Tag: New York Road Runners

How Do You Inspire Good in Others? Listen to Them

Posted on by robbie

In 1969, long before running became a popular workout activity, George Hirsch completed his first marathon in Boston. The 26.2-mile race was the only one Hirsch had ever entered. Huffing to the finish line, he could barely breathe, but he caught the bug. He recorded his fastest all-time record (2:38) at age 44 in 1978, and in 1988, he wooed the future love of his life, Shay Scrivner, a first-time marathoner, by running alongside her for nearly the entire race. The founding publisher of New York Magazine and long-time publisher of Runner’s World, Hirsch ran one final marathon in New York City in 2009 at the age of 75, on a route he had helped create in 1976 and oversees today as chairman of New York Road Runners. While he’s retired his marathon bibs, NationSwell spoke with Hirsch about the lessons he’s learned from a lifetime of long-distance running and the ever-changing world of publishing.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
My father once said to me, “Get a reputation for getting up at the crack of dawn, and you can sleep ’til noon.” Underneath that, there is a little something. You get a reputation for anything: being collegial, being transparent, being trustworthy, being straight with people. I do think we are our reputation. We can alter it to some degree, but over time, we build who we are and it’s what we become.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
After I was in the Navy and went to graduate school, my first real job was at Time Life, back in the day when it was the premier publishing company in the world. It was a very special place to work, and people — very unlike today’s world — spent their careers working there. When I left to be the founding publisher of New York Magazine, no one understood it. People, like my boss, who was a great guy, didn’t understand. Now, in all fairness, there was no New York Magazine, so it was a high risk. To me, it seemed like an incredible, terrific opportunity. You have to remember, I’m not from what you would call an entrepreneurial age. People didn’t start companies in garages or leave college freshman year because they had a big idea.

What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?

I’m on the board of Salon, which is an online magazine. I’ve entered that world, and it’s only taught me again that this idea of print being so challenged and all the answers are in digital, it’s not so true. For newspapers and magazines, digital presents as many problems as print does. Advertisers aren’t paying as much money for eyeballs. It’s very small, it’s very difficult, and with websites like Facebook and Google offering incredibly targeted audience segments to advertisers, it’s a different world. In-depth journalism and hard, good, solid investigative reporting costs a ton of time and money, and it’s not so clear how that’s all going to be paid for going forward.

Whenever there’s an opening — a vacuum, if you will — people try to move into it. So you are seeing people doing investigative reporting, even through nonprofits. Some of them are doing some really interesting and good work. You see organizations collaborating in ways they never used to. It’s being accomplished in certain ways, for sure, but I think that the real issue is: what is, if there is, the new business model? We all know what the business model was for Time magazine. To me, that’s still very much up for grabs. It’s no easy answer.

How do you try to inspire others?
That’s a role I guess you’re asked to play as the years go on, working with people that are in the middle or early on in their careers. It’s hard to answer in a way that doesn’t sound just pat, but I think over the years, I have become a better listener to people. I feel that, in a funny way, the more you listen, the more you can contribute.
What’s your perfect day?
A day I truly enjoy is one where I can get up and have some breakfast. I always have a real breakfast, with coffee. And if I have the time and I can linger over that, I’ll have a second cup of coffee and read The New York Times and get started that way. That makes me feel really good. Years ago and for countless years, my day began with a run, but now I push that back later in the day. Any perfect day for me still includes exercise, and I probably do that five or six days a week.

George and Shay in Kenya, 2000.

What’s your proudest accomplishment?
Marrying Shay. I met her in a very romantic way, and we were married for 25 years that were just remarkable in every way, before she died two years ago. She was really something extraordinary. She was one of those people who taught a master class in how to live a life. She was very tolerant, and even tolerant of the intolerant. During our entire marriage, I never heard her speak ill of someone. She just was someone you could watch and you just say to yourself, “I just learned being with her.”
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Editors’ note: This article originally stated that Hirsch worked for Sports Illustrated; he never did. NationSwell apologizes for the error.
 

How a Group of Exercising Seniors Hopes to Change a Crime-Plagued Neighborhood

Posted on by robbie

While much of Brooklyn has enjoyed an influx of wealthy citizens who have grown weary of the Manhattan scene, the community of Brownsville continues to be entrenched in a deadly cycle of high poverty and senseless crime. In 2013, former mayor Michael Bloomberg declared New York City as the safest big city in America, with crime down a total of 30 percent over a 10-year period. In Brownsville, this declaration couldn’t be further from the truth. Over that same period, the neighborhood’s incidence of serious crime went down only 9 percent. And in 2013, the area had 13 murders on record — just three fewer than in 2012. But a group of about 40 elderly women and a few men are doing something together to improve their community and fight poverty: They’re exercising. “It makes people want to come out and do more, rather than be afraid,” Linda Beckford, a 70-year-old Brownsville resident and member of the group, told NPR. “A lot of seniors are by themselves and they don’t want to come out.”
On a recent February day, the women gathered at the local community center, where instructor Sid Howard, who is also a coach with New York Road Runners, led them in an aerobics workout. He starts the class with the elderly in chairs, where they warm up with rubber exercise bands. Eventually, they get up, stretch, dance and work muscles that haven’t moved in ages. On warm-weather days, the group takes to the streets, walking and dancing together. Not only is this an opportunity for them to get active and have fun, but it also gets people used to seeing their elderly neighbors, who before Community Solutions started the program used to stay primarily indoors.
Delores Stitch, one of the ladies in the group, says that she thinks the seniors get more respect now from their young neighbors. “They stop in and speak to us,” she told NPR. “The kids, the young adults, the middle aged.” In the summer, the group will walk to a local fresh produce stand, which is run by teens through another program focused on reinventing the neighborhood. Despite its high rate of crime and bad reputation, many residents of Brownsville and members of the social seniors group have lived here for decades. As Gwen Grant, 65, puts it, underneath the harrowing statistics lies a lot of promise, especially in the kids. “As seniors, we have to be interested in the kids. Don’t just say, ‘They’re bad, they’re troublesome,’ ” she says. “We have to give them what we know. We can also learn from them as well.”