Bill Zimmerman, pioneered Newsday's Student Briefing Page, dies at 82

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 his LinkedIn profile. 

While at the American Banker, Kitchen said she worked with Zimmerman as an assistant features editor. “He once did a special illustrated explainer — comic book size — called 'The Fledgling Hedging Guide,' which, in a fun, accessible way, broke down the intricacies of hedge funds,” Kitchen wrote in an email. 

“Another of his missions, even then, was to seek out and include banker voices of women, people of color, gays — who were few and far between back in those days,” she said.

Zimmerman came to Newsday in 1990 as a deputy business editor, where Jacqueline Rivkin wrote business stories for the paper as a freelancer. “He was trying to make the business section more readable and more friendly,” she said in an interview. She said Zimmerman, “even in business, he had a whimsy about him. He made business fun.”

Rivkin said she started writing articles for the Student Briefing Page when Zimmerman transitioned to that new section. “He had his finger on the pulse of what the kids would be thinking about.”

Seeking new ways to engage an audience, Zimmerman also created at Newsday a series of newspaper comic books to teach readers about history with a cyber journalist, Chip Tracer.

Jack Millrod, Newsday's director of editorial technology, said, “Bill was one of the most creative and innovative people producing content for the paper at that time … He wanted you to communicate with him, but to also cut out parts of the page, draw things.”

Schneider said, “He made the page interactive, long before the internet, because he knew how important it was for young people to have their own voice and share their feelings … The result was that for more than a decade, Bill was one of Long Island's great teachers. He helped explain an often turbulent, complicated and scary world to tens of thousands of Long Island middle school and high school students each week.

“He did it with imagination. He did it with whimsy, but always with a deep appreciation for its importance.”

In retirement — Zimmerman left Newsday in 2004 — his creativity didn't stop. He continued to write books that he self-published, even completing one just before his death, his daughter said.

In a 2019 AARP article, Zimmerman spoke of his efforts to help young people by launching a free website in 2006 called MakeBeliefsComix.com, where users can choose from among dozens of cartoon characters and settings and write their own dialogue and stories. The site has gotten upward of 300,000 hits a month, his daughter said.

“Special education teachers have told me that kids with autism use the site to communicate,” Zimmerman said in the AARP article. “A grandmother in New Orleans let me know she had used it to make a comic book to cheer up her grandson while he was being treated for a brain tumor … Art therapists in Berlin reported using the site to work with Syrian and Iraqi refugee children, both to teach kids the German language and to allow them to express some of the trauma they had experienced after being forced to flee their homeland. These and similar stories make all the trouble and worry worth it, a thousand times over.”

Besides his daughter, Zimmerman is survived by his wife of 55 years, Teodorina, of Manhattan, and a sister, Cynthia Strauss, of Berkeley, California.

Zimmerman's body was cremated; the family plans to hold a memorial service in the spring.

By Olivia Winslow

olivia.winslow@newsday.com@newsollie