I met Nick Daniloff for the first time in either the late 1980s or ’90s. I can’t remember the circumstances exactly, but it was a Northeastern University event, and I recall that it was at the Boston Public Library. We had an active Northeastern journalism alumni group back then, so it may have been related to that.
Nick had joined the faculty after a long and distinguished career in journalism, capped off by his being imprisoned by the Soviet Union in 1986 on false espionage charges while working for U.S. News & World Report. I was sitting next to the then-director of our School of Journalism, the late LaRue Gilleland. Nick delivered a lecture that was informed by his deep learning and his calm but focused delivery. LaRue and I looked at each other. “He’s good, isn’t he?” LaRue said. Nick ended up succeeding LaRue as director.
Later I became a colleague of Nick, who died last Thursday at 89. He was someone we all looked up to as a role model. The students revered him, and so did we. He used to show up to our spring reception for graduating seniors every year in full academic regalia, partly as a joke — Nick had an exceedingly dry sense of humor — but partly to inject a note of seriousness into what was otherwise an informal and celebratory occasion.
In 2013, Nick earned the Journalism Educator of the Year Award from the New England Newspaper and Press Association, a well-deserved honor that was reported at the time by Debora Almeida in The Huntington News, our independent student newspaper. “I try to bring the real world of journalism into the classroom,” Nick told Debora. “A good journalism professor has real journalistic experience and didn’t just read about it.” He had some plans for his impending retirement, too: “I want to keep learning, read more Shakespeare, specifically his sonnets.”
Nick played a role in my being hired at Northeastern in 2005. He actually called my editor at The Boston Phoenix, Peter Kadzis, to inquire about me, which left me speechless when Peter told me about it because I hadn’t let him know that I might be leaving. Uh, oh. It all worked out, though.
Today I teach the journalism ethics course that Nick taught for many years. It’s an honor, and yet at the same time I know it’s impossible to live up to his high standards.
If a paywall prevents you from reading Bryan Marquard’s fine obituary of Nick in The Boston Globe, here is a gift link to Robert D. McFadden’s obit in The New York Times, which is also very good. I also recommend Nick’s 2008 memoir, “Of Spies and Spokesmen: My Life as a Cold War Correspondent.”
We will all miss Nick.
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Great coments, Dan. Quietly and efficiently, he got things done. Some examples. When a former student ran into some professional/academic problems, Nick’s contacts and diplomacy saved the day. When I wanted an oversea volunteer assignment, he put me in touch w/the head of the International Rescue Committee; when I returned, he suggested a Globe piece. He got NU J student John Simons (now Time Magazine editor) a job at U.S. News & World Report.
Great tribute Dan! I remember covering Gorbachev’s victory tour to Boston in the early 90s, with stops at the Kennedy Library in Dorchester and the Kennedy School, in Cambridge. It was pretty fawning stuff but Nick made everyone stand up straight when he took the floor at the Kennedy School and (with a “J’accuse!” tone) asked Gorbachev directly why he had ordered Nick’s arrest in Moscow in 1986. Gorbachev stumbled through an attempt of an explanation.