IT WAS Sept 10, 1963, and the simple black and white photograph on the front page of the late edition of Daily News became the defining moment in life for a five-year-old boy.
The picture captured a tender moment, his mother consoling his sobbing little sister who was upset that she could not follow her brother to class on that first day of school, as she was still too young.
That night, his mother brought him along to buy a copy of the Daily News. The boy, David Ng, was thrilled to see his family picture on page one, and with that, an indelible impression formed in his mind of the awesome “magic” of newspapers.
Today, Ng is executive editor of New York’s Daily News, the fifth largest newspaper in the US and the top within the New York metropolitan area, with a daily circulation exceeding 700,000.
As executive editor, he is the No 3 guy, making him one of the highest ranked Asian-Americans in the industry.
In a way, Ng’s story is like a fairy tale come true for poor immigrants who came seeking the American Dream.
His parents arrived from Hong Kong in the 1950s; his father worked as a truck driver and the family of five lived in cramped conditions in a Lower East Side tenement.
“I was born in New York. As a kid, you wouldn’t know much about poverty. As far as I was concerned, life was good,” he reminisced.
He started school not knowing a word of English. “My mother, in her infinite wisdom, had forbidden the use of the language at home. Her rationale was that we would eventually speak English well one day.”
His teacher asked for his mother once, telling her: “Your son doesn’t speak English at all.”
“I know that,” Ng’s mother replied. “That’s why I sent him to school.”
So the teacher taught him by pointing to the blackboard or the book. “That’s how I began to learn English,” Ng said.
A communications graduate of Marist College, Ng has spent 30 years in journalism.
“The biggest story that I have ever seen was obviously 9/11. It was a story that changed lives,” said Ng, who was then assistant managing editor of The Star-Ledger.
Though a true-blue newspaperman, he hoped not to see a bigger story than that ever again.
What does he think of journalists today?
“They are getting younger!” he laughed. “They are so much smarter now, more tech-savvy than I am. They grew up with technology as their second language.”
As executive editor, his duties include the day-to-day operations of putting the paper together. “We are always trying to find a story for page one and writing the headline, which has to capture the reader with just three or four words.”
The competition is especially tough in New York City, the media capital, and where the Internet is changing the rules of the game.
“It is very fast here,” Ng said, snapping his fingers repeatedly. “You have just a microsecond to attract someone walking past the newsstand to buy your paper.”
Daily News and its tabloid rival New York Post are not above calling each other names, as the US newspaper industry faces one of its toughest times with falling circulation, job cuts and declining advertising revenue.
To the Post, its nemesis is Daily Snooze; while Daily News once described the popular Page Six gossip column of the Post as “Page Sick”.
Ng, who smiled when reminded of this, said: “This is New York City. It’s part of the rivalry. Daily News is a brand name here. We are more recognised.”
(Ironically, he worked almost 13 years for the New York Post from 1980).
Daily News has an editorial strength of 350.
He remains optimistic about the future of newspapers in the US despite the bleak analysis everywhere.
“Every year is a tough year. This is not the first time the industry is in jeopardy. We are going through a transition. It is cyclical; it will be difficult, but we will reinvent ourselves,” he said.
That means breaking exclusive stories on the Internet “because you don’t think it will last till the next day”.
News coverage has changed, too. “If a fire breaks out at 8am, it would be all over the TV. I can’t do a story and say there’s a fire. We will have to find a new, fresh angle to it,” he said.
Does he fit into the stereotype image of a screaming editor?
“In my 20s, I was a yeller. But I’m now 50, older and more mellow; and you realise that you don’t get anywhere by yelling.”
He is grateful for his family. He's married to a Scot, and they have two daughters, aged eight and 14.
His life, he said, had been shaped by the education that his parents had given him. Nothing in his background would have suggested that he would be a “success”, if not for them, he said.
It is his hope that he had answered whatever doubts his parents might have in taking the decision to leave Hong Kong for their children’s sake.
So for what he has become today, the byline goes to his elderly parents.
