mini 012 Remembering Ed Koch on his birthday

Mayor Koch would be 95 today, Thursday 12/12/19. Boy oh boy would it be fun to have him around these days!  Always audacious, he had the audacity to die back in 2013 at a mere 88.

As former Mayor Mike Bloomberg said at Ed’s funeral, here was the typical New Yorker: A Jewish guy buried in a Protestant cemetery in a Dominican neighborhood. No, Mike, not typical. Archtypical.

My own first look at his audacity came around 1958. It turned into a friendship of more than 50 years. What was audacious about him back then? Try this:

That was the 1950s. Washington Square Park. Sunday sing-ins. Audacious? Hell, yeah. The only thing worse he did back then than play the guitar was to sing.

But he already was a lawyer and he was the lawyer that fought City Hall for the rest of us and won over the Parks Department which wanted us to clear out of the park and stop the Sunday sing-ins.

Ed destroyed the DiSapio-Tammany Hall wing of the Democratic Party, which badly needed destruction.  He rose from City Councilman to Congressman to Mayor to Elder  Scold in quick time. But he never changed much.

When he was first elected, New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy and there was no help coming from Washington.  So he figured out how to do it on his own.  And then, he did it.

He supported W. Bush’s run for president. (We fought. We ate.) He was friends with Republican Senator Al D’Amato (all three of us fought, we all ate.)

He ran his segment on my radio show overtime. When I asked him what to take out to make it fit into the Bloomberg Radio computerized weekend program he said “I don’t care. Take out anything you want.” So, I did. He was harder to edit than he was to interview. And it cut into my breakfast hour. 

I loved the guy. Still, I do.

But Ed, if you can hear me, I know they never gave you a harp up there… so put down the cheap guitar, stop “singing” some Pete Seeger song and get your butt back down here.  New York and all of America needs fixing. And I know you’re the guy who could do it.

Wes Richards 12/12/19

1421 The Bloomberg Omelette

This will be a little “inside baseball.”  But there’s a moral at the end that might be of value even if you don’t care a whit about former NY mayor Mike Bloomberg or his terminals or his news operation.

Bloomberg is making big changes at his company:  out with the old, in with the new.

For those of us long in the service of Bloomberg News, this is an old story, but with bigger than usual players.

And those outside the company are trying to read the tea leaves.  Forget about it.  There are no tea leaves.  The Maximum Chef is breaking eggs and trying a new recipe for an omelette.  He doesn’t know what it’ll look or taste like when it’s out of the pan and neither does anyone else.

Back when Mike was mayor, rumors spread that the company would buy “Business Week” magazine.  When reporters asked editor-in-chief Matt Winkler to comment, he said “we’re builders, not buyers.”

An eyeblink later, Bloomberg bought the magazine.  

That was a tea leaf, and some of us read it correctly, it turns out.

Now Winkler, who built the news operation from people watching pork belly and uranium trades to a giant of journalism is on his way upstairs. This after establishing a monolith with than 2,000 workers in150 bureaus.  The New York Times has about 50.

But the media world has changed around Winkler, and so has the company.  So now, he’s going to be “editor-in-chief emeritus,” whatever that is, and gets to hang out with Mike at the uber posh headquarters on Lexington Avenue and … and … do what?

The two men are close.  But Mike breaks eggs. It’s worked for him in the long run.

And there wasn’t a lot of mourning when the personnel change was announced.  Matt has the kind of personality that might have moved Gandhi to throw a punch.

That, too, has worked to the company’s advantage. Niccolo Machiavelli teaches us that it is more effective for a ruler to be feared than loved.

Matt’s stylebook, “The Bloomberg Way,” is the journalistic equivalent of a straightjacket.  But for an organization of the company’s size, it too works.  It’s thick, but in substance it’s little more than an annotated template.

Cranky executives never seemed to bother Mike. In fact, he embraced them.  So maybe it wasn’t Matt’s personality that got him kicked upstairs.  

Dedication never bothered Mike.  Matt never slept. Ever. No matter the time of day or the day of the week; no matter the location of his physical form, he was lurking.

Meantime, the data monolith marches on, carrying the news division on its shoulders.  Twenty grand a month per terminal, with 350,000 of them or so said to be in service:  that’s enough to run the news division the old fashioned way, as a public service.

So a big, look-to-the future wave is swamping all aspects of the company now that the Chef is out of city hall and back in the kitchen.

But there are no tea leaves; no tarot cards.  What you see happening is the omelette under construction, subject to regular tweaks of the recipe, some of them self-cancelling.

What you’re seeing is Mike being Mike.

I promised you a moral at the end: don’t try to second guess this guy or anyone like him.

Shrapnel:

--12/12/14… To Ed Koch:  Happy 90th, old friend. Sorry you had to go. Wish you were here.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014