Todd Richissin, Patch National Editor, Beloved Mentor, Dead At 57

Todd Richissin, an old-school journalist with a salty, gregarious sense of humor who embraced digital media in an enthusiastic bear hug and worked tirelessly over the last decade to build Patch, died Friday. He was 57.

Mr. Richissin's contribution to Patch was immeasurable — as an editor, mentor and wise counselor, as an unabashed champion of the company's local news mission, and most of all as an unrelenting source of inspiration, enthusiasm and joy to his Patch family.

As national editor leading Patch's local news teams, Mr. Richissin was instrumental in rebuilding Patch's newsroom after the 2014 spin-out from Aol when the editorial staff went from 750 to 50 overnight. He oversaw the hiring of new reporters, built a national and breaking news desk, and helped to right a ship that might have foundered without his expertise and energy.

"It took his combination of cantankerous drive and good humor to get through a period that would've broken a lot of lesser humans," said Patch President Warren St. John.

Mr. Richissin joined Patch in 2011, launching the Iowa region of the upstart news operation just in time for the 2012 presidential caucuses.

"We worked like maniacs in 2011 and 2012 to launch Iowa sites, market them and cover the presidential candidates swarming the state," said fellow Patcher Deb Belt. "It was exhausting but endlessly fun because Todd wouldn't have it any other way."

Somehow, he managed to commandeer a pricey, shrink-wrapped, Patch-branded recreational vehicle and drove it across the state as a marketing gimmick during Iowa's annual statewide bike race. Expense reports, he maintained, were obstacles to overcome.

"He was a treasure," Belt said.

After the election, he was promoted to associate editorial director and moved to Maryland to supervise the Southeast U.S. region. In 2014, the year Patch began its post-Aol resurrection, Mr. Richissin moved to the company's New York headquarters to run the editorial team.

This wasn't just a job, however. Saving local news was a mission.

Accomplished Reporter And Writer

Before Patch, Mr. Richissin traveled Europe and the Middle East as a foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun from 1997 to 2007. He ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, globe-trotted through 41 countries, and filed war stories from Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Todd's dispatches from Afghanistan showed a keen grasp of local politics and culture," remembered Craig Whitlock, a former overseas colleague. "The breadth and depth of his coverage was far superior to most American correspondents."

To mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps in 2005, Mr. Richissin went to Germany and retraced the steps of Sun correspondent Lee McCardell, filing a compelling story about a village and a people still haunted by the atrocities committed in their name, titled The Road to Neunberg:

There is no gentle way to tell the story of what happened back then in this Bavarian town.

On April 21, 1945, a Saturday night, Nazi SS guards slaughtered 161 men along Neunburg vorm Wald's roadsides and farms, on the town's church lawns and in its schoolyards, shot them dead or brained them with rifle butts, not as some desperate tactic to win the war but because they knew they had already lost it.

These men, all of them prisoners, were among the last of the 37 million people killed in World War II, murdered just days before the Allies arrived to liberate them.

Because of how they were killed — and even more because of what happened in the days afterward — the end of the war for Neunburg has never quite arrived.

In 2000, Mr. Richissin published a book of essays titled "Fathers and Sons," which featured honest explorations of the relationships between famous sons and dads, including Mike and Chris Wallace; Richard, Kyle and Adam Petty; Dick, Jeremy and David Schaap; Boomer and Gunnar Esiason; and many others. He was motivated by his relationship with his own father.

In the introduction, he wrote:

"I have always worked much more diligently on my friendships than I ever did on my relationship with my father, and that is to my great regret. I never told my father I loved him; that is to my great shame. We loved each other, clearly, but we did not do a very good job of showing it."

As an investigative reporter in Baltimore in 1999, Mr. Richissin uncovered abuse at Maryland's youth boot camp program for juvenile delinquents. His powerful, stark exposé in the Sun led the governor to close the boot camps and fire the state's juvenile justice agency chief. Several guards also lost their jobs.

The report earned Mr. Richissin a prestigious George Polk Award for regional reporting as well as a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award:

In boots, military pants, black T-shirts and hats, 14 large men — all muscles and no hair — pace a patch of yellowing mountain grass, pounding their fists into open palms and leather gloves. It's induction day for 14 juvenile delinquents at a state-run boot camp in the woods of Garrett County.

Time to beat some kids.

"Here they come!"

Adrenalin is flowing, as if before a prize fight. A blue van turns the corner, lurches and stops. Kids fill every seat. Shackles bind their wrists and ankles.

"Get ready, gentlemen!"

"Kick ass!"

This is not just another boot camp.

In their fight against juvenile crime, Maryland officials have taken to this: meeting violence with violence.

At this boot camp, the Savage Leadership Challenge, perhaps the nation's most violent, it's routine for guards to bust a 15-year-old boy's lip. To bloody noses. To slam kids to the ground and crash down on them with full force for little or no reason.

The RFK award came with a $1,000 cash prize, which Mr. Richissin donated to charity, and a bust of the late senator. Ever irreverent, Mr. Richissin placed the Kennedy bust on his mantle and topped it with a little miner's cap.

Mentor With Old-School Values

Mr. Richissin never took himself nor the accolades too seriously, but he cared deeply about journalism and his colleagues and would draw upon his considerable skill as a writer and reporter to coach young men and women just beginning their careers.

"Just a few weeks ago, Todd was up at 3:30 a.m. editing my story about Trump getting COVID," said Paige Austin, Patch's Los Angeles-area local editor. "It’s like he had a sixth sense that he was needed. There was something so inspiring and comforting about his devotion to the news. I will miss him and his way of calling you 'kid,' making it feel good even when he was tearing apart a story. We were lucky to work with him."

Feroze Dhanoa, now a deputy regional editor at Patch, started as one of several fresh, new interns in 2014.

"I remember no one really knew what to do with the lot of us. Todd came up to us and asked what we were doing there and why we looked so lost but it was in the kindest and most jovial way," she recalls. "His exact words were something like 'What are you guys doing here?' and then he was laughing. I immediately felt better and never looked back."

Long Island local editor Dan Hampton was just as green when he started at Patch in 2017.

"Todd hired me to work on the national desk. He saw something in me and took a chance on a stubborn, wide-eyed young journo from Philly and told me to pack my bags and move to New York. It was the best decision I've ever made," Hampton said. "I'll always remember the laughs we shared as he shredded my article about massive globs of flushable wipes that terrorized city sewers. More than once I had a 'Strunk and White' book gently tossed in my direction because I violated a journalism bylaw I didn't know existed."

Mr. Richissin was hard on reporters. Those who cared about their work as much as he cared grew to know and revere him as a mentor. Those who didn't were more likely to think of him as "that sonofabitch." He was equally comfortable with both reputations.

Always curious, always asking questions and eager to learn something new, Mr. Richissin embraced digital media and became an expert practitioner of SEO — the mysterious art of getting the Google search engine to recognize and reward your copy with more eyeballs. He was the primary architect of Patch's digital election-night strategy, too. Democracy's biggest night was his Super Bowl.

Still, he never gave up his old-school reporter ways. After a late-night in the New York newsroom, one most likely would find Mr. Richissin around the corner at the Patch newsroom's favorite pub, The Triple Crown, where he would hold court and a whiskey tumbler while regaling his work family with hilarious tales and jests.

"Todd was the kind of editor who would tear your copy to shreds and then laugh about it later that night at the bar," remembers Marc Torrence, who worked for Mr. Richissin on the national desk. "It was the absolute privilege of a lifetime to get to work so close with him for so long."

In 2016, Mr. Richissin was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. At the time, his doctors told him he might only live six more months. He resolved to keep living and keep working, and for the next four years amazed his doctors as they kept the cancer at bay.

Those who knew him well, however, were not surprised at his resilience and spirit. He approached every day with an "I'm all-in" attitude.

"He never complained or asked 'Why me?'" recalls Patch's deputy national editor, friend and longtime colleague Beth Dalbey. "He once said to me, 'I've known 89-year-old men who are miserable as hell because their bodies hurt, and I'll take my 57 years over that any time. I wanted to be a journalist since I was 6 years old. I got to travel the world and run with the bulls. Not bad for the son of a cop and a nurse's aide.'

"Todd taught us how to live fully every single day, to fight death with everything we've got and to do it all with smiles on our faces. The heart of Patch beat through Todd and it still does."

Ohio Born And Bred

While Mr. Richissin was indeed an adventurous world traveler and hard-bitten newsman, his heart never left his native Cleveland, Ohio, home to many family and friends. In the springtime, Mr. Richissin would return home to Brook Park to help his mother dig her garden.

He was born June 16, 1963. He graduated from Midpark High School in 1981 and was inducted into the Midpark Hall of Fame in 2006. He attended Ohio University, where he earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism. He began his career at the Associated Press and the News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh, N.C.

Mr. Richissin was preceded in death by his father Tom and mother Maureen (nee Dolan). He is survived by four brothers: Thomas (Liz), Timothy (Heidi), Terry (Cindy) and Ted (Amy), as well as 12 nieces and nephews, many cousins, and a few hundred fellow Patch staffers.

Mr. Richissin died Friday, Oct. 23, 2020, the morning after watching a beautiful Thursday-night Lake Erie sunset with his family.

Funeral Service

A Celebration of Life service will take place 3 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 31, 2020, at A. Ripepi & Sons Funeral Home, 18149 Bagley Road, Middleburg Heights. The family will receive friends (while practicing social distancing and the use of masks) from 1 to 3 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN 38105-1942, in memory of Todd Richissin.

Written by Dennis Robaugh, Patch's editor-in-chief, who wishes his friend Todd were here to edit this story because it would be so much better.