Gabe Pressman dies
Iconic TV newsman was 93
Legendary New York TV reporter Gabe Pressman, whose career spanned more than six decades, died in his sleep Friday morning. He was 93.
Pressman is credited as one of the first television reporters in New York and worked for decades at WNBC/Channel 4 as a senior correspondent.
He is survived by his wife, four children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandson.
His daughter Liz Pressman is a longtime news librarian for the New York Post.
“He’s a pioneer in his field and he was, most importantly, a family man,” Liz said. “We’re going to miss the hell out of him.”
Best known in the field as a “reporter’s reporter,” Pressman covered every Big Apple mayor from Robert F. Wagner to Bill de Blasio.
His long career also included stints at the New York World-Telegram and Sun, where he worked as a City Hall reporter.
The 1947 Columbia School of Journalism graduate became one of the most respected journalists in the city with stories on the 1956 sinking of the Andrea Doria and the Weinberger kidnapping on Long Island.
Pressman also covered the chaos of the 1960s and ’70s — the race riots in Newark and New York, the New York City blackouts, riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, mayoral campaigns of Abraham Beame, William F. Buckley and John Lindsay, and Robert F. Kennedy’s start in New York politics.
Liz recalled how her “tenacious” dad used to take her out on assignment — and how he was always one step ahead of technology.
“My dad would interview Harry Truman on his walks every morning and my dad would be walking backwards really fast and the cameramen would be on dollies filming my dad,” she remembered.
“He thought, ‘What if I took a film camera on the street, could we put this on TV?’
“He was a visionary, that’s for sure,” she added.
Pressman’s numerous awards and accolades include 11 Emmys. He was most recently set to be honored in September with the City Limits Urban Journalist Award.
Gabe Pressman, a giant of New York City journalism, died Friday at 93.
The Bronx-born Navy combat veteran of World War II started out in 1947 with the Newark Evening News, won a Pulitzer scholarship to freelance in Europe for a year, then came home to the New York World-Telegram & Sun.
In 1956 he joined WNBC/Channel 4, becoming the city’s first TV reporter.
And he stayed on the air for more than six decades. A reporter’s reporter, he covered 10 mayors, from Robert F. Wagner to Bill de Blasio — as well as the 1956 sinking of the Andrea Doria, the blackouts of 1965 and ’77, the riots at the ’68 Democratic Con- vention and the aftermath of 9/11.
Along the way, he collected several shelves’ worth of awards, including 11 Emmys, a Peabody and at least a dozen more.
In his annual Freedom of the Press message at the recent NY Press Club awards dinner, he declared: “The First Amendment is under attack, and we can’t let our guard down. We can’t give up. We have to keep fighting for our rights as journalists.”
He wasn’t just a legend, but a working newsman to the end. “We’re going to miss the hell out of him,” said his daughter Liz, a Post staffer.
She was speaking for the family, but it’s true for the whole town.