Christopher Tobin
About the editor of Nixola
Christopher P. Tobin has long had a fascination with New York City history and so it is not a surprise that he has collected, edited and published this collection of work by the now little known Nixola Greeley Smith, a reporter on Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World newspaper from 1900 to 1919.”
“I had a lot of pleasure digging up Nixola’s articles,” Chris says. “As a newspaper journalist myself I enjoy fossicking into the old newspapers of the past. I know there was some controversy over The New York World being a purveyor of ‘yellow journalism,’ but I found the standard of writing and the overall work exceptional.”
“Nixola was just one of a whole group of talented journalists on the paper. And that doesn’t include the cartoonists. I think from 1900 the New York World improved noticeably and just before the United States joined the First World War in 1917, some of the papers were outstanding.
“They were informative, insightful, entertaining and amusing. And of course, Nixola stood out. She was a committed suffragette but one thing I liked about her, she was not unbalanced about the whole thing.
“She was prepared to go out on a limb and criticise her fellow suffragettes publicly as happened soon after the Titanic disaster when she criticised a British suffragette who debunked the heroism shown by men in the sea tragedy.”
Chris says it was tragic that Nixola Greeley Smith died young at only 38 years of age.
“She was a clever woman, a brilliant writer and another thing I liked, too, she had a sense of humor. She would have been a fascinating person to meet.”
Chris Tobin works in Christchurch, New Zealand, as a freelance writer/journalist. He has worked on many newspapers on the South Island of New Zealand and has been the editor of several community newspapers. He was won national journalism awards for his writing and editorship on community newspapers.
He has written several books. They are: Lovelock: NZ’s Olympic Gold Medal Miler (1984); Gone to Gallipoli: Anzacs of Small Town New Zealand go to war (2000); Fitzsimmons: Boxing’s First Triple World Champion (2001); The Original All Blacks (2005); and Maori Slade and John L. Sullivan (2007).
In his younger days Chris was an athlete. He was New Zealand secondary schools senior boys’ 1500m running champion, NZ universities 1500m champion and he won two NZ open men’s road running titles. In 1986 he represented New Zealand in the world cross country championships in Warsaw, Poland, and in 1988 in Auckland (NZ). He ran internationally for NZ on several occasions.
“My running highlight was representing Oceania in a five man-team which contested the World Road Relay Championships in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1986.”
“I was actually called into the team at the last minute when John Walker, the 1976 Olympic Games 1500m champion, pulled out with injury so I had some big shoes to fill! They wanted another Kiwi and so it was me,” says Chris.
“There were three Aussies in the team as well as me and one other Kiwi. We placed third and I remember running my leg of the relay against John Ngugi, the world cross country champion and later the Olympic Games champion over 5000m. It’s not often you run in that sort of company.”
Chris has run several marathons including the New York City marathon way back in 1978.
“I was quite a young guy then and the race itself was quite young too. I remember staying at the Mayflower Hotel in the city not far from Central Park where all the race stars were staying as well. One of them was Grete Waitz who went on to win the New York marathon many times. I loved seeing all these people I’d been reading about in running magazines – Fred Lebow, the guy who founded the marathon, Bill Rodgers, who won it that year and lots of others.
“It was an unforgettable experience running over the Verrazano Narrows and Manhattan bridges. Coming off the Manhattan Bridge into Manhattan the crowd exploded; the support was just fantastic. That’s something that has stayed with me after all these years.”
These days Chris still runs regularly and he would one day like to return to New York to once again run the city’s famous marathon.
