Apple of the American Journalism Eye
It is not quite so easy to make obituary references to a fellow journalist whom you have known for a long time. But world media has risen as one to pay moving tributes to R. W. Apple Jr of the New York Times, better known as Johnny Apple, who passed away on Wednesday at age 71.
In a NYT career spanning 43 years, he travelled to more than 100 countries. Johnny, who covered Vietnam and the 1991 Gulf War, the Iranian revolution, the Falklands war and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, was described by his colleague Andrew Rosenthal as “the best mind and the worst body in American journalism.”
The Independent says: “American journalism was mourning one of its giants yesterday, the New York Times man Johnny Apple, whose exploits as a political writer and foreign correspondent were matched by a Falstaffian appetite for good food, high living and erudite wit.”
One of the best tributes paid to Johnny came from Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who now writes a monthly column for The Washington Post.
Holbrooke wrote: “It is impossible to call Johnny Apple’s death the end of an era, because he belonged to no specific era, only to himself. But the journalistic standards he stood for are eroding under the assault of the 24-hour news cycle and the endless stream of mostly unprocessed data and rumor and commentary, all mixed into one messy stew (Johnny would say ‘cassoulet’).
“By the end of his career he was no longer the high-expense-account enfant terrible everyone remembers. He had become one of the last defenders of standards whose loss will be very costly to all of us.
an earlier era, one in which print journalists were all that mattered and their coverage could change events.
“When he wrote a devastating front-page article in 1967 that called the Vietnam War a stalemate, President Lyndon B. Johnson hit the roof, blamed his own team in Vietnam for leaking the story, and tried to counter it with a now-familiar blend of counterattack and discrediting. But the article hurt, because it was accurate.
“When Apple realized in 1975 that a one-term Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter had the potential to go all the way, it had a huge effect and helped launch Carter. It is highly unlikely that a single reporter could make such a difference today.
“What made Johnny unforgettable, of course, was not simply his reportorial skill; it was his outsized appetite for life. His legendary zest for food, wine, flowers, great houses, hotels, art and politics — and much more — was overwhelming. He didn’t just know which hotel to stay in, he knew which room to ask for. He told you what to order in restaurants.”
The Newsweek has another interesting anecdote about his wonderful appetite for good food.
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