Cramer on Morrow's death: He taught us to sing

TheStreet.com co-founder and chairman Jim Cramer writes Tuesday about what he liked about working with Dave Morrow, the site’s former editor in chief who died Monday night.

Cramer writes, “Dave Morrow was the good part of journalism in the 21st century, the journalism that you could still do, that you could still afford, that didn’t compromise and that built something lasting despite the vicissitudes of a devolving industry. For those of us who have been here long enough, Dave’s the reason why, well, we have been here long enough. You see, we should have closed a long time ago, closed out of dispirit and disorganization and no sense of mission. Closed because of anger and rancor and the stench of failure.

“But we didn’t because Dave wasn’t going to let that happen. He was going to come up with a way to make it all work together because there was something worth saying that others weren’t saying. He figured out our voice and gave us pride and sense of place. Within that voice came several attributes that you want in a great editor: a desire to be compelling, a desire to tell the truth — ask yourself, have you ever heard of even a whit of a question of editorial integrity here, even a tad of it? — and a desire to be meaningful.

“Above all, Dave desired us to be permanent and willed us to be permanent. He endured more than his share of struggle and strife to keep us lasting, from the unthinkable — 9/11 — to the endless cutbacks, to the crash of the dot-coms and the crash of the stock market and the red ink it washed over us. Throughout he demanded relevance and deftly held together so many disparate views and so many different, often difficult writers and personalities–present company included. He cared about his people, giving them credit, giving them strength and community and power.”

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