Those who knew him said Bill Zimmerman had a sense of whimsy about him, an infectious giggle, and an aptitude that enabled the one-time business editor to relate to young people.
He devised imaginative ways to explain war and other complicated issues to middle school and high school students as the pioneering editor of the nationally syndicated Student Briefing Page in Newsday for more than a decade.
“Of all the editors I’ve worked with at Newsday, Bill was unique,” said Howard Schneider, a former editor-in-chief of Newsday who worked at the paper 35 years, and is now executive director of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism.
“He never stopped looking at the world through the eyes of a child, and that became the wellspring for his imagination and creativity. He found his calling when he became editor of the Student Briefing Page on the News,” which began in February 1991 to explain the first Gulf War to young people, Schneider said.
Journalists who worked with Zimmerman remembered his creativity, and how he nurtured theirs.
“He liked hearing the offbeat, creative things I had done as a middle school teacher, and showed me how to apply that thinking to stories and special sections,” said Patricia Kitchen, a former Newsday business writer and columnist.
Zimmerman died on New Year’s Eve at Mount Sinai Palliative Care in Manhattan, said his daughter, Carlota Zimmerman, after bouts with liver and prostate cancers. He was 82.
William Edwin Zimmerman was born in Brooklyn, and graduated from Queens College in 1960, where he received a bachelor’s degree in American Studies and Literature, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Carlota Zimmerman, of New Jersey, said her father started “at the bottom” as a copy boy at the financial newspaper American Banker around 1961, but over two decades rose to become its senior editor and vice president, positions he held from 1980 to 1989, according to…
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