C. Norman Stabler

Imagine the scenario:An ambitious young reporter, having earned his stripes in just a few years at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, is called to New York to become, at 28, the nation's youngest daily financial editor. And not just at any daily, but at Horace Greeley's grand and august New York Herald Tribune.

Oh yes, it's late summer, 1929.

That was the real-life situation of Mr. Stabler, who would test his mettle trying to explain the stock market crash, the ensuing Depression and a financial world that many predicted would have no future.

One of his innovations: writing the first stock market column geared to a general readership. Another: "How to Read the Financial News," a book that became the classic primer for countless thousands of readers in making their first serious stop at the financial pages.

Mr. Stabler also teamed with Elliott V. Bell and other pioneers in 1938 to found the New York Financial Writers' Association "for the professional enhancement of their craft."

Mr. Stabler would remain financial editor at the Herald Tribune for 30 years, through recovery and post-war boom. He left in 1960, shortly before the paper folded. He wrote for the Associated Press, the New York Journal of Commerce, and Weekly Bond Buyer before retiring in the 1970s. He died in 1982.

In 1988, he was chosen as one of the first five "giants of business and financial journalism" inducted into the Financial Journalism Hall of Fame, on the 50th anniversary of the NYFWA.