Requiem For A Media Guy

(Published October 16, 2001)

What an eerie feeling, bidding one of your best friends goodbye.

I have to look at it through romantic terms. The weight of it is overbearing. It's like my heart dies, though it strangely keeps on beating.

Chris Hanley took the plunge from traditional media, left Bloomberg for a COO job in the online space and attempted to take a real estate publishing company online.

It didn't work, but he bounced back. Got a top job selling Radianz, a secure IP Broadband service marketing to the financial business. Chris was at a banking event at Windows of the World on the morning of Sept. 11.

His memorial service is today at St. Francis Xavier Church on 16th Street in New York at 7 p.m.

When I first met Chris he was with The New York Times's radio station here in New York, WQXR. We met at a party my wife and I were throwing almost 10 years ago, and that was it. He and I hung out all the time and covered for each other, like the "Me & Terry" boys in Springsteen's Backstreets.

Chris was incredibly special and he loved this business; no matter that his online gig didn't work out, he never regretted the experience. In fact, though it changed him, I thought it was for the better. On our last night together just a week before his death, he told me, much to my surprise, that he'd just resigned his NYAC membership.

Though we'd been there partying a bunch of times before, his reasoning was that it no longer served his purposes. He said it created more "walls than bridges" when entertaining clients, so what was the point? That was classic Hanley, his ability to get to the heart of the matter.

The fact that he had to pay such a terrible price for being downtown vs. in his midtown office, and at the absolute worst time in history, seems contrary to his destiny. But, much as I wish it wasn't so, it became his destiny.

The online marketing business is very touch and go, though Hanley juggled it well. If he were here, he'd be making it more fun. It's going to be very weird, especially every Thursday night around 6 p.m., planning where to meet up.