NEW YORK (AP)– William J. Brink, the editor who turned the Oct. 30, 1975, edition of the New York Daily News into a classic of American journalism with the iconic headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” died Friday. He was 89.

Brink succumbed to congestive heart failure at a hospital in Norwalk, Conn., according to his son William.

Brink was the managing editor at the Daily News at a time when New York seemed to have desperately lost its way. Plagued by crime, grime, drugs and white flight, and in danger of fiscal collapse, it turned to the federal government for financial aid in 1975.

On Oct. 29, President Gerald R. Ford said no, and promised to veto any bailout bill.

Editing the next day’s Daily News, Brink scrawled the “Drop Dead” headline with a pencil on a sheet of newsprint. The headline has been widely cited as probably costing Ford New York state, and with it, the presidential race against Jimmy Carter.

Three decades later, the phrase is still shorthand for any elected official’s snub of an important constituent.

Born in Indianapolis, Brink was raised in Cincinnati and got a degree in journalism from Indiana University in 1940. He joined the Army during World War II, then worked at the Indianapolis Star, United Press and Newsweek magazine.

He joined the Daily News as an assistant managing editor in 1970, and was managing editor from 1974 until 1981, when he retired.

Brink lived in Westport, Conn. He is survived by this wife, four sons and a brother.