closest thing the Free Press has to a pope
So many journalism deaths, so many dying younger than they should. I thought Americans were supposed to start living longer and longer !
Doesn't seem that way for the journalists ...
Neal Shine (1933--2007) helmed the actually-in-real-life-venerable Detroit FREEP under many titles. Here's what they had to say about him ... (Tampa was SOOOO robbed in this respect, we've had no one like this, EVER)
Former Free Press publisher dies at 76
April 3, 2007
By JOE SWICKARD
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Neal Shine, who loved the Detroit Free Press so much he needed two retirements to leave, died today of respiratory failure after a recent illness.
Shine started at the Free Press as a copyboy in 1950 and by 1995 had carried the titles of reporter, city editor, managing editor, senior managing editor, columnist and publisher.
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Shine, 76, died at Bon Secours Hospital in Grosse Pointe. His family was with him.
He was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1993 but overcame it. In 2005 he had a heart pacemaker implanted and underwent surgery for skin cancer.
This spring he was hospitalized while vacationing in Florida and tests revealed the lymphatic cancer had returned. He also recently had been battling pneumonia.
Shine was a passionate Detroiter from St. Rose High School and the University of Detroit who colleagues and friends said never stopped urging the city and the people forward, even when he worried that he asked too much, too often.
"But the truth is, I always know that you are there," he wrote to his hometown in 1986, "ready to do what has to be done to take some of the sharp edges off life in this town."
In a little over one week that year, Shine raised $6,000 from readers to get a newer bus for an east side youth organization – enough money in those days to pay off a repair bill for the old bus and insure the new one.
When a downtown statue of Abraham Lincoln needed saving, he gathered piles of pennies to do it.
His affection didn't stop at Eight Mile.
After a Free Press reporter wrote that kids in the Dominican Republic were playing baseball using folded cardboard for gloves, he asked readers to check their closets and garages for old but still worthy mitts. It didn't take long before he was flying to the Caribbean with more than 1,000 gloves.
His list of honors bestowed by city and regional organizations ranged from the March of Dimes and American Lung Association to the Catholic Association of School Administrators, the Poletown Churches, the Pallotine Fathers and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan.
"He's the closest thing the Free Press has to a pope," said longtime reporter Jack Kresnak, a former seminarian hired by Shine.
Free Press editor and vice president Paul Anger hailed Shine today as an icon.
"He was iconic to journalists across the country – his name was larger than life, standing for excellence, courage and integrity. He was iconic to Detroit – a Detroiter who had such passion for the region and the city and the people here and pushed so hard to make things better for all. He was iconic to the Detroit Free Press and all of us Free Pressers – a rock of a man who guided this newspaper through turbulent change with decency and wisdom," Anger said.
Current Free Press Publisher David Hunke said: "If there was such a thing, Neal was a common, everyday lion. He commanded so much attention and respect, yet had little use for it," adding, "We were blessed to have him at the Free Press."
"Neal's basic quality was fairness," said U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Damon Keith. "He was just basically a fair man and he listened to other people and took their advice and counsel. If there ever was a person who lived by the statement, ‘Listen to learn and learn to listen,' it was Neal Shine.
"There's so few people you run into these days who are just good human beings and Neal was one of those."
In 45 years at the Free Press,. Shine spanned the transition from soft-lead copy pencils and paste pots to computers and the Internet. Shine was in the middle of the one of the last great newspaper wars and then helped implement a controversial joint operating agreement between the Free Press and Detroit News that merged the two newspapers' business and production operations.
Shine also served during the bitter newspaper strike that began in 1995. The divisive ordeal — the longest strike in American journalism — pitted him against some of his most ardent admirers.
As a reporter, Shine exposed mishandling of cases in the Macomb County juvenile courts and as an editor helped direct the Free Press staff to the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1967 Detroit riots and the George Polk Award for coverage of the Kent State University shootings in 1970.
Shine, of St. Clair Shores, is survived by his wife Phyllis and six children, Judy Heuvelman, Jim, Sue Epp, Tom, Peggy Shine and Dan. He also is survived by 17 grandchildren and two brothers.
He was a man of great passions: for his family, the Irish, his craft and Detroit — especially the beloved eastside streets of his youth.
Carole Leigh Hutton, former Free Press publisher/editor, now vice president of a community newspaper company in California: "Every time I went anywhere in the community, the first question I would be asked is: ‘Where is Neal?' And then, ‘How is Neal?' At one point, I finally told him, ‘I'm sick of everybody asking about you. All they want to know is about you.' He said, ‘When you get to be my age, they'll ask about you, too.'"
Not surprisingly, the Free Press library file contained regularly updated biographical memos about Shine, including one written by him from 1961 on now-yellowing and brittle copy paper, edited in pencil.
In one of his columns, Shine recalled an old newsman who submitted his own obituary well in advance because he knew "it was risky to assume that, when he died, his former colleagues would handle news of his passing with dispatch and precision."
Neal Shine sits at his desk on the sidewalk in front of the Detroit Free Press, June 30, 1989, on the occasion of his 'first' retirement -- Shine later returned to become publisher of the Free Press in 1990.
I've been thinking a lot about Molly Ivins today and David Rosenbaum and so this really didn't help at all ... another good journalist way too young ... wassUP with all of these journalist deaths ???? Peter Jennings, Ed Bradley, Peter Jennings' protege' (I have a lot of this info stored in a blog I'm considering starting about the questionable # of journalists who are dying only to be replaced with drones for the Bushes)
Oh, does anyone else think that ROMNEY got such a boost in his money gathering because he named JEBO666 as a possible VP mate?
I feel sure that neither Mr. Shine nor Ms. Ivins would mind me asking .......
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