Stop the presses: Jimmy Breslin, a Pulitzer-winning giant of journalism who tangled with a notorious serial killer and poignantly reported on the deaths of John Lennon and President Kennedy, died Sunday.
He was 88.
During award-winning runs at the New York Daily News and Newsday, Breslin covered New York City and beyond for five decades—continuing to cut a cigar-chomping, larger-than-life presence in the industry even after a brain aneurysm nearly killed him in 1991.
Perhaps the best known chapter of his legendary career came in 1977, during the Son of Sam’s reign of terror, when the killer sent a letter to Breslin at the Daily News offices. (Click the link to read the original article.)
He had made a name for himself 14 years earlier with a memorable interview of the undertaker at President John F. Kennedy’s funeral. The resulting piece for the New York Herald Tribune heralded a talent who would find angles that other reporters would miss. (Click the link to read the original article.)
Leave it to one of the great columnists of the present age to best eulogize his former mentor. “In a time of fake news and alternative facts, we have lost Jimmy Breslin, a brave and brilliant teller of deepest truth,” Michael Daly wrote for the Daily Beast.
– RealClearLife
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