Michael Daly, the Daily Beast’s Special Correspondent, has been honored with a prestigious Searchlight Award and described as “the soul and the conscience of New York journalism.”
Daly, 74, was given the honor by the Citizens Union of New York at its annual Gotham Greats event in Manhattan last Wednesday. The award was specially revived by the organization at “a difficult time for journalism” and is named for the former New York radio and television public affairs show, Searchlight.
John Avlon, the former editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast who is chairman of the good government organization, presented the award and described Daly as a true “deadline artist” and the heir to the great tradition of American journalists including the late Jimmy Breslin.
Avlon described journalism as a key public service, and told the more than 250 guests, “You get involved because you care about your city, your state, your country. You’ve got to fight the good fight. The good fight is always about something bigger than yourself.
“To persuade people, it’s not the fight or the argument that’s going to get them, it’s going to be the story. It’s going to be telling people’s stories.
“That’s what Michael Daly epitomizes to me and a whole generation of journalists.”
Avlon said of Daly that he was “the last of the Mohicans,” following in a “great tradition” of the storied metro columnists who included Breslin and Murray Kempton, “people who understood that you’ve got to always fight fear with facts and report absolutely independently.”
Avlon said, “I had the honor of working with Mike Daly at the Daily Beast and he was also extraordinary as a mentor to young journalists, so generous with his time, and he always told people, ‘You never look down at people, you never talk up to people, you talk to them eye to eye.’ And that’s where the good fight comes from.”
Daly came close to tears as he received the award, referencing his career as metro columnist for the New York Daily News before he joined the Beast in September 2011.
“I had the privilege of being a New York city newspaper columnist. I may even be one of the last, the very last. When you’re doing that your world ends at the Hudson River,” he said.
“The Daily Beast doesn’t just cover New York. I have to cover that strange country the other side of the river. I’m trying to cover that part of the world the same way as I covered the city of New York.”
Among those in attendance for the Gotham Greats, held at the Bar Association of New York’s Manhattan offices, were members of Daly’s family including his brother, botanist Dr. Douglas Daly and his sister-in-law, research geneticist Gloria Coruzzi, and Daly’s guest Bill Bratton, the former New York police commissioner.
Other honorees at the event were Eric Gertler, the publisher of U.S. News and World Report; Rose Gill, New York’s former Department of Investigation commissioner; Betsy Gotbaum, the city’s former public advocate; and Dawn Smalls, a member of the city’s Campaign Finance Board.
Citizens Union of New York is a more than 125-year-old good government organization set up in response to the corruption of the Tammany Hall political machine and since then has been a voice for pubic integrity. Avlon became chairman in December, succeeding Randy Mastro.
The award is far from Daly’s first. At the Daily News, Daly was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for his outstanding coverage of 9/11. He wrote The Book of Mychal, the biography of Fr. Mychal Judge, the New York Fire Department chaplain who was the first official fatality of the atrocity. He has also written for The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The Village Voice and Flatbush Life.
At the Beast, Daly’s work has included chronicling Donald Trump, with some of his latest work described on Monday as “brilliant reporting” by Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s Last Word show.
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