Abstract
Tommy Zumbo was gruff, unpredictable and used filthy language. He also had a big ego, held grudges, hated criticism and, like many New Yorkers with a trickle of Irish blood in them, had an absurdly sentimental view of Sinn Fein/IRA.
Oh, and he was an alcoholic, too.
But I loved him. And now – some 35 years later – I have an absurdly sentimental view of his way of running a newsroom, while thanking my lucky stars that he was my first editor.
Tommy liked noise – the rattertat-tat of typewriters, the whirring of the ticker-tape machine as it spat out news from agencies such as Reuters, the slamming of telephones, the arguments between journalists.
Most of all, he liked the sound of his own voice as he barked at reporters whenever they returned from an assignment. “Give me six inches, keep it tight and get it to me in the next 20 minutes – or you're a schmuck.”
I think Tommy – who learnt his trade at United Press International and was chairman of the New York Press Club for many years – would describe modern newsrooms as funereal and argue that good journalism requires a degree of malice and certainly some raised voices from senior editors.
Tommy and I met in December 1981 when I was in my 20s. He was metro editor (metro as in responsible for news in the New York metropolitan area) of the now-defunct New York City Tribune, the paper I joined as an intern on a three-month trial.
I knew I wanted to be a journalist but had not convinced journalism that it wanted me.
“Can you type – fast?” asked Tommy when I stood before him on my first day.
“Yes,” I lied.
That evening I bought a teach-yourself-to-type book and spent the night practising. Three weeks later, Tommy had hardly addressed a word to me. I just sat at a desk reading the papers, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, working my way through the wires and watching how seasoned hacks went about their business.
Once, I went up to Tommy and said “Mr Zumbo, I feel I'm ready to work on a story”, and he said: “I'll decide when you're ready, limey.”
Then he handed me a book called The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and EB White and told me to read it from cover to cover and report back when I had done so. The book was a revelation at the time – and still is. In fact, just the other day, I insisted that a young journalist who had joined my department at the Daily Mail should buy a copy – though I refrained from demanding she report back to me once she had done so.
Tommy was horribly tough. I think he was like that because he saw journalism as a privilege – a ringside seat on world events, a chance to call politicians to account while possibly behaving badly oneself, an excuse not to deal directly with money (apart from filling in an expenses form), a career based largely on guile, determination and instinct.
Thankfully, I took pretty much everything he threw at me (including a heavy dictionary when I spelt “separate” wrong) and after three years he made me his deputy. I then became a foil for when he fell off the wagon and his superiors wanted to know where he was.
I used to invent a variety of excuses for his absence. Sadly, one day no excuse quite stood up, as Tommy was found dead in his Lower Manhattan apartment, aged 62.
A different era, for sure. I dare say some of Tommy's outbursts would lead to complaints to the HR department if witnessed today. But he was not a bully. He just believed passionately in newspapers and could not abide working with anyone who did not feel the same way.
Newsrooms are, of course, quieter nowadays because of computers. Emails mean the telephone seldom rings and ticker-tapes have long gone. It might be easier to concentrate in a hushed environment but I'm not sure the end result is any better.
I like hearing colleagues on the telephone. A young man called Guy Adams sits near me at the Mail. When he gets on the blower they can practically hear him in the fashion department. “I'm just starting to look into…” he tells some company boss who has had a dodgy accusation made against him. What Guy means is that he's spent the last week “just looking into” something or other and is about to bash out 2,000 words which might not be pleasant reading for the poor fellow in question. I always feel a slight rush of adrenaline when Guy's in full flow. And it concentrates the mind.
If a rookie journo were to ask me for advice, I would put “don't take offence” high on the list. The alternative is to cower.
On one of my first shifts at the Evening Standard's Londoner's Diary in 1985, I approached the then-diary editor Geoffrey Wheatcroft while he was typing with his headphones on (he was partial to Wagner), with a view to discussing a story. “Oh, do go away,” he boomed in a baritone sort of way.
More recently, it would have been easy to have been offended by Paul Dacre. One Friday, I walked into his office to complain about the lack of space he was giving my section and he said: “Please fuck off – and I mean that in the nicest possible way.” Come to think of it, Tommy and Paul would have got on famously.