Long ago, a nearly unvarying command could be heard across the din of telephones and typewriters in almost every big-city newsroom: “Get me rewrite!”
Not at The New York Times. For 45 years, the command was more likely to be: “Get me McFadden!”
Robert D. McFadden worked on the rewrite team at The Times from 1968 to 2013, crafting accurate, authoritative, detailed and balanced articles while locked in the unforgiving vise of production deadlines. The deskbound reporters on this squad were called “rewritemen” because their original function was to rewrite accounts phoned in by “legmen” on the scene, or to improve substandard articles filed by their colleagues. In time, their function broadened to include just about any deadline-driven reporting that needed to be smart and quick.
Most rewrite reporters could forge a “lede-all” article for the top of Page A1 that tied together many threads about some momentous citywide, national or global event. But a McFadden “lede-all” had abundant touches of color, drama and poetry. Most importantly, he delivered fast.
I had a ringside seat in the early 1980s as a (very) junior night rewrite reporter.
When Mr. McFadden was in the zone, he seemed for all the world like a conductor on the podium; the score spread before him in the form of neatly stacked notes, wire-service reports and newspaper clippings; hands poised over the computer keyboard; the breathless interval before the downbeat; and then, the symphony began as words danced literately across the screen. How did he do it?
“Cub reporters at The New York Times spent a year writing radio news bulletins for the paper’s radio station, churning out reams of clean copy on hourly deadlines,” Mr. McFadden wrote in the Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1982, describing his own experience. “It was wonderful training. After months of writing up to 5,000 words a day, it seemed easy to write a single 1,000-word piece for the newspaper.”
Spoken modestly. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his highly skilled writing and reporting on deadline.
There was such esprit de corps on the rewrite bank when Mr. McFadden was assigned to it in 1968 that Lawrence Van Gelder (1933-2016), who was then on rewrite, designed a four-inch patch depicting a winged typewriter. Members of the crew wore the patch on racing drivers’ jackets purchased in California. Mr. McFadden donated his patch to the Museum at The Times, where it is now on display.
He retired on Sept. 1 after 63 years, the last 11 as an obituary writer. Mr. McFadden specialized in “advance obits,” whose subjects are still alive when they are written. More than 250 of his obits are waiting to be published.
Among his subjects is a 58-year-old legislator who could live at least until the mid-2040s. That means the McFadden byline may keep appearing for decades to come.
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