Remembering reporter Gary Mogel

Time heals all wounds, or so they say. But it will take a great deal of time…

Time heals all wounds, or so they say.
But it will take a great deal of time to get over the blow suffered by the InvestmentNews family.
Gary Mogel, 49, a staff reporter who covered insurance, annuities and banking, died last week. Our loss is immense.
When I first interviewed Gary for a reporter position in June 2004, I concluded that he wasn’t the right fit for the very important insurance beat.
While Gary knew the insurance business, I believed he lacked reporting experience. I told him as much on a follow-up telephone call.
Gary, however, explained to me that I was making a mistake. He asked to be given a chance.
Gary was confident but not cocky. He assured me that if given an opportunity to tackle the job he would deliver solid news stories.
“I bet I know more about the insurance business than any person on your staff,” Gary said.
He was right.
Hiring Gary proved to be one of my best decisions at InvestmentNews.
My fears of Gary not having the right stuff as a reporter were totally unfounded. He was the consummate professional journalist — an avid seeker of news, an unbiased observer and a clear writer.
Through diligent and thorough reporting, Gary carved out a niche and provided our readers with detailed, insightful insurance coverage that InvestmentNews hadn’t been delivering on a consistent basis.
His professionalism exemplified the excellence that InvestmentNews strives for in its coverage of the financial services industry.
Gary covered a complex industry and always delivered strong, accurate and fair stories. He was ahead of the pack in his news coverage, having the ability to spot industry trends before other reporters.
Gary also had the guts to write the tough stories that made some key players in the insurance industry cringe.
A few days following his death, I received many phone calls and e-mails from insurance executives. They praised Gary as a solid reporter who truly understood the nuances of their industry.
Many admitted that some of his stories upset them, because Gary exposed problems that insurers would rather not have aired. But they also freely acknowledged that his stories were always fair, always accurate and always dead-on right.
As an employee, Gary was a manager’s dream. He simply showed up to work each day, quietly went about his business, and did so without drama.
Around the newsroom, Gary was soft-spoken and not one to engage in chatter.
However, once you got to know him, you would come to find he had an incredibly amazing dry sense of humor. Gary was very witty and possessed a wide, contagious smile.
Over the past three years, he became one of the key members of the InvestmentNews team. I looked forward to the insurance/retirement coverage that Gary would be delivering in the years ahead.
But, as another saying goes, people plan and God laughs. How many wonderful stories may never be written because Gary is no longer here?
All of us at InvestmentNews obviously are shaken by his untimely death. Sure, we will all get up, put aside our grief and continue to publish weekly news.
Sure, someone eventually will be hired to cover life and long-term-care insurance, annuities and banking. And someone eventually will be assigned Gary’s desk and phone number.
Time will heal. But for the moment, we are all saddened.
Our world isn’t the same without Gary wearing his wide smile and working quietly at his desk in the InvestmentNews newsroom.
Our thoughts and prayers are with his children, Leeann, 15, and Daniel, 12.
They should take pride in knowing they had such a wonderful dad who was admired and respected by the people with whom he worked and by the industry that he covered.