Greg David, a distinguished lecturer at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, honored the late Richard Ravitch in THE CITY on June 26, 2023. Ravitch was a board member and friend who supported Newmark J-School, including the Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program, for more than a decade. Below is an excerpt of David’s story.
Richard Ravitch, 1933-2023, Friend to NYC and THE CITY
By Greg David
Richard Ravitch, who died Sunday at age 89, is being widely and appropriately praised for his roles in helping save New York City from bankruptcy in the 1970s, rescuing a collapsing transit system in the 1980s and insisting on financial prudence by governments for his whole life.
But Dick (no one ever called him Richard) should be remembered for one more aspect of his life that seems especially important today: He was a steadfast friend of journalists.
Dick was one of the driving forces behind the creation of THE CITY and the initial chair of the board. Jere Hester, THE CITY’s first editor-in-chief, remembers visiting Dick’s Fifth Avenue apartment in early 2019 with a printout of a PowerPoint outlining plans for the newsroom.
Dick flipped through the pages quickly until he got to the one listing the journalists who had been hired. “He wanted to know everything about every one of them,” Hester recalled. “He wanted to know everybody’s life story and took genuine delight in every detail I could muster.”
After his stint as New York’s lieutenant governor in 2009 and 2010, Dick became appalled by the superficiality of coverage and overall lack of interest among media outlets on the issue of state and city finances and wanted to do something about it. Some people told him journalists weren’t interested in such training.
Sarah Bartlett, then dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, said that if a training program were free, with all expenses paid, the reporters would come. She was right.
Read the full story in THE CITY.