Here’s a game for Haverfordians to add some extra spice to their daily perusal of The New York Times.
While you catch up on world news, the campaign, various scandals, and the vain hopes of the New York Mets to beat the Phillies this year, try to count the number of Haverford alums mentioned every day in the NYT’s pages.
We’ll give you a hint:
For now–and for a good long time to come, we hope–you can start your count with an automatic minimum of one. Times Senior Vice President and Deputy General Manager Dennis Stern ’69 occupies a prominent daily space on the right side of The Times’ masthead.
Most Sundays, you’ll also find Mark Hulbert ’78 in the Business Section with his column on
financial advice newsletters.
But rarely a day goes by without at least a couple of other Fords appearing in the august pages of The Times. We just wish that when they have a chance, the alums would mention where they went to college!
We haven’t opened our Times this morning, but we already know that the paper will be running a book review of “Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker ’80.
And, yes, there was even a Ford playing a tangential role yesterday in the extensive coverage of the New York State scandal–demonstrating just another reason we can be so proud of John Whitehead ’44. Turns out John was once on the receiving end of an over-the-top rebuke from
the politico everyone else now realizes made being over-the-top a lifestyle.
A week ago Sunday, two alums looked out of photos at Times readers–Tim Hanrahan ’95, who had just gotten married (which leads to the vital question of whether Fords are proportionately over-represented in the wedding pages) and Jon Berenbom, early ’90s grad, who was the iconic
representative of folks commuting *out* of the city in roomy, relaxed surroundings on the train.
So keep your score, and we’ll keep ours, and at another time we’ll see how the scoreboard looks.
PS–while he didn’t make the New York Times Tuesday, senior Ben Zussman had a big day in the Philadelphia newspapers, being quoted in the Phila. Metro about how students at Haverford are reacting to calls for a smoking ban and then being photographed for The Inquirer, gazing out at Philadelphia’s new Cira Center, to accompany a story about how locals react to the controversial new lights there.
And speaking of making us proud, you’ll find Tony Petitti ’83 in USA TODAY today (no, that’s not a typo). Tony, Executive Producer of CBS Sports, reacting to ESPN’s hiring of boorish Bobby Knight as a commentator, makes it clear CBS has no room for and no interest in adding the loudmouth ex-coach to its roster.
–Greg Kannerstein ’63