A great friend of many people in the news business has died.
Jerry Nachman (search) died Tuesday night, evidently from the cancer for which he's been treated the last few months or so.
The news of Nachman's death was the buzz among news people. He was 57 years old, and he'd worked in newsrooms in New York and around the country for the last three decades or more.
Lately, he'd been at MSNBC as on-air anchor and analyst and as a behind-the-scenes manager.
But Jerry's heyday were the years he spent on the streets of the New York... the big guy in the trench coat, sometimes with an ankle holster, chasing mobsters and cops.
The fed has just announced a huge bust of the Bonnano family, one of the most famous of mob families. Jerry would have loved that story. He would have raced out of the newsroom to cover it, even if he were recovering from cancer surgery, taking chemotherapy and still gathering strength.
I know he would have, because that's exactly what he did when the Michael Jackson story broke a month ago. Even though Jerry was still taking chemo, still recovering from liver cancer... off he went to Santa Barbara.
He chased that story for nearly a month and when he came back, he had to reenter the hospital.
Jerry wouldn't tell his co-workers or bosses his real condition. He kept it to himself and kept working — chasing stories, knocking unworthy stories down and having fun, which is the real reason newspeople do what they do.
Jerry's gone now, but he will always be remembered as a great guy. An unforgettable guy who be missed by thousands of people.
That's My Word.
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