Two days before what would have been his 74th birthday, legendary journalist Jim Naughton, former Plain Dealer political writer, died on Saturday, Aug. 11. He had battled cancer for a decade.
Naughton, Poynter Institute president from 1996 to 2003, was previously editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he started in 1977. Before that, he was a Washington correspondent for The New York Times from 1969 to 1977.
Here's the Plain Dealer's obit:
James M. Naughton, legendary journalist with Plain Dealer ties, dies at 73
Published: Sunday, August 12, 2012, 2:36 PM Updated: Sunday, August 12, 2012, 2:38 Pm
James M. Naughton ran the Poynter Institute for Media Studies; he was the pranksterish executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer; he reported from Washington for the New York Times. But before all of that, he was The Plain Dealer's uniquely well-liked chief political writer.
Naughton, 73, died Saturday in St. Petersburg, Fla., after a battle with cancer.
An impish man with a disarming smile, Mr. Naughton was irrepressibly mischievous. As chief of newsgathering operations when The Inquirer won more than a dozen Pulitzer Prizes, he injected the newsroom with a puckish spirit that he believed stimulated creativity and cohesion.
... Mr. Naughton was born in 1938 in Pittsburgh and raised in Painesville, Ohio. ... When he landed at the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1962, he was a seasoned and confident 24-year-old.
"His copy was impeccable," said Don Bean, the Plain Dealer's former police reporter who became a reliable coconspirator upon whom Mr. Naughton would call in later years to obtain farm animals to plant in reporters' hotel rooms when the campaign passed through Cleveland.
... As political editor at the Plain Dealer, Mr. Naughton's electoral predictions showed such prescience that he was invited to speak at the City Club of Cleveland. He showed up wearing a turban and cape and toting a crystal ball, Bean said. Though the newspaper's brass was displeased with Mr. Naughton's irreverence, the young reporter had discovered his "swami" persona, which became a recurring role for the rest of his life.
Naughton came to the attention of the Times during his coverage of the 1967 Cleveland mayoral election, in which Carl Stokes became the first black mayor of a major U.S. city. When Naughton left for the Times' D.C. bureau in the summer of 1969, it was a major public event. From The Plain Dealer story by Robert Stock:
The way this thing for Jim Naughton got going, you expected them to have a robed choir gathered at sunset on Public Square and singing: "Fare thee well. O Moxie Naughton. . ." Naughton (James M.). this paper's politics writer, was cheered on his way by an extraordinary assemblage of 470 persons at lunch yesterday in Hotel Sheraton-Cleveland. He is going to Washington to work for the New York Times.
YOU SHOULD have seen that crowd. It included more different kinds of politicians and office-holders, not to mention lawyers and PR guys, than anybody ever caged in one room before.
The CTS board was there. The Cleveland school superintendent. The police chief. Councilmen and state legislators. A veritable outpouring of judges. Various aspects of the Board of Elections. Party officials. Labor leaders.
George Condon, introduced as a "distinguished" coIumnist, was toastmaster. ... Condon mentioned Albert S. Porter, county engineer and Democratic chairman.
"THEY HAVE had a strange relationship in that Jim has been trying to reach Porter by phone forfour years now."
At that point a cleverly-planted phone rang. Condon picked it up and said, "Jim, he's returning the call."
But he wasn't really.
When Naughton left the Poynter Institute -- a key training center for the industry -- in 2003, he said covering the '67 election still was one of the high points of his career. And he still loved the business:
"I love being in the company of people who care about the written word, the oral word. I love the dark humor and a mix of skepticism and a self-effacing understanding of the role," he said.
He still loved pranks, too. And that can be traced back at least to The Plain Dealer times as well. In John H. Tidyman's book "Gimme Rewrite, Sweetheart," a collection of anecdotes from Cleveland journalists, Naughton tells of a practical joke he and Don Bean pulled on Cleveland Press reporter John Hernandes when all three of them were working the police beat out of the old Central Police Station. They cooked up a phony story of a big plane landing on the Shoreway and called it in to Hernandes, in his separate office at the station. They even got their copy boy/photographer, Dick Conway, to pretend to pack up his camera gear for the big story:
Then Conway jumped out our window onto the parking ramp and got in the PD police beat car and revved it. Hernandes jumped into his car and tore off toward the scene. Well, Conway came back in and we had figured we'd let Hernandes get partway there and then phone him on the newfangled phone in his Press car and tell him we'd found out it was a hoax.
It turned out he was so eager to beat us there he did not take the time to use the key that unlocked the phone--which by then was dangling with the other keys from his car's ignition--so we couldn't reach him. As time elapsed, we figured he'd cruise around and come back. Then we heard a call on police radio that, as I recall, was like this: "This is car 596. We've got a Press reporter who says there's a plane down on the Shoreway."
All hell broke loose. Sirens everywhere. Coast Guard checking the Lake Erie shore. Police driving over Bratenahl golf course. We lived in fear for months that we'd be found out, but so far as I know neither the authorities nor Hernandes ever traced it to Bean and Conway and me.
But more than anything, Naughton was a journalist, a dogged reporter and gifted writer whose stories and columns were direct and authoritative. To mark his passing, here's one of his last columns for The Plain Dealer, in July 1969:
What ever happened to justice? Here it is, the first week of the campaign for mayor of Cleveland, and the key contenders are prattling about law and order.
It used to be someone of stature would step in to remind the electorate that justice was another important element of the war on crime. This must not be the year for it.
What it is the year for is a loud, angry debate about which of the candidates will do the most to provide the people with safety on the streets.
Mayor Carl B. Stokes is promising to do his all. His Democratic primary opponent, Robert J. Kelly, is pledging to do better than the mayor has in 19 months, which is not so hot.
Republican Ralph J. Perk is vowing to save tax money -- and use it to provide more policemen on the streets. Louis F. Molnar, of Cleveland's right wing, is intent upon arresting every criminal in sight (though his name won't be on the ballot unless he gets his version of justice from the courts.)
And, out in left field, independent Socialist Worker candidate Sydney R. Stapleton is demanding that the black community (or, for that matter, the Hungarian community) have local control over the cops working within it.
What all this nonsense means is that Cleveland is about to become the latest example of municipal political stupidity. Men seeking to lead are planning to follow. They are making it clear they noticed the public's desire for more security and will answer the demand with catch phrases.
That's unfortunate. It also is politics. But there is a much more sensible way to approach the mayoral contest. It involves just one question: Does Carl Stokes deserve another two-year term?
Many can argue, with facts in hand, that he does. Others can debate the question legitimately.
And here, from one who will not be on hand for the final decision, is a view somewhere in between:
Stokes has done a good job of reuniting City Hall and the city's business leadership. His election in itself revived national interest in Cleveland. And, for a time at least, his performance reinvigorated the spirit of the community.
On the other hand, Stokes has made a horrid botch of the task of getting along with City Council. He has failed to live up to most of the promises he made naively as a candidate in 1967. His administration has fumbled through two law directors, two police chiefs, two police prosecutors, two finance directors, and just lost two members of the Civil Service Commission.
In essence, Stokes and his administration have been long on spirit and short on performance.
There is, too, a distressing indication that Stokes regards race as an issue in the coming months of the campaign. He has said as much. His opponents have said it is not an issue -- though it seems likely most of them say that because they want race to be an underlying factor, not a topic for debate.
If race is an issue at all, it should be so only from the standpoint that the 1969 mayoral contest should prove, firmly and finally, that skin color makes no difference, that Carl Stokes is a man, not Negro, and that he should be judged like any other mayor on the basis of his abilities and failings, of which every human has a number. On paper, the objective observer would have to state that Stokes has the background, knowledge, and ability to be superior in City Hall to Kelly, Perk, Stapleton, Molnar or, for that matter, to Ralph Locher, Frank Celeste and Seth Taft.
But in practice, using the past 19 months as the test, such a view is becoming increasingly difficult to justify.
Stokes and his backers contend two years is too short a period for a mayor to set a track record. They want two more years to complete the picture.
In fact however, two years is the period allotted to a Cleveland mayor, not four. And in reality Stokes has three months until the Sept. 30 primary or four months until the Nov. 4 election to prove he deserves another crack at the toughest job in politics.
That's what the contest really should be all about.
