Mark Toor, career journalist who worked on Newsday's national, foreign desks, dies at 68
A demanding but beloved editor who made his reporters' stories better, Mark Toor, a career journalist who spent three decades at Newsday, died Saturday.
He was 68 and had battled a series of health issues.
A Huntington resident, Toor was married to Newsday associate editor Joye Brown, a longtime editor and reporter at the publication. He worked for Newsday from December 1979 to March 2008 in myriad notable roles. He guided young reporters with the Minority Editorial Training Program (MetPro) and seasoned reporters on the national and foreign desks. He was part of the New York Newsday team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News coverage of the fatal 1991 Union Square subway crash in Manhattan.
"Mark had a long history at Newsday as a strong, tenacious and caring editor," Newsday publisher Debby Krenek said. "His guidance of Newsday’s coverage in the city and across the world brought important stories to Newsday readers. He was beloved and respected by all his reporters."
Howard Schneider, founding dean of the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University, spent more than 35 years at Newsday, including stints as both the managing editor and editor, where he worked closely with Toor.
"He was a smart, persistent editor who never took no for an answer in making a story clearer or more accurate," Schneider said. "If you were on the other end of his questions, he wouldn’t go away until he got answers."
Newsday reporter James T. Madore was Albany bureau chief when he worked with Toor.
"Mark made me a better reporter," he said. "He always asked good questions — the types of questions where the answers gave readers a better understanding of why the story mattered to them."
Born Aug. 17, 1956, in Wilmington, Delaware, Mark Steven Toor grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. His father, Jay, was an executive with Pathmark; his mother, Ruth — who as a child fled Vienna, Austria, with her family before the Holocaust — was a librarian active in the Association for Library Service to Children.
His younger brother, Cary Toor, of Great Falls, Virginia, recalled how Mark graduated from Governor Livingston High School in three years.
"His junior year, he announced at the table one night that he didn’t want to go to high school anymore, saying: ‘I’m ready to go to college,’ " he said. "And, by the end of the year he was going to college ... He was an overachiever with a keen sense of observation and a really quirky sense of humor."
When Brown first saw Toor in an introduction to journalism class at George Washington University, it was anything but love at first sight.
Toor was being praised by the professor as one of three students who'd passed that semester. Brown, of Washington, D.C., had gotten straight A's all her life — and suddenly found herself failing in class along with others.
"He had hair down his back, these wide sideburns and glasses," Brown recalled. "There had to be more than a hundred of us in that lecture room — and I know no one in that hall was happy for that man at that moment, knowing he'd passed and we'd all failed. Me? I just hated him."
But the two became fast friends while working for the school newspaper, The Hatchet, where Toor became the editor-in-chief and Brown managing editor.
Journalist and author Mark Dawidziak, a Greenlawn native now living in Cayuga Falls, Ohio, first met Toor at The Hatchet.
"There was a worldwide aspect to Mark," Dawidziak said. "He was our unquestioned leader. He thought in journalistic terms, which was odd for somebody that age ... He was just so far advanced in the way he thought — you knew Mark was going to be a journalist, no doubt about it."
Brown recalled when she realized she was in love. "We were walking down the street in D.C., and on the corner was a group of kids bullying some kid — and Mark stepped in and stopped it.
"At that point I said, ‘This guy is something special. He’s not only smart, but he’s got a heart of gold.’ It made me take a second look."
Toor graduated early, went to work for The Washington Post, then went on to papers in Newport News, Virginia, and in Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Toor bought an engagement ring, even asked Brown's father for permission to marry, but put it in a safe deposit box. And waited until he was confident she would say yes. That took seven more years.
By that time, Brown was at the Chicago Tribune and Toor was at Newsday. He said she should come to New York. She didn’t want to go. So, the two flipped a coin.
"I lost," Brown said, "which meant we were getting married — and I was moving to Long Island."
He became her rock; she became his biggest fan.
"He was the person who let me be me and over time we became bound at the hip," she said. "Now I will never be the same, ever."
The couple bought a house in Huntington, where they raised their two children, Catherine and Joshua.
A dedicated father and family man, Brown said her husband was also a voracious reader who on game night played Monopoly and Scrabble as "blood sport."
Visitation will be from 10 a.m. to noon Friday at the A.L. Jacobsen Funeral Home at 1380 New York Ave. in Huntington Station, followed by cremation. The family asks contributions be made to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
A demanding but beloved editor who made his reporters' stories better, Mark Toor, a career journalist who spent three decades at Newsday, died Saturday.
He was 68 and had battled a series of health issues.
A Huntington resident, Toor was married to Newsday associate editor Joye Brown, a longtime editor and reporter at the publication. He worked for Newsday from December 1979 to March 2008 in myriad notable roles. He guided young reporters with the Minority Editorial Training Program (MetPro) and seasoned reporters on the national and foreign desks. He was part of the New York Newsday team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News coverage of the fatal 1991 Union Square subway crash in Manhattan.
"Mark had a long history at Newsday as a strong, tenacious and caring editor," Newsday publisher Debby Krenek said. "His guidance of Newsday’s coverage in the city and across the world brought important stories to Newsday readers. He was beloved and respected by all his reporters."
Howard Schneider, founding dean of the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University, spent more than 35 years at Newsday, including stints as both the managing editor and editor, where he worked closely with Toor.
"He was a smart, persistent editor who never took no for an answer in making a story clearer or more accurate," Schneider said. "If you were on the other end of his questions, he wouldn’t go away until he got answers."
Newsday reporter James T. Madore was Albany bureau chief when he worked with Toor.
"Mark made me a better reporter," he said. "He always asked good questions — the types of questions where the answers gave readers a better understanding of why the story mattered to them."
Born Aug. 17, 1956, in Wilmington, Delaware, Mark Steven Toor grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. His father, Jay, was an executive with Pathmark; his mother, Ruth — who as a child fled Vienna, Austria, with her family before the Holocaust — was a librarian active in the Association for Library Service to Children.
His younger brother, Cary Toor, of Great Falls, Virginia, recalled how Mark graduated from Governor Livingston High School in three years.
"His junior year, he announced at the table one night that he didn’t want to go to high school anymore, saying: ‘I’m ready to go to college,’ " he said. "And, by the end of the year he was going to college ... He was an overachiever with a keen sense of observation and a really quirky sense of humor."
When Brown first saw Toor in an introduction to journalism class at George Washington University, it was anything but love at first sight.
Toor was being praised by the professor as one of three students who'd passed that semester. Brown, of Washington, D.C., had gotten straight A's all her life — and suddenly found herself failing in class along with others.
"He had hair down his back, these wide sideburns and glasses," Brown recalled. "There had to be more than a hundred of us in that lecture room — and I know no one in that hall was happy for that man at that moment, knowing he'd passed and we'd all failed. Me? I just hated him."
But the two became fast friends while working for the school newspaper, The Hatchet, where Toor became the editor-in-chief and Brown managing editor.
Journalist and author Mark Dawidziak, a Greenlawn native now living in Cayuga Falls, Ohio, first met Toor at The Hatchet.
"There was a worldwide aspect to Mark," Dawidziak said. "He was our unquestioned leader. He thought in journalistic terms, which was odd for somebody that age ... He was just so far advanced in the way he thought — you knew Mark was going to be a journalist, no doubt about it."
Brown recalled when she realized she was in love. "We were walking down the street in D.C., and on the corner was a group of kids bullying some kid — and Mark stepped in and stopped it.
"At that point I said, ‘This guy is something special. He’s not only smart, but he’s got a heart of gold.’ It made me take a second look."
Toor graduated early, went to work for The Washington Post, then went on to papers in Newport News, Virginia, and in Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Toor bought an engagement ring, even asked Brown's father for permission to marry, but put it in a safe deposit box. And waited until he was confident she would say yes. That took seven more years.
By that time, Brown was at the Chicago Tribune and Toor was at Newsday. He said she should come to New York. She didn’t want to go. So, the two flipped a coin.
"I lost," Brown said, "which meant we were getting married — and I was moving to Long Island."
He became her rock; she became his biggest fan.
"He was the person who let me be me and over time we became bound at the hip," she said. "Now I will never be the same, ever."
The couple bought a house in Huntington, where they raised their two children, Catherine and Joshua.
A dedicated father and family man, Brown said her husband was also a voracious reader who on game night played Monopoly and Scrabble as "blood sport."
Visitation will be from 10 a.m. to noon Friday at the A.L. Jacobsen Funeral Home at 1380 New York Ave. in Huntington Station, followed by cremation. The family asks contributions be made to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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