Happy birthday, Peter Eisner!
So glad to have had Peter, my colleague at the Center for Public Integrity and The Washington Post, at our Journal-isms Roundtable.
Gives him time away from his life as an author and contributor to “Spy Talk,” which is about “intelligence for thinking people.”< https://bit.ly/3T9xzRB >
I’ve been pleased to publish in “Journal-isms” Peter’s appreciations of our mutual friend, the late Les Payne, such as this one, which subsequently appeared in The Nation: < https://bit.ly/3Bhfl5s >
At a Roundtable in April 2022 about the need for diversity among foreign correspondents < https://www.journal-isms.com/the-good-stories-we-miss-abroad/ >, Peter reminded us of how that came about at Newsday, where Peter worked from 1986 to 1994 and was a correspondent and foreign editor.
He referenced Michael Slackman, then international editor at The New York Times, and Morris Thompson, retired editor/foreign correspondent at Knight Ridder and Newsday, now in Mexico, who were also on the Zoom.
“I don’t think that our dear departed friend Les Payne would mind if I would speak for him,” Peter said. “He was my mentor at Newsday and I became foreign editor under him, and Morris Thompson was one of my colleagues . . . .
“Les believed that first of all you had to have executives who were Black, to be there, to also provide the kind of perspective that people have spoken about today, and part of that perspective providing diversity at all levels of the media outlet that you’re at. . . .
“What he did was step by step change the mindset of the place he was operating and forcing diversity where it could not be denied. And the lesson for everyone around him resonates in journalism. It certainly resonated at Newsday, resonates at The New York Times, where people like Michael Slackman worked under him, and so many other places.
“So it takes small steps and small breakthroughs, and I just said that to say that Morris and I worked at a proud place, and a proud moment at Newsday where Les was making those kind of things happen.”
Here’s Peter, at right, chatting with Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, with journalist Edwin Lake standing and artist Joyce Wellman watching.
(Journal-isms Roundtable, January 2020, photo by Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks.)
