Who are your journalism heroes?

Deford. I have his "best of" book "The World's Tallest Midget" and some of the pieces in that book are just amazing .. especially "The Anglo Meets The Indian." A scathing indictment of boxing before it became fashionable to bash boxing.

I hope to have the time to do those kind of long-form pieces at some point in my career.

 

Jim McKay

One reason is that his stories were always about other people, never himself.

 

Ebert's response to the Thor criticism:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/05/my_mighty_hammering_over_thor.html

 

Also:

Breslin
Royko
Halberstam

 

Piotr, I have a feeling Thor could make it rain in a strip club and be a personal assistant in one of Bravo's Housewives shows, and you'd still think it awesome. Ebert has nothing to apologize for.

 

starting out as a sports writer in Philly in the 1980s was amazing, because every day you're reading guys like Bill Lyon, Mark Whicker, Stan Hochman, Phil Anastasia, Tim Kawakami, Rich Hofmann, Phil Jasner, Phil Sheridan, Bill Conlin and Ray Didinger

but Jasner was the guy I admired the most, for his insane work ethic, his ability to write & report off the beaten path, just his sharp, clean writing style and routinely terrific story ideas. and of course, his classy way of treating people.

I learned from all those guys but I reckon Phil was the closest I ever had to a journalism hero.

 

Heinz for sure, Deford, Joe Falls, Paul Hemphill, Jenkins, Roy MacGregor, Earl McRae, Plimpton, Gay Talese

 

How the hell did I forget Dick Schapp?

 

You'd be quite incorrect.

 

Joe Posnanski

If you judge writers by their best work, I'm not sure many would top Posnanski. If you judge writers by their worst work, I'm more confident Posnanski would rank at the top. Being great is, well, great. I think always being at least very good (and ranging up to great quite often) is much more admirable.

 

Actually, it was a subtle dismantling of the criticism he received from fanbois. An easy read and pitch-perfect.

 

His followup was vastly superior to the original review, which had the "I'm just gonna slag every little thing about this one!" tone that he adopts for at least one movie every summer.

He'll probably find a way to slag Thor in every summer review from here, to amusing effect.