As a Manhattan “press agent,” Morty Matz understood the importance of public profile. He understood the importance of taking credit for your best work, and for your worst? He understood how to stay out of the headlines for that, too.
I’m a modern-day “press agent.” That is to say; I run a strategic communications consultancy in Manhattan. I’d also like to think I learned a thing or two from Morty about how to do business. Matz based himself on Tony Curtis’s character Sidney Falco in the 1957 movie “Sweet Smell of Success” (pictured above). Albeit “a more principled version.” Of course.
His obituary today — he made a century — in the print edition of the New York Times, is a joy to read. Not because I’m glad he’s dead but because he lived a life anybody could be grateful for.
Morty Matz understood the importance of a moment. He pioneered the use of the raincoat to cover handcuffs during “perp walks.” He turned a dull gig promoting animal flesh into the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. He pioneered the New York Marathon’s expansion to all five boroughs. The year I was born he got the mayor of New York to hire more subway police. He tipped the papers every time an infraction happened in the system, a “one-man subway crime wave.” It cost the taxpayer $10 million to assign a cop to every train and platform at night on the basis of pure spin.
“He was the master of subtle and spectacular at the same time,” said a reporter who worked with him.
“He was trusted in a world where there’s very little trust,” said another.
Matz’s network of informants, combined with his “native ingenuity and the equanimity of a former World War II bomber navigator,” all helped. As a student at Amherst college he chaufeurred the poet Robert Frost around. That’s quite something. Like me, Morty also benefited from a decade in journalism before moving to the “dark side.”
“I had close personal relationships with a lot of media,” Matz told PR News last year. “My forte was that I came from journalism. I spent 10 years on the city desk of The New York Daily News. That was my education, my PhD in public relations. I knew the media. I socialized with the media. I lived among the media. We went out to bars at night. I had the advantage of speaking the same language. And I could be persuasive. I could keep certain stories out of the paper. I could also tell stories that would benefit my clients.”
Above all Morty understood that media relations is a high-stakes business. To do it well, you need trust, and that’s something developed between people over years. Both with your clients but also with the reporters you introduce them to.
Meanwhile Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes droned on for more than an hour about “attention” this week. These guys have no sense of irony, I swear, although they could “disrupt” the city’s Nyquil market. Zohran Mamdami, the two men argued, understood how to listen to constituents. That’s what got him “attention(TM)!” They’ve cracked the code!
Rest in peace, Morty Matz. We could use a few more like you.
Thanks for reading and please share this with anyone you feel might be interested.
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Matt Davis is a strategic communications consultant in Manhattan.
