I am terribly sad to hear about the death of my friend Jeff Ressner. He was a very good reporter–enterprising, dependable, resourceful, hard-working, smart. A Time editor once compared Jeff to Jerry Rice–“Just throw him the ball, and he runs with it.” He was equally comfortable covering business and entertainment. When I was editing Time‘s Notebook section in 1998, he brought me a story about a little known company called eBay that was going public, and we ran a small story. Just one case of Jeff beating the tech and business reporters on staff. Among the stories and personalities he covered were O.J. Simpson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Spielberg, Rupert Murdoch, David Geffen, Terry Semel, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder, Jerry Seinfeld and Tommy Lee Jones. He was a witness to his times. One of his favorite interview moments occurred on the afternoon he escorted Bjork to the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge, where she parked at a piano and began singing Gershwin tunes. Above all, he was just a very decent guy. He was a befriender–a guy who made efforts to be your friend and stay your friend. In 2009 and 2010, he was trying to set me up with Politico. A very lovely guy.
