Married to the EIC

Meet Julie Baumgold, Daily News' 'Special Correspondent'

by Cynthia Cotts
published: September 30, 2003


On September 22, the day of opening arguments at the Robert Durst murder trial in Galveston, Texas, a squabble broke out between two members of the press corps. Author Matt Birkbeck was chatting with other reporters outside the courtroom when a petite blonde charged up to him and said, "If I were a man and as big as you, I'd tell you to step outside, put up your dukes, and I'd take you." Birkbeck, who is 6’3” and broad-shouldered, calmly replied, "Do you want me to get down on my knees?" After the blonde disappeared, Birkbeck recalls, a colleague informed him that she was Julie Baumgold, the same woman who had elbowed him in the courtroom earlier that day. Baumgold is a relic of a past era. After making her name as a feature writer for New York in the 1970s, she married Ed Kosner, who published her work in New York and Esquire for years when he edited those magazines. In his latest incarnation, Kosner, 66, is the lame-duck editor of the Daily News, where his wife is a "special correspondent." Her stories make much of the fact that she was a childhood friend of Durst, the New York real estate heir who is on trial for killing his Texas neighbor.Wait a second! Isn't it a conflict of interest when someone covering a murder trial is the editor's wife and a friend of the defendant? Birkbeck calls this "journalism in its lowest form," and he's not the only one who thinks so. In his 2002 book, A Deadly Secret: The Strange Disappearance of Kathie Durst, Birkbeck recalls how Kosner enraged many News staffers by publishing Baumgold's 2001 front-page "exclusive," "My Friend Bobby Durst," a piece which Birkbeck calls "part love letter, part defense."

Baumgold did not reply to a request for comment. In an e-mail, Kosner defended his wife, saying she has "never proclaimed Durst's innocence." However, she did try to pick a fight with Birkbeck, he said, because Birkbeck's book "disparaged her integrity . . . something no one has ever done in her long career."

Kosner denied giving his wife special treatment, saying, "Any editor would love to have a top writer who has known a murder defendant since childhood contributing to coverage of a headlined trial." He said Baumgold's features and sidebars are intended to supplement the daily coverage (which is being written by veteran trial reporter Richard T. Pienciak). Baumgold is paid a standard freelance rate, according to Kosner, who called her stories "good writing, good reading, good journalism."

If Baumgold is not getting special treatment, why did she get a press pass from U.S. News & World Report? According to Kosner, at the beginning of the trial there was talk that only one reporter from each company would be allowed in the courtroom, and the rest sent to an overflow room. Because two News reporters wanted to be in the courtroom, U.S. News editor Brian Duffy gave Baumgold her credentials. Ultimately, everyone got in, Kosner explained, but Baumgold "would have contributed to U.S. News had the occasion arisen." (Both U.S. News and the News are owned by Mort Zuckerman.)

On September 3, the News trumpeted Baumgold's name on the front page "skyline,” and News staffers joked that it was as if the paper had hired Dominick Dunne to cover the trial. Since then, the editor's wife has published two more pieces and attracted attention for all the wrong reasons. Courtroom sources find it odd that she flies back and forth frequently, doesn't take notes, shows a poor grasp of legal procedure,. and insists on dining at the best restaurants instead of the dives where most reporters have lunch. (Her September 3 piece mentions "the terrific restaurant Rudy and Paco's.")

Baumgold's connection to Durst may be more liability than asset. For example, there was Baumgold's first encounter with Eleanor Schwank, a friend of Durst's wife Kathie, who disappeared in 1982. Upon arriving in the courthouse, Schwank was surrounded by reporters, and the New York Post's Andrea Peyser began interviewing her. Baumgold butted in, asking Schwank, "Who are you?"

"I was a friend of Kathie's," Schwank said.

"I was a friend of Kathie's, too," Baumgold replied.

According to two witnesses, Schwank stared at her and said, "I know you are friends with Bob and the Dursts, and I feel your pain at losing your friend, but you have to understand that he killed Kathie and he must be brought to justice." Though Schwank gave interviews to other reporters, including Pienciak, there is no evidence that she gave an interview to Baumgold. Kosner says his wife "has not interviewed Durst but spoke to him by phone before the trial began."

Baumgold made another scene on the day the district attorney announced that he would be giving the court tapes of Durst's phone calls from jail. As soon as he said that, according to one witness, Baumgold gasped and everyone turned to look at her. She began asking which jail the calls had come from, the Pennsylvania jail where Durst was before or the Galveston jail where he is now. She asked local reporters to find out if calls to the Galveston jail are taped, and when the answer came back no, she let out a loud sigh.

Says Kosner, “Any jailhouse conversations Baumgold may have had with Durst are part of her reporting. Why shouldn’t she be concerned if they were going to be made public?”

While Baumgold was fretting, Peyser was busy obtaining leaked transcripts of the aforementioned tapes, which come from the Pennsylvania jail and are protected by a gag order. On Friday, the Post published excerpts from the tapes, and Peyser followed with another scoop on Sunday.

Baumgold's theatrics might be less objectionable if her connections were producing substantial insight or scoops. Instead, her copy is a thin hash of trivial observations, inconclusive memories, and claims that are contradicted by other sources. Case in point: Baumgold's explanation of how Durst's mother died. In the September 3 story, Baumgold stated that her own mother was the last person to speak to Durst's mother, "before she fell out the long window to her death." But Birkbeck's book reveals that Durst's mother stood for a long time on the roof of their house, while seven-year-old Durst watched with his father and grandfather, and a police officer tried to persuade her to go in. Eventually, Durst saw his mother plunge to her death on the pavement below.

Baumgold herself has written that Durst believes his mother committed suicide. But on September 22, two days after The New York Times' Charles Bagli called the death a suicide, Baumgold wrote, "Bernice walked out her window onto her roof and fell to her death. . . . [Bob] was awakened by the shouts after she had fallen." Asked about the latter assertion, Kosner said Durst was the source. He says Durst was also the source for Baumgold's claim that Durst's friend Susan Berman left Baumgold "pearls and gold earrings" in her will—but an informed source says that Berman left Baumgold nothing in her will.

Perhaps Baumgold is saving all the juicy stuff for a book. An assistant to agent Mort Janklow said that Janklow represents Baumgold and could fax a message to her, then retracted that statement at press time. Kosner says, "Baumgold is not writing a book about the trial."

On September 29, Baumgold was not in the courtroom, but Galveston’s Tremont House, where all the reporters stay, expects her to return soon. Then again, she may not. Kosner has said he will stay on at the News until he retires in March. But the couple’s power may fade after News editorial director Martin Dunn shows up on October 14.