The Tab Man : For hard-edged editor Joe Kovach, the days of brash, freewheeling tabloids and raucous newsrooms are gone. His punchy paper fell victim to sleaze kings and corporate moguls.

Like a ghost visiting a ghost town, Joe Kovach has returned.

On a cloudy morning, he rides up to the seventh floor of the old Daily News building in Manhattan and wanders through the abandoned city room of a newspaper he helped run for 25 years. The silence is painful.

Once, the place rattled and hummed, a nerve center wired into the heartbeat of New York. Now it’s just empty space--58,000 square feet of memories.

Weeks before, the tabloid had left its landmark headquarters--the famed Daily Planet building in “Superman” movies--to move into cheaper digs. It was an economy move, but some called it an amputation of the past.

In the tomblike calm, Kovach points to where his desk stood, then jokes about reporters who once filled the room, banging out stories on deadline. Today, all that’s left are piles of cigarette butts, scattered Chinese menus and the sense that an era, along with a wild cast of characters, has vanished.

“This shows what’s happened to newspapers,” says Kovach, 68. “The place is a goddamn shell of what it used to be.”

Outside, a fire engine shrieks past, but the eerie quiet returns. By reflex, Kovach reaches for a pack of Marlboros, then shakes his head.

“Jesus, you can’t smoke in here, and they took the bottle out of the newsroom, too,” he says. “They don’t have room for people like me anymore.”

The world is changing faster than ever. While new occupations are being created every week, others are sliding into history, along with a vanishing sense of tradition. In a culture that places so little value on the past, whole worlds can disappear without warning--leaving endangered people behind.

Joe Kovach, a tabloid newsman from the old school, is one of these people. But he isn’t ready to be stuffed into a museum case just yet. Although the bare-knuckled newsrooms he worked in might be gone, his story matters to anyone who wonders why journalism has changed, and what it has lost along the way.

Once, men like Joe Kovach put in 12-hour days at the city’s most popular tabloid. They’d break it up with a few pops at Costello’s--a raucous mid-town bar--and then head back to work. On a typical night, Kovach would down a quart of Scotch between deadlines and still put out four editions of the News.

He was a tab man, a little-known editor behind the scenes who decided what millions of New Yorkers would read and talk about each morning. Kovach helped write some of his paper’s most famous headlines--like “Ford to City: Drop Dead” in 1975--and he also chose the day’s top news stories, arranging them for maximum impact in the first five pages.

Anywhere else, these would be crucial responsibilities. But at the Daily News--a brash, freewheeling tabloid that was once America’s largest paper--Kovach’s clout stretched well beyond the newsroom. His choice of words and pictures could make the entire city laugh, or cry, or seethe with outrage.

The Daily News put a premium on lean prose and Kovach embodied that ethic. As news editor, he sliced, trimmed, chopped and shredded copy until all the fat was gone. Some called him a blowhard, and his impatience was legendary. A crew-cut, barrel-chested man, he had a mean temper and a habit of blaming others when things went wrong. But that’s not what most folks remember about him.

“For all his rough edges, Joe Kovach cared passionately about the news business, and you don’t see many like him anymore,” says former editor Jim Wieghart. “He had high standards and respected his readers. He wasn’t faking it, and he never got cynical, like so many tab writers do today.”

The tab men. Every so often, the public gets a glimpse of their world in movies like “The Front Page” and “The Paper.” There used to be thousands like Joe Kovach, strutting like peacocks in the city rooms of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and other tabloid towns. But now they’re hard to find, done in by forced retirement, bad livers and a workplace that has little use for them.

Indeed, the button-down, corporate culture of modern newsrooms has turned the tab men into dinosaurs. Nowadays, drinking at work is frowned on, and there are limits on irreverent behavior. You have to watch what you say and write. Most papers try hard to please, not to offend, and madcap stunts are a thing of the past.

There’s no room for reporters like Pete Coutros, who once spray-painted obscenities about Richard Nixon on the newsroom wall and threw his typewriter at an editor. Few bosses would stand for the midnight shenanigans of photographer Jack Smith, who Krazy Glued a sleeping reporter to his chair. The late Walter Kelleher, who took brilliant news photos but loved to bite the brassieres off women from behind, wouldn’t last 10 seconds.

Until the 1970s, there were few women or minorities in the tab world. Many reporters shudder at memories of racism and sexism in the city room, while others wince at the crudeness and dark humor that could erupt without warning.

Joe Kovach had his moments: Many colleagues remember the time he exploded at a diminutive copy editor, shouting: “I’d like to beat the crap out of you, but you’re just too goddamned small! So maybe I’ll piss all over you. But then you’d drown!”

Years later, Kovach recalls the incident with a grin and shrugs: “I guess they don’t talk that way at the New York Times, do they?”

Not exactly. Yet many people who worked at the paper of record across town recognize the importance of good tabloid journalism, warts and all.

“The old Daily News was a spark plug in the life of this city and it spoke eloquently to working people,” says A.M. Rosenthal, former executive editor of the New York Times. “But you can’t romanticize it or the folks who worked there too much, because when times change, important things get lost.”

Today, in a media culture saturated with sleaze, tabloids have a bad reputation. The mere word conjures up gossip, gore and UFO stories. Yet there was an era when such papers were different. True, their front pages were sensational and the people who produced them could be outrageous, but they still treated the news with respect. They got the facts right.

A bare handful remain, in New York and other cities, and most have replaced old-fashioned street reporting with shock trauma and glitz, says Michael O’Neill, former editor of the News. The contrast is telling.

“Just because you have splashy headlines and photos doesn’t mean you connect with people the same way,” he says. “The folks who knew how to put these papers together, who lived and breathed them, are disappearing.”

But they have grown distant from their readers. Once, reporters shared a common bond with their public. They rode the subways and lived on meager paychecks, just like the working stiffs who paid a nickel for the paper each morning. Today’s journalists are a more sophisticated, better-paid group.

In his memoir “A Drinking Life,” columnist Pete Hamill celebrates a time when newsmen didn’t take themselves too seriously--and wouldn’t dare call themselves journalists. The old-timers, he says, were “working-class people who might not have great formal educations. But they knew about New York, the world and life.”

*

Like many tab men, Kovach was a workaholic and he paid a stiff price. His wife divorced him after he spent too many late nights out. Yet that only capped an earlier string of family tragedies.

His first child died in premature birth; daughter Libby injured her spine in a freak home accident and died at 13; son Glenn accidentally hanged himself at home, playing with a Venetian blind.

Soon afterward, Kovach learned that his wife had been a secret alcoholic for years. His other two daughters ran away from home and Kovach’s carousing increased. Although he attained prominence at the News, his younger brother Bill rose much higher--in time becoming Washington bureau chief of the New York Times and editor of the Atlanta Constitution.

“There’s great pain in Joe’s eyes,” says novelist Pat Conroy, a friend. “It looks like ‘King Lear’s’ been played across his face several times.”

The man is a jumble of contradictions: A son of Albanian immigrants, he grew up in the hills of Tennessee and made his name at a big-city tabloid. Blunt and coarse, he’s a gifted painter. Kovach looks like someone you’d meet at a boxing ring or racetrack; then he talks knowledgeably about Truman Capote.

For a quarter of a century, Kovach stood like a rock in the newsroom, a gruff, cigar-smoking man who cursed violently but reveled in a well-turned phrase. Built like a cinder block, he walked with a swagger and was a dominating figure on deadline, yelling for copy across the busy room.

“If a bomb went off at LaGuardia and you had an hour to put out the paper, Joe was the center around which everyone revolved,” says Michael Oreskes, a former News reporter and now metropolitan editor of the New York Times. “He was an unforgettable character in a newsroom filled with characters.”

Kovach retired in 1988, frustrated by what he called a growing focus on celebrities instead of real news. He also believed newspapers had grown lazy and irresponsible. It wasn’t enough to point fingers, he said, they had to offer solutions .

Kovach hated flowery writing; he couldn’t stand it when reporters began injecting their personal feelings into stories. Although he might be flattered by this piece, its length would appall him.

“I couldn’t come back now if I wanted to,” Kovach says. “It’s a different world and they don’t need me. I’d be a bull in a china shop.”

Today’s papers, after all, are run by serious people. Folks with graduate degrees. Many of them are in their 30s and 40s, and they worry more about baby-sitters and property values than the old-timers did.

“Most reporters nowadays aren’t hanging around the city desk, waiting for the Lusitania to go down,” jokes Michael Pakenham, former News editorial page director. “They’re waiting for the 6:10 train back to the suburbs.”

The new crowd may be smoother, but there’s no question who had more fun.

“These tabloid guys were rowdy, semi-Bohemian types,” says Hamill, who has worked for the News, the New York Post and New York Newsday. “They were terrible husbands and they abused their livers. But they put out some of the best damn papers in America. They were part of an important tradition.”

The Daily News, founded by millionaire Joseph Patterson in 1919, was a rich part of that tradition. For years, it was the authentic voice of everyday New Yorkers, a punchy tabloid with eye-popping headlines and photos.

Every day, the paper made you laugh. When an Italian court ruled that actress Gina Lollabrigida’s sex scenes were too risque, the front page cracked: “SAY GINA WAS OBSCENA ON LA SCREENA.” When Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko died after a brief time in office, the News said: “CHERNIE WE HARDLY KNEW YE.” Hours after mob chief Albert Anastasia was shot in a barbershop while getting a shave, the headline read: “HE DIED IN THE CHAIR AFTER ALL.”

At its height in 1947, the tabloid reached 4.8 million Sunday readers. But those days are gone. Circulation at the News and other papers plummeted as city dwellers fled to the suburbs. Meanwhile, television grew in influence and advertising shrank. New York once had 13 dailies; now it has three.

Today’s News reaches 974,000 Sunday readers and operates in a vastly different economic climate. The owner, real estate baron Mort Zuckerman, has vowed to reinvigorate the paper, and color presses are expected to debut next year.

Yet no matter how many changes are made, the Joe Kovachs aren’t returning.

“We had some wild times, and Joe symbolized them pretty well,” says Bob Massi, a longtime colleague. “I remember him sitting at Costello’s, telling stories in that deep accent about where he came from. It was mesmerizing.”

*

He was a brawler who loved books.

Born in 1927, Kovach was one of four children whose parents settled in Johnson City, Tenn. Unlike his quieter siblings, Kovach learned to settle disputes with fists instead of words.

Somehow, he developed an interest in newspapers. Maybe it came from his Uncle Teddy, who drilled him on new words from a dictionary. Or maybe it was the Sunday edition of the Daily News that his father bought every week in town. The bulging tabloid, wrapped in comics, opened up a whole new world.

“Jesus, that was New York City coming to Tennessee!” says Bill Kovach. “Joe was always big on reading. That’s one of my earliest memories, him telling me to read books.”

When World War II broke out, Kovach enlisted in the Navy. He planned to attend college afterward, but tragedy intervened. His father, a stubborn man who hated hospitals, went to a nature-healer to have his hernia treated, and came down with peritonitis. Kovach watched his father writhe in agony, without pain killers, before disengaging him from an iron lung and ending the ordeal.

Kovach subsequently worked his way through college by teaching elementary school. His world changed in 1953 when he got a job at the local paper, the Bristol Herald Courier. It paid $45 a week.

His first assignment was to write about two girls who drowned after falling off a bridge. He had to track down the grieving parents and ask for photos. Tough as he was, the experience rocked him.

“You have to treat every story with respect,” he says. “If you get jaded, you’re in the wrong business. You can’t mess around with hard news.”

In years to come, Kovach held a variety of reporter’s jobs, in Mississippi, Atlanta and St. Louis, but his wandering came to an end in 1963 when he landed a job on the copy desk of the Daily News. With the exception of a brief and miserable stint at the New York Times, he stayed there 25 years.

At the time, the News was one of America’s best-edited papers. Kovach was hungry for a challenge--anything to get his mind off family tragedy.

“I felt like the whole damn world was falling apart,” he says, recounting the deaths of three of his children and the discovery that his wife was an alcoholic. “But I don’t make excuses. I wasn’t home. I just kept working, to the detriment of my family.”

His wife divorced him in 1980, and a second marriage to a younger woman he met at Costello’s ended quickly. Kovach buried himself in work; it was all he had.

“They couldn’t have put out the damn paper without Joe,” says columnist Jimmy Breslin. “At 5 p.m. in that newsroom there was smoke in the air, baby. Smoke and energy. And this is the guy you looked to for leadership.”

Kovach’s special gift was editing copy with only minutes to spare, adds Breslin: “He instinctively knew where to make trims. In less than 10 minutes, you’d be done. Boom! With a moron, you’d still be on the phone.”

He didn’t have time for fancy speeches. When copy editor Alan Fayette wanted to take a long vacation, he sent his boss a Playboy calendar with the dates circled in red ink. Kovach granted the request--and kept the calendar.

Arthur Browne, now managing editor of the News, says Kovach’s gut feeling about stories was invariably right. Would a Brooklyn “rubout” dominate the news, or should something else replace it on Page One? The news editor had better make the right decision, and Kovach’s track record was superb.

“He placed stories that gave the Daily News its character for years,” Browne says. “His sole loyalty was to the paper, and he was the most politically incorrect person you’ll ever meet. Joe really didn’t care whose ox was gored, or who got offended by a story. For him, news was news.”

To his credit, Kovach recognized the growing importance of stories about gays, women and minorities, and he understood that seemingly routine crimes in 1960 had developed racial overtones by 1980. But he drew the line at frivolity. Why should puff pieces about celebrities drive news off the page?

“Some people think they can play with newspapers like they’re toys,” says Gil Spencer, former News executive editor. “But they’re not toys. They’ll break if you mess with them too much. Joe, bless his heart, understood this.”

Others saw it differently. As they tried to survive in a shrinking market, some executives wanted the News to be more entertaining--like a British tabloid, or the New York Post. Old-timers like Kovach were getting in the way.

“For years, Joe was like a big boulder in the stream that people look up to,” says his brother Bill. “Then one day, you realize that everybody’s going around you. You don’t fit in anymore. And that’s when you leave.”

By all accounts, it was one of the noisiest farewell parties ever given at the Daily News. Hundreds of people piled into a bar to say goodby to Kovach, and it was the only time he remembers passing out drunk on the floor.

Today, he spends his retirement in a beach house on Long Island. Last year, Kovach was found to have diabetes, so his drinking days are over. There are boxes of memorabilia in his basement, yet he hasn’t looked at them in years.

He had one last hurrah in 1993, when a band of reporters seized control of the bankrupt New York Post and asked him to help out. The paper was on the verge of closing, yet staffers put out a short-lived renegade edition. Ultimately, Rupert Murdoch bought the tabloid and snuffed out the rebellion.

“We brought Joe in to provide continuity for young reporters,” says Post columnist Jack Newfield. “And it was just like having Willie Mays on the bench. Joe’s the real thing--the DNA in the lifeblood of tabloid journalism.”

Kovach laughs off the compliment, but he was clearly moved by the Post insurrection. It triggers a lot warmer thoughts than he has now, wandering through the old Daily News city room.

In the jarring quiet, he looks stunned, even small. Once, there was a newspaper here. People spent the best years of their lives in this place. Now, someone has painted a farewell message on the wall: “Truth has no address.”

Asked to put his feelings into one last headline, Kovach chuckles. Then he comes up with a pretty good line--something any tab man would understand.

“What a shame,” he says. “What a goddamn shame.”