By Chris Satullo
Last week, the newspaperman who first fired my love of journalism and taught me the basics of the craft died.
When I arrived at the Easton (PA) Express in 1976, Bruce P. Frassinelli was the metro editor, charged with whipping a room full of newly minted reporters into shape. He later ran the whole operation.
I worked at The Express (pronounced “EX-press” by locals) for 13 years. I ended up marrying the impossibly cute reporter who sat at the desk next to the one where, on my first day, Bruce told me to park my rear. My daughter later worked at the paper, now called the Express-Times, for 17 years. My son-in-law is now the top editor there, sitting in Bruce’s old chair.
Local journalism is the family business. And it’s dying. Also dying, inch by inch, are Americans’ trust in facts and their willingness to do their part in the hard work of representative democracy. Those two trends are not coincidental. They are tragically interwoven.
All this was on my mind when my son-in-law asked me to write the following tribute to Bruce, published online the day after he died:
He loved Kreskin, the “mentalist” who was a minor star in the ’70s.
He cried when Elvis died – then ordered up a slew of “local angle” stories.
He spotted Tom Hanks’ superstar potential as far back as Bosom Buddies.
He once told curious readers they could come to his office to read the Seven Dirty Words that the Supreme Court had ruled George Carlin couldn’t say on air.
Bruce P. Frassinelli was a character.
He was also a passionate lover of local news. In the 1970s and ’80s, he taught an army of badly dressed, green and cocky reporters (including me) how to serve the Lehigh Valley community in precisely the way that it (and democracy) deserved.
He was unique. He was legendary. He was the editor who shaped us even as he exhausted us, a man whose intensity and quirks spawned a thousand tales we’ve never tired of telling.
And now Bruce P. Frassinelli is gone. An original whose like will never be seen in newsrooms again, he died Wednesday at the age of 84. What a great run he had.
In 1966, after some rollicking radio days, Bruce joined the Easton Express as a reporter, covering his beloved Monroe County. He rose to become executive editor and general manager, leaving in 1991 to become publisher of a paper in upstate New York.
In 1989, the American Society of Newspaper Editors named The Express one of the best small-city newspapers in the land. ASNE got that call right – and no person was more responsible for the paper’s steady excellence than Bruce.
I joined The Express in 1976, a smart-aleck without a clue whom Bruce rode hard, precisely because he glimpsed some talent beneath all the attitude. Honestly, I fought with the man nearly daily for the 13 years it took me to rise to the post of managing editor, his top deputy.
It was only after I left, to join the Philadelphia Inquirer, that it slowly dawned on me: Bruce had been an extraordinary role model; his example of work ethic, love of community, and sheer joy at doing the craft still guided me every day.
Bruce taught us that journalism was above all about serving the community where you lived, about providing people the useful, accurate, timely information they needed to be good parents, neighbors and citizens. The work wasn’t about awards; it wasn’t about setting up your next job, nor about gathering string for your great American novel. It was about doing right by the thousands of people who plunked down their hard-earned money every day to read the facts about their hometown’s joys, griefs, dreams, dreads, heroes and failures.
In the late ’70s and throughout the ’80s, The Express produced a gusher of journalistic talent. Some from that boisterous newsroom – such as Jim Kuhnhenn, David Goldstein, Tom Frank, Mike Remez and Dave Boyer – went on to cover White House administrations and sessions of Congress. Others, like Jim Flagg, Janice Blake and Mark LaRose, chose to keep serving their Lehigh Valley home.
Bruce pushed us all to do more and better work than we ever suspected we had in us. We didn’t always thank him for it in the moment. But we sure did later on.
It’s the people you love the most who can drive you the craziest. As anyone who worked at The Express in the Frassinelli era can tell you, the emblematic experience for a reporter was to arrive for work around 7:30 a.m. (in those days, we were still that dinosaur, an afternoon paper) to find your desk buried beneath a blizzard of notes from Bruce. Since before dawn, his IBM Selectric had been furiously churning out those fabled “half-sheet” notes on old newsprint. All were signed “Regards, BPF.”
Many were routine story assignments. Some were goofy jokes. But…if any were folded and stapled, your heart went to your throat. You might have done something very wrong to earn his ire. Or, if it was a blessed day, you’d done something very right to earn his treasured praise. Either way, he didn’t want prying eyes to see the words he’d composed just for you, and your continuing education in journalism.
Though he was usually at his post before the sun rose, Bruce rarely left before those chock-full-of-news p.m. editions that he’d summoned out of thin air – in a breathless daily act of deadline magic – were landing on subscribers’ lawns and doorsteps. If he went out for lunch, that was an upset.
He set the standard for we young Turks: This work of service we called newspapering was worth all our effort, all our focus, all our passion.
The seeds he planted in our callow hearts in those days have since put down roots and flowered in newsrooms, nonprofits, broadcast studios, law firms and foundation offices all over America. We are all heirs and guardians of the quirky standard of excellence that Bruce set. Whatever I might have accomplished in my career, no way any of it could have happened without the time I spent learning alongside him.
BPF, you ran the race hard and you ran it well. We miss you already. (Have you met Elvis yet?) Regards, CMS.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia