he
said he was not tempted to go back should the paper jump into the city action
with both feet. "I can't tell you how great my regard is for those people," he
said, speaking of Newsday's staff, "but it wasn't on my radar. I would
have a great terror of going home again. It really was a great and rare moment,
and I would hate to enter the time machine and tamper with a very good memory."



Wayne Robins (wrobins@editorandpublisher.com) is an associate editor covering new media for E&P.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.