Jaffee, Mark

Mark Jaffee refers to his 44-year journalism career as a “whirlwind, full of great moments, ” and yet there was a care he took with each well-told story.

“When Mark writes an article in relation to your life in some capacity, he comes as a friend, ” CIAC executive staff member Dan Scavone said in an article upon Jaffee’s retirement last year, as written by longtime Waterbury Republican-American/Hearst Media colleague Roger Cleaveland.

“He is not just a journalist. He takes such an interest in his stories that there is always a follow-up, and he becomes your friend. It is almost like he remembers every single article he writes, and when he is running through his mind and looks back to the stories, it’s not uncommon for him to reach out and see how the individual he wrote about is doing.”

Jaffee, who began as a sports clerk for the now-Connecticut Post while he was a student at the University of Bridgeport in 1980, worked as a sports writer at the New Haven Register (1981-90) and as a reporter and copy editor at the Record-Journal of Meriden (1992-96) before landing at the Republican-American in Waterbury from 1996-2025.

There, he hosted a weekly show on the web, The Red Zone, and provided daily game coverage for all four seasons, in addition to his knack for features and opinion columns, and organizing the paper’s annual Thanksgiving gridiron section.

A 1984 Bridgeport grad, Jaffee’s list of coaches, athletes, officials, and administrators he has been privileged to write about is extensive. He grew up in Long Island during the Title IX era and eventually had the opportunity to write about some of Connecticut’s elite girls’ basketball teams, as well as the University of New Haven women’s basketball team, which won the NCAA Division II national championship in 1987.

He was named to the Connecticut High School Coaches’ Association Hall of Fame in 2012 and to the Watertown Gridiron Club as a member of its Hall of Fame in 2005. Jaffee has also been honored for his writing by the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists and the Associated Press New England News Executives Association and has received service awards from the Waterbury Olympian Club, the Connecticut State American Legion baseball program, and the Connecticut Special Olympics.

He told Cleaveland that he carried the lessons that he learned from his parents: be on time and wear a tie.

He wrote his first story after being cut from the eighth-grade basketball team and never stopped. A Cheshire resident, Jaffee will be presented for induction into the Connecticut Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame by Hall of Fame president and executive director Linda Wooster.

“It’s been a 45-year whirlwind career, full of great moments, ” said Jaffee, “watching the elite teenagers and young women and men thrive in their respective sports, and especially the hardcourt. I have been honored to be able to showcase their efforts in print publications for nearly five decades.

“People would always say, ‘You’re the feel-good writer, ’” Jaffee told Cleaveland. “And I would always say, ‘What’s wrong with that? ’”