A conversation with Charles Kruzansky, Managing Editor '81

Charles Kruzansky was a Managing Editor, Baltimore sports reporter and a restaurant reviewer for The News-Letter from 1980 to 1982. Kruzansky was very busy with local Maryland and national political campaigns and was a Political Science major. He went on to business school at Columbia University and then went to work for the New York State (NYS) Legislature on their Ways and Means Committee. After five years of learning all about NYS government, he went to work for Cornell University as a lobbyist. 

The News-Letter: What are some of the best or funniest personal stories from your time with The News-Letter?

Charles Kruzansky: The Editor-in-Chief Andrew Hurley was a good friend of mine and a real character. We would have to go at night and get [The News-Letter] printed. We’d drive in a van down, you know, it was not close. And he loved diners. So we would go to these really bad diners, and we would drive pretty far to go to them because we were waiting for the thing to be printed, and then we’d pick it up and then we’d have to drop it off in all these different spots on campus and off campus. And so basically, you're spending a night doing that. So that was a great, great activity. I was always up for that. 

I was a restaurant reviewer, but I believe I was a vegetarian at the time and people didn’t like that. And I was pretty critical. I got a lot of complaints from the restaurants. 

Then one memory about covering sports. I remember I’m in the press box and it was hockey or soccer. I forget which one. And I was just into it. I love watching that. And I play sports and I was there screaming and yelling, you know, with all the action. And I look over and all these Sports writers who, of course, were old guys were all staring at me because they had been doing this for years. And I was new at it and really excited about it, and they’re just staring at me because you can’t get them to be excited about anything. That was pretty cool. 

N-L: What were some of your favorite articles that you ever wrote? 

CK: Well, there was a restaurant that opened. It was called PJ’s. I did a review and my last line was that now I know what PJ stands for. Pretty junky. They didn’t like that. 

I also did a restaurant review of a place. It was an all-you-can-eat just north of campus, and I wrote it as a military operation, you know, the way to approach that all-you-can-eat buffet. I’d written it up as basically going to war. It was pretty entertaining. 

N-L: How do you remember The News-Letter impacting the student body at Hopkins?

CK: There were some big issues. One big one was that the traffic pattern was very different in front of Charles Street, and people would be walking and there were accidents. It was bad stuff. Also crime in the area, particularly in the back of campus, was covered. 

Andy Hurley, this editor, did an exposé where he went to Hampden. It was very rough and he interviewed and got some insight into a young kid who was a drug addict. It was really cool. We were told, “Don’t go in there, don’t go in that direction.” But nobody really knew what was going on there. So he covered it, wrote it up, and it got a lot of attention. We were always looking for good stories.