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AP's Sam Boyle Dies at 59
NEW YORK (AP) — Samuel J. Boyle, who in two decades as chief of The Associated Press' New York City bureau oversaw the news organization's coverage of high-profile events from elections and gangster trials to the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, died Sunday at age 59.
Boyle died at home after a long battle with lung cancer, his wife, Suzanne O'Brien, said in an e-mail.
Just a few months ago, he relinquished his last role as an adjunct faculty member in Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he had taught for nearly two years.
Boyle was born Sept. 25, 1948, into a distinguished Philadelphia newspaper family. His father, Samuel, was a revered editor. His younger brother Bill died last Sept. 8, also of cancer, after a career that included editorships in Philadelphia and 21 years at New York's Daily News, where he was senior managing editor.
Boyle joined the AP in Newark, N.J., in 1971, transferred to the Philadelphia bureau a year later and over the next seven years moved from AP's business desk to the national desk at New York headquarters, and then to deputy sports editor, involved in Olympics and Super Bowl coverage.
In 1981, Boyle was appointed chief of bureau for West Virginia, and the following year he was named bureau chief in New York City, running a large staff whose dual mission is covering local news and explaining Gotham to the world.
Over the next 21 years he supervised coverage of such headline events as the Bernard Goetz subway shootings, the rise and fall of mobster John Gotti, City Hall under mayors Ed Koch, David Dinkins and Rudolph Giuliani, the renovation of raunchy Times Square, the crash of TWA Flight 800 and the World Trade Center attacks in 1993 and 2001.
"Sam was an old-fashioned, hard-nosed newspaperman who thrived on the raucous, anything-can-happen atmosphere that makes New York City a unique place for news," said Mike Silverman, AP's senior managing editor.
"But as much as he loved a big story, his allegiance first and foremost was to his staff."
When terrorist-hijacked jetliners destroyed the WTC's twin towers, Boyle managed the NYC bureau through its most tumultuous day ever, coordinating main stories and sidebars from staffers at desks and in the streets, even taking dictation by telephone. It was not the relaxed, somewhat diffident Boyle that his colleagues generally saw. Boyle's penchant for hands-on reporting could be irrepressible on a major story.
"You knew when he was interested in a story, because Sam would suddenly pop out of his office — loping across the newsroom, staring over your shoulder at the copy, inevitably dictating a few sentences as you sat banging on the keyboard," said Larry McShane, a former AP reporter, now at the Daily News.
Boyle also was known for backing his employees in disputes with officials and others. When a police officer tried to prevent an AP staffer with press credentials from entering City Hall because "I don't know you," Boyle wrote a strong letter of protest to then-Mayor Giuliani.
"Sam Boyle stood up for me, a junior reporter, and he did so without doubting my story for a moment," recalled the reporter, Timothy Williams, now with The New York Times.
Boyle, an early proponent of news cameras in courtrooms, also was honored by the New York Press Club and the city's Deadline Club for his activities in Freedom of Information issues.
Boyle, an avid bicyclist and scuba diver, retired from the AP in 2004 and went to work at Columbia two years later, first as an editor in the school's Columbia News Service course and later teaching fundamental reporting and writing.
He was "a thoughtful, magnanimous teacher who combined tough love with just plain love" and quickly won the hearts of his students, "several of whom already have established significant careers," said professor David Klatell, chairman of International Studies at the journalism school.
With his wife, Boyle was active in animal rescue projects, finding homes for strays and adopting half a dozen dogs, including some older ones.
CBS-WGA Contract Ratified
This report is excerpted from the Writer's Guild East Web site.
CBS News employees, who are members of the WGAE and WGAW, have overwhelmingly ratified their new contract agreement. The vote was 98% yes.
The contract is effective immediately and covers approximately 500 newswriters, editors, news desk associates, production assistants, graphic artists, promotion writers, and researchers working in television and radio on the national and local levels in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.
The vote was conducted at special meetings held in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles on January 22 and 23.
Under the terms of the new contract, WGA-CBS employees will receive a 3.5% raise immediately and again one year from now. In addition, most regularly scheduled employees who worked 200 days or more in 2007 and did not receive wage increases during the negotiations time frame will receive an additional $3,700 payment. Employees who worked shorter schedules will receive pro-rated payments. The contract runs through April 1, 2010.
Should Government Decide Who Are Legitimate Journalists?
There have been some disturbing developments recently down at City Hall and at Police Headquarters.
At issue is whether two veteran news people should be credentialed by the NYPD or admitted to mayoral news conferences. Neither of the two men is in danger of winning a popularity contest with politicians (and even some fellow reporters). But that's just the point. It's not how gentle or kind or gentlemanly a newsperson can be that should decide whether he or she should be recognized. It's whether that person is a journalist, entitled to report on the news, regardless of what flavor those reports have.
Rafael Martinez Alequin published a newspaper called the Brooklyn Free Press in 1983. He wrote some critical articles about a succession of mayors. The paper appeared sporadically. It didn't have enough money to survive although Martinez Alequin passed the hat around every so often to put out an edition. Ultimately, it folded, reappeared, only to fail again. Most recently, his publication was transformed into a blog called yourfreepress.blogspot.com.
Martinez Alequin was - and is - a gadfly. He is skeptical of almost everything politicians say. His questions, which are not always completely understandable in his heavily accented English, are often impertinent. He's irreverent. He's tenacious. He tries hard.
But, in April, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's press secretary barred him from City Hall news conferences in the Blue Room. He has been readmitted to the Blue Room - but Bloomberg won't take any questions from him. This state of purgatory presumably will last at least until civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel brings court action to assert Martinez Alequin's First Amendment rights.
I called the Bloomberg press office to ask further questions. They did not respond.
Leonard Levitt, whose tough column, called NYPD Confidential, can be read online, was barred from entering Police Headquarters, he said, and the NYPD has turned down his application for a press card. This is the credential issued to all reporters in New York by the NYPD - it's supposed to enable reporters to cross police and fire lines.
The NYPD also denied a press card to Martinez Alequin.
Administration officials told the New York Times that the press cards were denied because they did not show a need to cover breaking news for a legitimate news organization.
Paul Browne, Deputy Police Commissioner and spokesman for the department said, "An individual's declaration that they are a news-gathering organization does not make it so."
How's that again? Does the NYPD decide who is "legitimate" and who is not? I know Commissioner Ray Kelly to be a fair and honest man. Indeed, in half a century of covering City Hall and the NYPD, I believe he is the best of all the commissioners. But, on this issue, he is treading on dangerous ground.
He needs to re-examine the basic issue involved. And it is time, too, with technology changing so rapidly, to decide on how to credential blog writers and reporters, if at all. The specter of a licensing system for journalists should haunt us all.
This is the city that produced the hero, John Peter Zenger, who had the courage to criticize the English governor. Zenger was jailed in 1735, but ultimately, he was acquitted in a trial that established the principle of freedom of the press. If Zenger were alive today, would the NYPD give him a press card?
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