Jack Abraham Newfield (February 18, 1938 – December 20, 2004) was an American journalist, columnist, author, documentary filmmaker and activist. Newfield wrote for the Village Voice, New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Sun, New York, Parade, Tikkun, Mother Jones, and The Nation and monthly columns for several labor union newspapers.[2][3] In his autobiography, Somebody's Gotta Tell It: The Upbeat Memoir of a Working-Class Journalist (2002), Newfield said, "The point is not to confuse objectivity with truth."[4]
Jack Abraham Newfield | |
---|---|
Born | Brooklyn, New York City, U.S. | February 18, 1938
Died | December 20, 2004 New York City, U.S. | (aged 66)
Occupation | Journalist, author, documentary filmmaker |
Language | English |
Education | Hunter College |
Notable awards | George Polk Award (1979), Emmy Award (1992), American Book Award (2002) |
Spouse |
Janie Eisenberg (m. 1971) |
Children | 2 |
A career beat reporter, Newfield wrote prolifically about modern society, culture, and politics, on a range of topics relevant to urban life, such as municipal corruption, the police, and labor unions, and also professional sports, especially baseball and boxing, as well as contemporary music.[5][6][7] He wrote numerous books about modern social and political subjects, including A Prophetic Minority (1966) and Robert Kennedy: A Memoir (1969). He received the American Book Award for The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania about New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.[8]
Early life and education
editNewfield was born and grew up in the Bedford–Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, where he was primarily raised by his mother, Ethel (Tuchman) Newfield. When he was four years old, his father, Phillip Newfield, died of a heart attack.[9] An only child, Newfield was a latchkey kid. The ethos of his upbringing led him to establish a professional approach he identified as "advocacy journalism".[10]
Newfield completed his secondary education at Brooklyn's Boys High School before receiving his B.A. in journalism from Hunter College in 1960. While at Hunter, he wrote pamphlets for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ("SNCC") and articles for the Hunter Arrow student newspaper. During the 1960s, he was drawn to the Civil Rights Movement and the antiwar New Left politics of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) under the tutelage of Michael Harrington. He was arrested in the South at a sit-in in 1963 and spent two days in a Mississippi jail with Michael Schwerner, who was murdered in that state in June 1964 with James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.[11]
Identifying as a populist, Newfield was from the outset a politically active journalist and author. In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse to pay tax to protest against the Vietnam War,[12] and later became a sponsor of the War Tax Resistance project, which practiced and advocated tax resistance as a form of protest against the war.[13] By 1971, Newfield had begun to question the ideology of the New Left,[14] writing that "in its Weathermen, Panther and Yippee incarnations, [the New Left] seems anti-democratic, terroristic, dogmatic, stoned on rhetoric and badly disconnected from everyday reality".[15]
Newfield served as a copy boy at the New York Daily Mirror and later became editor of the West Side News, a local weekly. He resided on Charlton Street in Greenwich Village for most of his adult life.
Career
editJournalism
editNewfield considered himself a "participatory journalist", involved in politics and advocacy. Inspired by Lincoln Steffens, Jacob Riis, and I.F. Stone, Newfield held himself to a professional standard of moral emotionalism.[16] On this he wrote, "Compassion without anger can become merely sentiment or pity. Knowledge without anger can stagnate into mere cynicism and apathy. Anger improves lucidity, persistence, audacity, and memory."[17]
In 1964, he was hired by editor Dan Wolf to write for the Village Voice. Newfield said he set out to "combine activism with writing" and advised like-minded journalists to "create a constituency for reform and don't stop until you have made some progress or positive results." In 1968, Newfield covered the Chicago Democratic Convention, where he famously threw a typewriter from the window of his Chicago hotel at police that he saw beating demonstrators.[18][19] By 1988, Newfield had contributed 700 articles to the newspaper over 24 years on staff as a reporter, columnist and senior editor. From 1988, Newfield was editor and writer in an investigative reporting unit at the New York Daily News. Ardently pro-labor, he made a principled choice to support a 1990 strike by the newspaper's unionized reporters and refused to cross the picket line, resigning his editorship.[20] Shortly thereafter, he joined the New York Post as a columnist.[21] After conservative publisher Rupert Murdoch resumed ownership of the publication, Newfield wrote columns and investigative articles for The New York Sun, The New York Observer and The Nation.
In 1980, the Center for Investigative Reporting awarded Newfield the George Polk Award for Political Reporting, and he received a New York State Bar Association Special Award in 1986 for his series of articles on wrongfully convicted Bobby McLaughlin. In 2000, he was honored with the 25-Year News Achievement Award from the Society of the Silurians. Since 2006, Hunter College awards the Jack Newfield Professorship each spring to a distinguished journalist representative of his legacy of investigative journalism.[22]
Author and filmmaker
editNewfield authored books about contemporary political and social phenomena. Newfield wrote A Prophetic Minority (1967), his account of the early 1960s civil rights movement, the formation of the SNCC, the voter registration initiative in Mississippi, the expansion of the SNCC to include white students and the rise of SDS. A year later, The New York Times called Newfield's book Robert Kennedy: A Memoir (1969) a "a perceptive and moving book", and it was received again when it was reissued in 2003, on the 35th anniversary of Kennedy's murder.[23] Newfield was traveling with Kennedy and his campaign when the senator from New York was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles on in June 1968.[24] He endeavors to separate "the man from the myth" in his first-hand accounted of the assassinated politician.[25] He wrote about Kennedy, "Part of him was soldier, priest, radical, and football coach. But he was none of these. He was a politician; His enemies said he was consumed with selfish ambition, a ruthless opportunist exploiting his brother's legend. But he was too passionate and too vulnerable ever to be the cool and confident operator his brother was."
Newfield and Jeff Greenfield co-authored A Populist Manifesto: The Making Of A New Minority (1972), an elaboration on their ideas about civic reform, relevant to the banking and insurance industries, utilities, regulatory agencies, land reform, the media, crime, health care, labor unions and foreign policy.[26] With Paul Du Brul, he co-wrote The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York (Viking Press, 1977) and the revised edition, The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? (Pilgrim Press, 1981), considered classics in urban muckraking.[27][28][29][30][31]
In City for Sale (1988), Newfield and longtime Village Voice collaborator Wayne Barrett chronicled patronage-driven municipal corruption in New York during the three-term mayoralty of Ed Koch.[32][33] In 2003, Newfield's acerbic critique of the mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani, The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania (2002), received the American Book Award. City of Rich and Poor: Jack Newfield on New York, a 2003 PBS documentary, was based on "How the Other Half Still Lives", a contemporaneous Newfield article published in The Nation.[34] In 1988, Robert Kennedy: A Memoir was adapted into an acclaimed documentary, which Newfield wrote and co-directed.[35] He was writer and reporter of JFK, Hoffa and the Mob, a 1992 PBS documentary.
Newfield advocated for professional boxers to be viewed as members of the "exploited working class".[36] He wrote and produced documentaries about professional boxing, including Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson (1993), Sugar Ray Robinson: Bright Lights, Dark Shadows, (HBO, 1998; co-producer), The Making of Bamboozled (2001) and Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story (2005).[30][37][38][39][40] In 1991, he was a contributing reporter and writer to the documentary Don King Unauthorized (Frontline & Stuart Television, 1991), which aired on PBS.[41][42] Shortly thereafter, he authored Only in America The Life and Crimes of Don King in 1995, a story serialized in Penthouse and then adapted it into a 1997 Emmy Award-winning HBO biopic, Don King: Only in America, directed by John Herzfeld, starring Ving Rhames.[43]
Activism
editNewfield was an investigative reporter who wrote openly about social reform. His articles often influenced the media and public policy. Notable examples include the creation of a law banning the use of lead paint in apartments, changes in campaign finance laws, the prosecution of corruption and enforcement of regulations to protect the elderly in nursing homes. His series of articles on wrongly convicted and imprisoned Brooklyn resident Bobby McLoughlin helped to exonerate and release him from prison in 1986.[44]
Historians of the political movement against lead poisoning in the U.S. trace its origins to the American civil rights and environmental movements, and acknowledge Newfield's series of newspaper articles in New York City about the tragic consequences of lead poisoning, beginning in 1969, for exposing the lead scandal, and then-Mayor John Lindsay's initiation of the first lead poison prevention program, a model for other urban areas.[45][46][47][48]
From 1999 to 2004, Newfield wrote a series of columns advocating for the idea of a memorial honoring Jackie Robinson (1919–1972), legendary for his role as the first black professional baseball player in the major leagues, and Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team captain Pee Wee Reese, who together made history.[6] In 2005, a commemorative sculpture by William Behrends was installed at the center of a circular lawn and perimeter walkway designed by Ken Smith, inscribed with commentary related to the lives and achievements of the athletes, in front of a Brooklyn ball field, Key Span Park.[49]
Still working until the end of his life, Jack Newfield died in New York City, succumbing to kidney cancer on December 20, 2004, at the age of 66.[50]
Awards and recognition
editNewfield received the American journalism George Polk Award in 1979 for reporting on politics at the Village Voice.[51]
Selected bibliography
editBooks
edit- Newfield, J., (1966). A Prophetic Minority. New York: New American Library.[52]
- Newfield, J. (1969). Robert Kennedy: A Memoir. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.[53]
- Newfield, J. (1971). Bread and Roses Too: Reporting About America. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.[54]
- Newfield, J. (1974). Cruel and Unusual Justice: From Incompetence to Corruption, The Failure of Our Courts and Prisons. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.[55]
- Newfield, J. (1984). The Education of Jack Newfield. New York: St. Martin's Press.[56]
- Newfield, J. (1995) Only in America: The life and Crimes of Don King. New York: William Morrow.[57]
- Newfield, J. (2002). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books.[58]
- Newfield, J. (2002). Somebody's Gotta Tell It: The Upbeat Memoir of a Working-Class Journalist. New York: Saint Martin's Press.[59]
- Newfield, J. (ed.) (2003). American Rebels. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books.[60]
Co-authored books
edit- Newfield, J., & Grossman, R. (1966). Animal Ranch: The Great American Fable. New York: Parallax Pub. Co.[61]
- Newfield, J., & Greenfield, J. (1972). A Populist Manifesto: The Making of a New Majority. New York: Praeger.[62]
- Newfield, J., & DuBrul, P. (1977).The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York. New York: Pilgrim Press.[63]
- Newfield, J., & DuBrul, P., (1981) The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? The Pilgrim Press.[64]
- Newfield, J., & Barrett, W. (1988). City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York. New York: Harper & Row.[65]
- Newfield, J., & Jacobson, M. (2004). American Monsters: 44 Rats, Blackhats, and Plutocrats. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press.[66]
Reporting, selected
edit- "More Bad Judges". The Nation, January 8, 2004. 278, 3, 7.
- The Meaning of Muhammad". The Nation, January 17, 2002. '274, 4, 25.
- "B.B. King: Legend, Icon, American Original ... I Put Everything In The Song". The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 28, 2003.
- "Plenty of Nothing in New York: Governor Pataki's effective Gary Cooper imitation leaves Democrats in despair". The Nation, October 24, 2002, 275, 16, 18.
- "The Shame of Boxing: The fighters are powerless workers in need of rights and justice". The Nation, November 12, 2001, 273, 15, 13.
- "Can Mark Green Heal NYC?: New York's Democratic mayoral primary revealed the city's racial fault lines". The Nation, October 18, 2001, 273, 14, 20.
- "An Interview with Michael Moore". Tikkun, November - December, 1998. 13.6: 25–29.[67]
- "Remembering John F. Kennedy Jr." TV Guide, July 3 to August 6, 1999.
- "Stallone vs. Springsteen". Playboy, April 1986, p. 116-117+188-191.
- "Of Honest Men & Good Writers". The Village Voice, 1972, Vol. XVII, No. 20
- "Congressman Ed Koch is misleading the readers of The Voice". The Village Voice, 13, 1972, Vol. XVII, No. 2
- "The Death of Liberalism". Playboy, April 1971.
- "Blowin' in the Wind: A Folk-Music Revolt". The Village Voice, January 14, 1965, Vol. X, No. 13
- "MacDougal at Midnight: A Street Under Pressure". The Village Voice, April 8, 1965, Vol. X, No. 25
- "The Liberals' Big Stick: Ready for the SNCC??" Cavalier, June 1965, 33.
- "Jack Newfield and Robert Kennedy: A Lunch that Launched a Memoir". The Village Voice, 1969, Vol. XIV, No. 34.
- "Campus Across The River: Cause Without A Rebel". The Village Voice, May 20, 1965, Vol. X, No. 31
- "Bobby Kennedy In The Village". The Village Voice, October 8, 1964, Vol. IX, No. 51[68]
Contributory works
edit- Newfield, J. (1990) "Introduction" in Gunter Temech, Photographer. The Lost Supper/The Last Generation, Gegenschein Press.
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Jack Newfield, Writer, to Wed Janie Eisenberg, Aide to Mayor". New York Times. December 6, 1970.
- ^ Amateau, Albert (December 22, 2004). "Jack Newfield, 66, journalist, Villager, club critic". The Villager. Vol. 74, no. 33.
- ^ "Editorials & Comment - Jack Newfield". The Nation. Vol. 280, no. 2. January 1, 2005.
- ^ Newfiled, Jack (2002). Somebody's Gotta Tell It: The Upbeat Memoir of a Working Class Journalist. New York: Saint Martin's Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0312269005.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (September 21, 2004). "Who Really Invented Rock-n-Roll". The New York Sun.
- ^ a b Newfield, Jack (October 1, 2004). "Jackie Robinson Statue Assured". The New York Sun.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (December 14, 1993), "Behind the Badge", Frontline, PBS
- ^ American Booksellers Association (2013). "The American Book Awards / Before Columbus Foundation [1980–2012]". BookWeb. Archived from the original on March 13, 2013. Retrieved September 25, 2013.
2003 [...] The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania, Jack Newfield
- ^ Schudel, Matt (December 23, 2004). "Muckraking N.Y. Reporter Jack Newfield Dies at 66". The Washington Post. p. B08.
- ^ "Newfield, Jack". encyclopedia.com. The Schribner Encyclopedia of American Lives.
- ^ Dittmer, John (May 1, 1995). Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (1st ed.). University of Illinois Press. p. 560. ISBN 978-0252065071.
- ^ "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest", New York Post, January 30, 1968
- ^ "A Call to War Tax Resistance" The Cycle 14 May 1970, p. 7
- ^ Carson, Clayborne (April 3, 1995). In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674447271.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (1971-07-19). "A Populist Manifesto: The Making of a New Majority". New York. pp. 39–46. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
- ^ Murphy, Jarrett (December 21, 2004). "Jack Newfield, 1938-2004". The Village Voice.
- ^ Barrett, Wayne (December 21, 2004). "Jack Newfield: 1938 - 2004". The Village Voice.
- ^ Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the American Political Conventions of 1968 (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1969), 170-171.
- ^ Oliver, Myrna (December 22, 2004). "Jack Newfield, 66; Newspaper Columnist, Expert on New York". LA Times. Archived from the original on May 10, 2010. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
- ^ McLeary, Paul. "Trench Tales". January Magazine. Review of Somebody's Gotta Tell It by Jack Newfield
- ^ Albert Amateau, "Jack Newfield, 66, journalist, Villager, club critic", The Villager, Dec. 22-28, 2004
- ^ Hamill, Denis (December 7, 2007). "Jack Newfield: Defender of the city that made him". Daily News.
- ^ Johnson, George (April 17, 1988). "New & Noteworthy". The New York Times.
- ^ Amateau, "Jack Newfield"
- ^ Newfield, Jack. "Jack Newfield, Looking for the Man in the RFK Myth". National Public Radio. June 4, 2008.
- ^ Applegate, Edd C. (1996). Literary Journalism: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. p. 326. ISBN 978-0313299490.
- ^ Shefter, M. (June 1, 1983). "Book Review: The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York?". Administrative Science Quarterly. 28 (2): 319–321. doi:10.2307/2392634. ISSN 0001-8392. JSTOR 2392634.
- ^ Tabb, W.K. (October 1, 1979). "Book Review: The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York". Science & Society. 43 (3): 362–366. ISSN 0036-8237.
- ^ Katznelson, I. (June 1, 1979). "Book Review: The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York". The American Political Science Review. 73 (2): 595–596. doi:10.2307/1954940. ISSN 0003-0554. JSTOR 1954940. S2CID 142346165.
- ^ a b "Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story (2005)". IMDb. Archived from the original on 21 June 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
- ^ Dolan, P. "Book Review: Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 435: 322–323. doi:10.1177/000271627843500146. ISSN 0002-7162. S2CID 144973331.
- ^ Alter, Jonathan (January 15, 1989). "'THE MAYOR WHO DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW'". The New York Times.
- ^ Mollenkopf, John Hull (August 23, 1994). A Phoenix in the Ashes: The Rise and Fall of the Koch Coalition in New York. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 280. ISBN 978-0691036731.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (March 17, 2003). "How the Other Half Still Lives". The Nation.
- ^ Matthews, Wallace (December 22, 2004). "Jack Newfield: Champion of the Underdog". The New York Sun.
- ^ "The Jack Newfield Collection". Brooklyn College Library. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
Mr. Newfield advocated for the rights of professional prize fighters who he viewed as 'exploited workers.'
- ^ "Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson (1993)". IMDb. Archived from the original on 21 June 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
- ^ "Sugar Ray Robinson: The Bright Lights and Dark Shadows of a Champion (1998)". IMDb. Archived from the original on 21 June 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
- ^ "The Making of 'Bamboozled' (2001)". IMDb. Archived from the original on 21 June 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
- ^ "Jack Newfield: Biography". IMDb. Archived from the original on 21 June 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
- ^ "Don King, Unauthorized (5 Nov. 1991)". IMDb. Frontline: Season 9, Episode 18. Archived from the original on 21 June 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
- ^ Huff, Richard (November 5, 1991). "Television Reviews: Don King, Unauthorized". Daily Variety. p. 11.
- ^ "Don King: Only In America". IMDb. Archived from the original on 21 June 2014. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
- ^ Radelet, Michael L.; Bedau, Hugo Adam; Putnam, Constance E. (1994). In Spite Of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases. Northeastern Publisher. p. 400. ISBN 978-1555531973.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (September 18, 1969). "Silent Epidemic In The Slums". The Village Voice. No. 3.
- ^ Gonzales, Juan (June 10, 2003). "SPEAKER'S FLAKY IN LEAD POISON FIGHT". The New York Daily New.
- ^ Packard, Randall M.; Berkelman, Ruth L.; Frumkin, Howard; Brown, Peter J., eds. (July 30, 2004). Emerging Illnesses and Society: Negotiating the Public Health Agenda (1st ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 235. ISBN 978-0801879425.
- ^ Keelan, Goeff; Goodlet, Kirk W (July 17, 2014). "The "Silent Epidemic" of Lead Poisoning". Clio's Current. ISSN 2374-1406.
- ^ Berkow, Ira (November 2, 2005). "Two Men Who Did the Right Thing". The New York Times.
- ^ Martin, Douglas (December 22, 2004). "Jack Newfield, 66, Proud Muckraker, Dies". The New York Times.
- ^ "George Polk Awards, Past Award Winners". Political Reporting. Long Island University. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (1966). A Prophetic Minority. New York: New American Library. p. 212. OCLC 230800.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (1970). Robert Kennedy: A Memoir. London: Jonathan Cape. pp. 318 pages. ISBN 978-0224618168.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (1971). Bread and Roses Too: Reporting About America (1st ed.). New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. p. 429. ISBN 978-0525070856.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (1974). Cruel and Unusual Justice (1st ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. p. 205. ISBN 978-0030110412.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (1984). The Education of Jack Newfield (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 200. ISBN 978-0312237394.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (1995). Only In America ; The Life and Crimes of Don King. New York: William Morrow. pp. xiii, 352 pages, [, 14], pages of plates: illustrations, 24 cm. ISBN 978-0688101237.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (2002). The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania. New York: Thunder Mouth's Press/Nation Books. p. 176.
- ^ Somebody's Gotta Tell It: The Upbeat Memoir of a Working-Class Journalist (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin Press. 2002. pp. xii, 336 pages. ISBN 978-0312269005.
- ^ Newfield, Jack, ed. (2003). American Rebels (1st ed.). New York: Thunder's Mouth/Nation Books. pp. xv, 368 pages. ISBN 978-1560255437.
- ^ Newfield, Jack; Grossman, Robert (1966). "Animal Ranch: The Great American Fable". Monocle Periodicals. 5 (5): 63 pages: illustrations, 21 cm. OCLC 1497726.
- ^ Newfield, Jack; Greenfield, Jeff (1972). A Populist Manifesto: The Making of a New Majority. Washington: Praeger Publishers. p. 221. OCLC 635986484.
- ^ Newfield, Jack; Du Brul, Paul (1977). The Abuse of Power: The Permanent Government and the Fall of New York (1st ed.). New York: Viking Press. pp. xiv, 368 pages, [7] leaves of plates: illustrations, 24 cm. ISBN 978-0670102044.
- ^ Newfield, Jack; Du Brul, Paul (1981). The Permanent Government: Who Really Rules New York? (1st editton ed.). New York: Pilgrim Press. p. 304. ISBN 978-0829804669.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (1988). City For Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0060160609.
- ^ Newfield, Jack; Jacobson, Mark (2004). American Monsters: 44 Rats, Blackhats, and Plutocrats. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. pp. xv, 377 pages. ISBN 978-1560255543.
- ^ "Notable Biographies: Michael Moore Biography". Encyclopedia of World Biography.
- ^ Tony, Ortega. "Bobby Kennedy In The Village". The Village Voice Archive. The Village Voice. Retrieved August 10, 2009.
External links
edit- Jack Newfield at Find a Grave
- Berliner, Eve "Jack Newfield: From the Radical Outpost" Eve's Magazine
- Official website archived at the Internet Archive