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Gail Collins: You know, where I used to go to work,

I would see all these people on the subway,

reading the paper.

They're working at working-class jobs,

and they get up in the morning and they grab this paper,

and they read the whole thing.

The firefighter, the emergency room nurse,

the beleaguered schoolteacher,

the factory worker losing the job.

♪ ♪

There was nothing like a big city paper,

especially a big city tabloid.

Nick Pileggi: These cities were big enough

and interesting enough to be able to justify

three, four, in my day, seven newspapers.

Ed Kosner: You know, the WASPs read theHerald Tribune

and theWorld-Telegram.

The Jews read thePost and theTimes.

And the Irish and Italians read

theJournal-American,

and theDaily News, and theMirror.

And there was the number one columnist,

and, usually, it was an Irish columnist.

Back in the day, I mean, you would buy the papers

to see what Jimmy Breslin's saying, you know, or Pete Hamill.

I mean, these guys were like superstars.

They were able to connect, and that's why people saw them

as the voice of true New Yorkers.

Richard Wald: Both of them were people

imbued with that sense

that we're on the side of the little guy.

And the way to be on the side of the little guy

was personal stories.

Tom Brokaw: They had their own kind of street poetry.

They always brought a blue-collars sensibility to whatever they did,

but they could also explain about what was happening in the underclass.

Jonathan Alter: Sometimes they were colleagues

at the same paper,

sometimes they were rivals,

but they were always good friends.

Pete, he had almost no enemies.

Jimmy had more than a few.

Man: How do you define your enemies?

Everybody that doesn't like me,

and that's an awful lot of people,

that's an all-inclusive topic.

Michael Daly: He loved being Jimmy Breslin.

It's infectious to be around somebody

who really loves being who they are.

-(laughing) -I went to John Adams High School,

and I wasn't a dropout.

I went the full five years.

(laughter, applause)

-Man: The New York Times said that you wrote literature. -Yes.

-That this is literature. -That was the worst thing

-that could've happened to me, too. -(laughter)

There's something the matter, I don't know.

There's something very much the matter with the thing. It doesn't work.

Tom Wolfe: He looked like you'd taken a ball of clay,

and then you'd gotten another ball of clay for the head,

and these arms were stuck on.

What color were the four kids who got shot?

-Host: Black. -What color was the gunman?

-White. -Thank you.

So what are you saying, this was a racial murder, is that what you're saying?

No, it was over geraniums.

Lemme call you back in a little while. Okay, bye.

Breslin.

Charlie Carillo: Pete went for the heart

without being sentimental.

Pete had a high school education.

Everything he learned, he learned on the streets.

You would come in the subway home at night,

and there was an aroma of perspiration in the place,

a salty kind of smell in the subways

because working men were on their way home.

Gay Talese: The guy had another side beyond the journalism.

He had this almost movie star life!

You know, with Ms. Kennedy or Onassis.

Shirley MacLaine, they were together for years.

♪ ♪

Colin Quinn: Two guys in New York,

they're both like these Irish bar columnists,

and they both are so similar and so different at the same time.

Man: Hamill was, I always thought, like a poet.

He'd give you the poetry of New York.

(Hamill speaking)

Robert Krulwich: This guy had sweep and majesty.

It was like walking into, you know, a French novel--

the light glancing off the buildings, the atmosphere.

-And Breslin would give you the... -(smacks palm)

...here's what happened yesterday in New York.

(Breslin speaking)

This is literature in real time, on deadline,

and it still lasts.

♪ ♪

(train rattling)

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

(gunshot)

(gunshot)

(gunshot)

(gunshot)

Newswoman: Berhnard Goetz,

New York's so-called "Death Wish Gunman,"

is in a New York jail this morning,

after confessing to the vigilante-style shooting of four youths

aboard a New York subway last month.

Newsman: Goetz wounded four teenagers

whom he said surrounded him on the subway

and asked for money.

Newsman 2: Police say the teenagers had arrest records

and three were carrying long screwdrivers.

It is not clear exactly what the kids intended.

Newsman 3: Many New Yorkers consider him a hero,

and fundraising efforts are underway to pay

his bail and legal expenses.

If I were in his place and I had a gun,

I would do exactly the same thing.

I have no pity on criminals, you know.

If they're gonna rip off people, they get what they deserve.

Les Payne: This was the most terrifying period

that I have experienced in New York.

The city had rose up almost as one,

and said that yes, he should have shot them.

You know, it served them right.

Alfonse D'Amato: I've been on that subway

when these young thugs come in there.

And they don't even have to approach you.

When three or four or five come in,

and they start their messing around,

they are menacing by their presence.

Payne: It was that vacuum that happens

when journalism is not doing its job.

Journalism was out to lunch,

save Breslin.

Breslin: They burned down something irreplaceable

in New York this week,

and there were people who looked at the ashes

and termed them beautiful.

A man on a subway took out a gun and shot four people--

two in the back-- and ran away.

One of the two shot in the back was 19

and he will be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

There were people who praised the gunman.

As lawlessness was applauded,

we in New York arrived at the sourest of all moments:

when people become what they hate.

Would the gunman have fired,

and would people now be jubilant

if the four had been white?

Almost no one wants to hear that question

because it would shorten the celebration.

Mr. Breslin, if somebody were to attack you,

would you just stand there with your arms out and not protect yourself?

I hope I'd fight back, and I also hope I wouldn't shoot

two people in the back and another one in the side,

because he didn't turn around quick enough

that I could shoot him in the back!

Once my father found out

from one of his

friends in the NYPD that the kids were shot in the back,

that's when my father said game over.

How can you be threatened when they have their back to you?

I can understand how he cracked, and I think the people who--

Breslin: Do you know what he did?

Did you know that he bent down

and he shot a kid on the floor with the fifth bullet

because he had one left and he said lemme get rid of it?

Behind this lunatic gunman, you had New York City.

We in America, the victims, have been portrayed to be the wimps.

Give your money over, wave the white flag, roll over

and hope that these guys are gonna spare your life.

Jimmy Breslin was the only voice out there.

Mr. Breslin, sir, you do appear to be

whistling a very lonely tune.

-No. (scoffs) -(laughter)

(applause)

Donahue: This is not to say that you are wrong.

-How can I be wrong? -Your speeches are not playing in New York City.

I don't care! It's the law!

It's in a book! Go look it up in the book!

You're not supposed to shoot four people!

Payne: It began to become obvious

that this guy was not this fair-haired hero,

the Death Wish Gunman that everyone said that he was.

If I had more bullets, I would've shot them all again and again.

Payne: And this is why Breslin,

people who stand head and shoulders above the mob

in this craft of journalism,

they're so important.

They realize that, yes, crime is rampant.

But if your son is one of those four kids,

should he be shot in the back

by Bernhard Goetz because crime is rampant?

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

You better believe that I hate the people

that took this girl and raped her brutally.

You better believe it.

And it's more than anger, it's hatred,

and I want society to hate them.

-(yelling) -Newswoman: It is the ages of the accused,

14 to 17 years old,

and the horror of their alleged crimes that has caused a furor.

A woman, jogging in New York Central Park,

raped and nearly beaten to death.

Man: She was dragged about 200 feet

into the woods, where they beat her with their fists,

we believe a rock, and a metal pipe.

We must reinstitute the death penalty.

Newsman: So outraged by the brutal rape attack

of the young jogger in New York Central Park,

Trump took out full-page ads in four city newspapers.

It was an ad that suggested that there was no mercy necessary,

no justice, as we know it, necessary.

He thought they just should be killed.

They hadn't even been indicted yet.

They were still in the police precincts.

♪ ♪

Trump inflamed race hate in New York City.

Of course I hate these people,

and let's all hate these people,

because maybe hate is what we need

if we're gonna get something done.

Esposito: Donald Trump is happy to inflame divisiveness.

That's what makes a gifted writer like Pete Hamill--

the sensibility to see that before other people see it.

Hamill: Snarling and heartless

and fraudulently tough,

insisting on the virtues of stupidity,

it was the epitome of blind negation.

Hate was just another luxury.

(Hamill speaking)

♪ ♪

Newsman: Now, after each has completed his sentence,

this man, Matias Reyes,

imprisoned for another rape,

says he raped the jogger,

and DNA evidence confirms it.

And then we find out that, years later,

those guys were innocent,

and their lives' are never gonna be the same.

What the best, the past in the tabloid era did

was it put forward big personalities

with big opinions who backed them up with real reporting.

And they were uncompromising in trying

to hold people in power to account,

and tell the stories of people who were suffering.

-(typewriter clacks) -(indistinct chatter)

Keep walking, but watch your step, Jim.

There's wires on the floor.

-Step lightly. -Oh, just what you said.

There you go, almost there.

-Hamill: There we go. -Breslin: All right.

-Hamill: Here. -Breslin: You got coffee here somewhere?

-Man 1: Oh, coffee! -Man 2: You want coffee?

-You okay? Good. -Yeah, I'm all right.

♪ Nice and easy does it all the time ♪

-Man: Marking. -(clacks)

♪ ♪

Interviewer: Where were you born?

Breslin: Ozone Park, Queens, New York City.

Interviewer: What year?

Breslin: 10/17/29.

I lived on 101st Avenue,

and it was a house with a porch

that people used to sleep on.

Those were the Depression days.

Scraping to get a job.

And then we'd go down two blocks from there to Liberty Avenue,

there was a bar.

By the time I'm 17,

two guys came in with guns and held the joint up.

Hamill: Oh, in my neighborhood,

there was a bar on every corner except

the one with the movie house.

A lot of them had been speakeasies during Prohibition.

Most of them were populated by men.

They lived across the street from the bar.

Their favorite bar was the closest one.

That was it, the bar. Everybody was in the bar.

Every-freaking-body.

The main problem in my house

was anything outta the bottle.

There was a lot of drinking.

Interviewer: And you didn't know your father, right?

No, he was around. That didn't last long.

My father took off when, I guess, when I was about seven.

He went out for rolls one morning and didn't come back.

And that took care of that end of the family,

and then the rest of it, it was just a nice,

large, cold Irish family.

Do you know where your father is now?

No, he died a couple of years ago.

-Did you see him after he left the house? -No, never. No.

-He must've-- -No.

What? What, are you gonna tell me

-it's a heart-tugging thing? Who the hell cares? -(laughing)

The guy went away. Who cares?

Oh come on, Breslin, cut it out. (laughing)

♪ ♪

Breslin: My mother, she got mad and just declared him dead.

He just was gone, and that's it.

All those years.

When I grew up, my mother never kissed me, ever.

Nor did I ever kiss her.

The closest we ever came to touching each other

was when we sat together on the subway.

I was a stranger who was out of her.

I sat on the staircase and peered through the banister.

My mother was there for a long time, for hours,

weeping and talking to her reflection in the big mirror.

I dozed.

Suddenly, a click woke me up.

My mother was motionless.

My eyes closed. There was another click,

and her weeping rose almost to a shriek,

and I saw that she had a pistol at her left temple.

She was gonna shoot herself.

So, I told my grandmother,

and she just came down from her bed,

and just took it from her and turned around,

and walked back up to the room.

Afterward, nobody ever mentioned in the house what had happened.

The night was part of the dust in the air.

Barry: His father leaves. His mother is troubled.

He's a lonely kid.

And what he would do is,

he would get lost in the newspapers.

♪ ♪

Harriet Arnone: Jimmy Breslin was devoted

to newspapers from the day he was able to read.

He always said,

"I'm going to be a newspaper reporter when I grow up."

Breslin: I was in a Catholic grammar school.

The nuns were interested in the writing.

Subject, verb, and object--

that was the story of the whole thing.

Concrete nouns,

-active verbs. -Yeah, it's all...

That's what we were taught that way.

It was pretty good teaching.

Well, we'd put out a paper,

the kids' paper, on 134th Street.

The Flash.

We never heard of, in fact, the typewriter thing.

-(chuckles) -Never.

It was always your hand.

I realized early that bad news was great,

even if it involved me.

I protected myself by writing about it.

Interviewer: When you were putting that your mom had tried to kill herself,

were you upset when you wrote the article?

I had to write an article!

What's going on inside your head and your heart at that age?

Me.

When I finishedThe Flash,

I took it around to Worship's Candy Store

and asked them to put it in the newsstand.

My headline said, "Mother Tried Suicide."

Later, I learned that the headline

should've been in the present tense.

"Mother Tries Suicide."

♪ ♪

To get here, I had to beat a rough,

bleak, shrinking business.

I started out in Queens County,

where I was born, on theLong Island Press,

as one of the last of the generation with no college,

and who came off the copyboys' bench.

People at desks in the City Room called out,

"Boy! Copyboy!"

Copy!

And a copyboy comes running over.

There is no thing like it today.

City rooms have no sound.

People are sitting at their computers,

and they're sending messages

to people six feet away.

Man: Boy! Take that over there.

Breslin: I was 16, just 16.

It was tough making a living

for being that young in that business.

Eighteen dollars a week was a huge amount of money

from the newspaper.

Eighteen dollars and ten cents, that I remember.

That's one fact outta the whole life that I remember.

I mean, in the early, gritty days of journalism,

you didn't have an Ivy League degree,

and you never made a particularly good salary.

You were much more naturally of the street

than you were when the whole thing

became a profession.

These journalists today

go to best-- the elite colleges.

We went to the not-elite colleges.

Hamill didn't even go to any college at all.

I would say more than half of the guys

I was a reporter with in that time had not gone to college.

What happens when you have

that kind of employee base?

You have connections to the street.

You have cops in your family.

You have guys who work at sanitation. You have all that stuff.

If you're gonna cover a city like Breslin covered it,

you have to have that street sense.

You can go to Oxford four and a half, a thousand years,

you're not gonna come in and cover the street like Jimmy Breslin.

♪ ♪

Caldwell: He could understand

the working guy's,

or woman's situation.

(typewriter clacks)

Breslin: One day, Cibella Borges met a photographer

who offered her $150

to pose for pictures that were supposed to give men

the thought of incredible pleasures.

Her photographer spent many months

showing the pictures around town.

Jimmy and Cibella: Finally, he was able to sell them to a magazine

"...called Beaver, which is a publication

read with one hand." (chuckles)

TheBeavereditor had no idea of the name

of the small, Hispanic woman in the pictures.

That was me.

When I came on to the police academy,

I knew I was gonna have a rough time.

Number one, I was a female.

I was a Hispanic, and I was 4 feet 11.5 inches.

I was recruited to work for Public Morals Division,

as an undercover.

And when I went to the 19th Precinct

that day, to report to work,

the administrative lieutenant called me into his office,

went into his drawer, took out the magazine,

and just threw it at me, and said,

"Is this you?"

♪ ♪

I said, it's me.

Newsman: Cibella Borges, she's a cop

who posed nude in a girlie magazine,

faced police brass...

Newsman 2: ...posed nude in a men's sex magazine

before she joined the force...

Newsman 3: Ms. Borges is accused of misconduct

and bringing discredit to the police department...

Newsman 4: ...disqualifies her as a member

of the police force.

Pictures in Beaver magazine.

Borges: Before I became a police officer,

a guy approached me and told me that I was beautiful,

and I would've been a perfect model.

The pictures never identify me, just by a name, Nina.

Newsman: Well, as of today,

Ms. Borges is no longer a police officer...

Borges: It just ripped my heart out

because this is the job I love.

-(indistinct chatter) -I hated the news media.

It was like a Salem witch hunt.

Major headlines for weeks.

I kept on telling myself,

I'm not a criminal.

I didn't do anything wrong.

And then Jimmy wrote an article

about what was happening to me.

♪ ♪

Breslin: The nasty thought arose that the police union

did not stand up for a member because,

in this case, she was Hispanic and female.

And Cibella Borges has been suspended from her job,

which paid over $400 a week,

the most anyone in her family had ever earned.

Borges: The union that was supposed to be representing me

paid $16,000 for an ad

in theDaily News to attack Jimmy Breslin

because Jimmy Breslin was in my corner.

He was my champion.

Bill Clark: Jimmy was probably not running for PBA president.

Jimmy was left of center,

and cops are always...

(chuckles) right of center,

so when it became any kind of political issue,

Jimmy was always on the opposite side.

And he wasn't gonna back down.

Breslin: The police department should've been

proud of the pictures,

as they proved that at least one member of the force

is in marvelous physical condition.

Most officers are in such deplorable shape...

Breslin and Borges: ...that if called upon to pose for pictures,

"they would put on overcoats." (chuckles)

♪ ♪

Borges: I was so happy that there was somebody out there,

backing me up because nobody else was doing it.

I was reinstated by the Appellate Division

of the Supreme Court in April of 1985.

Man: Detective Cibella R. Borges.

(applause)

-Man: Two... -(shutter clicks)

That's great.

(smooches)

Take care, and thank you for everything you did.

Oh, shut up. Good. God bless you.

All over the country,

even in little bitty cities and towns,

there were people trying to be a Breslin,

trying to get that kind of writing

about their community out.

Esposito: You have Mike Barnicle

up in Boston.

Mike Royko in Chicago.

These people were anchored in a place and time,

and they told stories to their audience.

Collins: They brought a sense of urgency

about local reporting, in an attempt

to make local stories not only important,

but incredibly, wildly readable.

Interviewer: What happens if communities

don't really have good local journalism?

Well, it's bad. I'll tell you what happens

is the crooks get away with what they wanna get away with.

I mean, you know, it's not at the federal government,

is my view, that your pocket gets picked.

It's in statehouse, and it's the city hall.

You know, the New York Times used to cover local news,

it no longer does. I mean, nothing.

Even if you go on the web page of the Daily News,

it starts with the fact that somebody in Australia

ate their baby or something like that.

The complete obliteration of statehouse coverage

and coverage at the local level...

I mean, if you're gonna be upset about something,

focus on that because that affects you directly,

every single day.

-(horns honking) -(sirens wailing)

Hamill: This is 75 West Street.

It was then the home of the New York Post.

I had more laughs

and more joy in this building

than almost any other place I ever worked.

♪ ♪

(typewriter clacks)

I had been writing letters to thePosteditor,

and he was publishing these letters every once in a while.

And finally he sent me a letter back saying,

have you ever thought about becoming a newspaperman?

If so, give me a call.

Kosner: And he walks in and he says,

"I'm Pete Hamill and I have a tryout."

And lo and behold, his very first story

ran right in the front of the paper,

and that was the beginning of his career.

Hamill: Newspaper people were flamboyant,

hard-drinking, bohemian anarchists

with great gifts for obscenity.

I loved being in their company

in city rooms,

at murder scenes,

or standing at the bar after work.

Kosner: TheNew York Post nightside,

it was like Devil's Island.

The night city editor was

the former managing editor of the Daily Worker.

There were drunks,

and screenwriters, and poets.

Everyone was strange.

There was one guy who was an opera singer,

who wanted to be a newspaperman.

So he would sing... ♪ Oh! ♪

-...and he would type. -(laughter)

You know... ♪ Oh! ♪ ...and type.

(typewriter clacking)

(train clattering)

Hamill: I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood

in Brooklyn in the 1940s and '50s.

And I was the oldest of seven kids.

♪ ♪

We didn't think of ourselves as poor.

And we lived in a place

that was cold water.

There was no heat.

(kids laughing)

♪ ♪

Kathy: Our neighborhood was like a small town

because everyone knew everybody else,

and everyone knew one of my brothers.

Hamill: We were poor, but we weren't impoverished

'cause four blocks away was a public library.

They had a sign outside,

chiseled into the wall. It said,

"Here are enshrined the longings of great hearts."

And I'd be 12 or 13, walking around saying,

maybe I could be a great heart some day.

♪ ♪

(recording playing)

Kathy: My mother was a really gentle kind of a person.

Everything we are, we can owe to our mother.

Hamill: I remember when the atom bomb dropped,

and we were running around all excited,

"We got a secret weapon!"

And I remember my mother saying,

"Don't do that.

"Pray for those poor Japanese.

"They didn't start the war.

"It was the guys with the fancy uniforms

"and everything who started the war.

They're just like us."

Denis: She was a Catholic, a devout Catholic.

But better than that, she was a real Christian.

-She hated bigotry, in any shape or form. -Kathy: Yeah.

She was an early, early supporter of Martin Luther King.

You were not allowed to use any racist terms in our family.

-You got hit with a wet dish rag. -Kathy: Yeah.

Poverty was not a sin. It wasn't something to be condemned.

It was something to be fought.

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

Hamill: There had been no heat at 165 Eldridge

for more than a year.

The kitchen bathtub was filled

with a solid block of dirty yellow ice.

But the inspectors come around, and fill out their forms,

and go away, and nothing happens.

It just stays this way.

Maybe that is the story of the city,

or at the least, the story of the poor:

it just stays this way.

Kathy: He was an ordinary kid,

but he had an extraordinary brain.

He was always looking for the next adventure.

He couldn't wait to get out and actually

experience life.

(recording playing)

Hamill: I had dropped out of high school,

breaking my mother's heart,

and I found this apartment for eight dollars a week. (chuckles)

I wanted to be a painter.

I originally wanted to draw comics,

and went to Mexico,

and there I failed out of painting into writing.

By the time I came back,

I was a writer rather than a painter.

I knew nothing. I never went to journalism school,

or anything like that, but you didn't have to in those days.

You needed editors who took a chance

in what they saw as some kind of talent.

'Cause it's a craft, it's teachable.

♪ ♪

Breslin: I once went to the racetrack

with one of the sportswriters,

and I saw they had a big cooler of beer,

and all you had to do was reach in, in the press box,

-and you had a free beer. -(laughter)

-So, I sat there that day and I had, like, 50 of them. -(laughter)

And I said, "Jeez, I'm gonna be a sportswriter for sure."

1951, I covered a baseball game,

the Giants against the Dodgers.

The pictures came

by carrier pigeons from the baseball field.

They'd strapped the film, after they took it,

onto the homing pigeon,

and threw them up in the air.

They circle around home plate,

while the umpire and everybody ducked.

And then they went up in the sky,

and they flew to theJournal-American, theHerald Tribune,

all these newspapers, and theLong Island Press.

-(flashbulb pops) -(crowd cheering)

(bell ringing)

Dan Barry: He will tell you, "Go to the losers' locker room.

The person you don't remember, that's where the story is."

Breslin: The losers' dressing room,

or the loser always was the best story

'cause there's nobody there in the language biz. The best.

Then he hauls off and writes the funniest freaking

baseball book that anybody's ever written in the history of the world.

I mean,Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?,

you could pick it up today and read it like a novel

and laugh your ass off.

Barry: Breslin is drawn to the New York Mets

because they sucked so bad.

They're horrible, okay? They're horrible.

Esposito: Jock Whitney,

who is the publisher of theHerald Tribune,

his sister owns the Mets.

And the book led Whitney

to want Jimmy to come to work at the Herald Tribune.

-(typewriter clacks) -(chatter)

His writing his fresh,

his writing is concise,

and his writing cuts to the heart of a matter

very colloquially.

TheHerald Tribunewas none of those things.

It was a dull newspaper.

The New York Times just overwhelmed us,

so the Tribhad to stay in business somehow.

It became a writer's newspaper.

It became kind of, almost avant-garde.

So, Jimmy Breslin was the star columnist,

and Tom Wolfe was the star writer.

Wolfe: The editor would come right over to your desk and says,

"pour it on! Don't worry about length."

'Cause I was always saying, how long should this be?

And he'd look at me incredulously and say,

"Until it's boring!"

Talese: Breslin introduced what became known as,

the New Journalism,

using the specific techniques of fiction,

but sticking to the facts.

He tried to be a storyteller,

but to tell a story that's also true.

Breslin: And they were walking around looking at me

as if I was doing something new and I was a genius.

It was all sports page stuff.

The columns they had in newspapers before that

consisted of somebody like Arthur Krock.

You know, big name from the past. You ever read him?

You wanna freaking die.

(laughter)

Hamill: Before I ever had a column,

Breslin had a column.

It was not the Alsop brothers,

or the guy who read theWashington Post

and wrote a column.

It was going out, get outta the building,

get outta the house.

♪ ♪

That was like a revolution.

Bob Costas: How would you define yourself as a journalist?

Breslin: Reporter, not a journalist.

I don't know what those words mean.

That's a college word.

I just go out and report. Wanna chase news.

That's the keyword: chase, chase, chase, chase.

And in the chasing, you always ran into something.

♪ ♪

Hamill: Jimmy had opinions

because he was a columnist,

but the opinions were all based on reporting.

Knowledge that you can get only

from talking to ordinary people,

one at a time.

♪ ♪

He knew about worlds I didn't know about,

and made me feel like I understood them.

Collins: If something bad happened to somebody,

man, woman, young, old, black, white,

Jimmy was so there, and he was literally there.

He would go there to their place.

Carillo: You hope the dog doesn't bite you.

You sit down there. You accept the drink

from a glass that may or not be clean.

You're part of it.

Breslin: Because you're dead

with stories done by the phone.

You're not gonna hold my interest.

There has to be some chemistry in a story,

and that has to come from the reporter

talking to the person involved,

face-to-face, getting those little odd facts

that really make a story.

Wald: The beginning columns,

the people Jimmy was talking to

were people you could recognize as New Yorkers.

Tony Bennett: I used to be a singing waiter in Astoria

when I was a kid.

I used to wait on tables and take requests.

And he would be going from bar to bar underneath the L trains.

Esposito: He had this place in Queens,

Pep McGuire's Bar,

and that's the place where he held court,

and that's the place where

these characters would congregate.

Jim Hennessey: Pep McGuire's was the center.

There was judges there sometimes,

and there was wise guys there.

It was a colorful place.

Daly: I mean, it's not for nothing

Jimmy wrote a biography of Damon Runyon.

But these are like people who,

it isn't like they were on Broadway.

They were out living their lives in Queens.

Sam Roberts: Queens Boulevard was his

boulevard of broken dreams.

This is where he found his characters.

Fat Thomas, Marvin the Torch, Klein the Lawyer.

They were like some kind of dreamscape of

what it would be like if you lived

in the richest, craziest movie on Earth.

-(alarm ringing) -There was a guy who professionally burned down

any house that ceased to be valuable to its owner,

and you could hire him, his name was Marvin.

Breslin: Two weeks later on a dark night,

Marvin the Torch arrived at the restaurant with his team.

Now, arson is a three-man job.

Two men pour, then one of his pourers comes out

and becomes the blanket man.

He holds an old car blanket and throws it over

anyone coming out whose clothes are on fire.

Marvin the Torch is my favorite. I mean, we used to get

fire helmets for Christmas every year. "MT Torch 1."

We were introduced to

all kinds of felonious people

when we were very, very young.

Fat Thomas, you know,

he was my babysitter a whole bunch of times.

Daly: He was a bookmaker.

His brother was in jail for robbery.

During the Civil Rights Era,

he went down to hotels

and registered as Martin Luther Fat.

Rembrandt was another guy. He was an art thief.

Melvin Lebetkin was Klein the Lawyer,

who he really had a ball with.

Mel was a criminal attorney on Queens Boulevard.

These were all real people. They were real.

Many of Jimmy's characters were at least half Jimmy.

They never complained because he made them look

wonderful and colorful and wise.

But on the street,

when I worked for UPI, it was the saying that,

if a guy jumps out of the 33rd story window,

Breslin's the only person who'll tell you

what he was thinking on the way down.

Daly: Somebody at theTimes

started saying this stuff isn't real.

You know, there's no Marvin the Torch, Fat Thomas.

Jimmy took him out to Pep McGuire's Bar,

and there they all were.

There's Fat Thomas, there's Marvin the Torch.

You know, they're all there.

♪ ♪

David Frost: Summarize for us, if you could,

what the gang that couldn't shoot straight were like.

Breslin: Inept criminals, which is

the worst charge of all you can level at people.

They're not as smart as everyone says they are, simply.

They can be buffoons.

Robert De Niro: I read for the movieThe Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

for Irwin Winkler and Bob Chartoff,

and somehow I got cast.

(speaking Latin) Amen!

De Niro: I read the book. I loved the book.

I liked the sense of humor.

It had that New York kind of,

Italian neighborhood sort of humor.

Go starta the car.

Breslin: So one guy I know,

when he goes in the morning to start the day,

his wife, they have breakfast,

and then she goes out in the driveway,

and she gets in the car to start it,

and he sits down on the floor of the kitchen, he's like this.

(laughter)

(engine starts)

If there's no explosion

when his wife starts the car,

he comes out and kisses her on the head,

and says thank you, and gets in and drives away.

Oh, he knew everybody. He knew a lot of guys.

He certainly hung out with

certified bad guys

who the cops were looking for.

(John Gotti speaking)

Costas: You, like Runyon,

have always found something fascinating

about these guys who live on either side of the fence.

Oh, I like bad boys. Legitimate people are boring.

They're terrible, I mean...

That's the worst sentence of all,

to spend the night with legitimate people.

♪ ♪

(typewriter clacks)

Newsman: This is what we have on a flash basis

from the Associated Press.

Two priests in Dallas who were with President Kennedy

say he is dead of bullet wounds.

There is no further confirmation...

Breslin: I went to Dallas on November 22nd, 1963,

when Kennedy was shot,

and I thought that every minute of every hour I ever had worked

had prepared me for writing about this.

This is a marvelous emotion for you to have

when a guy with a wife and two children gets shot.

That is called news reporting.

Pileggi: You know, you have the press conference,

and everybody gets the same information.

So, you all go off and you write it differently,

but it's the same pool of information.

Harvey Araton: Most journalists would've said,

Fine, I have enough. I have an incredible deadline.

But this was the essence of Breslin.

Breslin said, no, I don't have enough.

I want more. I want more than every other person,

every other journalist who's in this room right now.

And so, he pursued Malcolm Perry,

and he got an interview with him

where he found out everything

down to what the guy was eating for lunch when the call came

that Friday afternoon.

John Avlon: He opens up with the doctor

who gets called to see if he can save

the president's life, and...

Jackie Kennedy is standing there,

and you're in the room, and he's telling their stories.

♪ ♪

(Breslin speaking)

(Breslin continues)

Lupica: "A Death in Emergency Room One"

just blew the doors off of

however people had covered stories like this,

from the beginning of time in newspapers.

What you were basically doing

is using the tools of a novelist

to tell a news story.

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

Breslin: I came to the White House for the day of the funeral,

and there were 3,000 reporters there.

I can't make a living here.

Everybody's gonna have the same thing.

So, where does he go? He goes to the cemetery.

He finds the poor bastard

who has to dig the grave.

A working man, a black man,

digging a grave

for the assassinated President of the United States.

And in the midst of what we're witnessing on television,

a parade filled with heads of state following a casket

borne on a caisson and horses driving the casket,

you have this piece,

and it appears when the country cries together.

The whole country cries together.

Breslin: Clifton Pollard was pretty sure

he was gonna be working on Sunday.

So, when he woke up at 9 a.m.

in his three-room apartment on Corcoran Street,

he put on khaki overalls

before going into the kitchen for breakfast.

His wife, Nettie,

made bacon and eggs for him.

Pollard was in the middle of eating them when he received

the phone call he had been expecting.

Wolfe: You're in the home of this gravedigger,

and you don't even know how he fits into the story.

But he wakes up, he gets a phone call...

(Breslin speaking)

♪ ♪

Clifton Pollard wasn't at the funeral.

He was over behind the hill,

digging graves for $3.01 an hour,

in another section of the cemetery.

"I tried to go over to see the grave," he said.

"But it was so crowded, a soldier told me I couldn't get through.

"So I just stayed here and worked, sir.

"But I'll get over there later a little bit.

"Just sort of look around and see how it is, you know.

"Like I told you,

it's an honor."

Jimmy Breslin wrote that our father earned $3.01

to dig the Kennedy grave, per hour.

And he came in on his off day, which was Sunday,

and I don't think he got overtime for that.

But he didn't care about the money.

He cared more about being able to perform that honor.

♪ ♪

Hamill: Jimmy revolutionized the column

when he was at theHerald Tribune,

and...

I ended up with an opportunity at the Post

because the editor said,

we have to have some equivalent of Breslin.

And I was offered the shot.

Breslin: We were doing the same thing,

against the world.

Araton: They were like Zelig.

They were like Forrest Gump.

They were everywhere.

(gunfire)

(explosion)

-(gunfire) -(yelling)

Hamill: In all wars, some men die

and some men add up the losses.

The foot soldier lies in the stink of a rice paddy,

his feet rotting in his boots.

The clerks move in to compile

the statistics of horror,

and hope that, somehow,

such statistics will dilute the brutality.

♪ ♪

Breslin: There are people who have been beaten

because they are black.

They have had friends and relatives killed

because they are black.

They have been laughed at and spat at

because they are black.

And they have been held down on the dust of the streets

and made to be dirty and uneducated

for all their lives because they are black.

Yesterday, they stood up from the dust,

and they asked for the right to vote,

which is the start of the right to live.

-(crowd cheering) -King: We come baring a message

that Chicago can change.

Hamill: King got up and shook hands.

He had caused more controversy in Chicago

than anyone since Al Capone.

But on this afternoon, he just looked very tired.

He knows what is coming up,

and none of it will be pretty.

For Martin Luther King,

it was all a more innocent time

when your only goal

was to sit in the front of a Montgomery bus.

♪ ♪

Breslin: One cold Sunday morning in January of 1965,

I went to the Audubon Ballroom to see Malcolm X.

He was working on a Sunday,

and I needed a column for the Monday paper.

I went upstairs into the back

where the fighters used to get dressed,

and I was smoking a Pall Mall cigarette there.

You couldn't smoke at a Muslim gathering,

but you could shoot guns.

(gunshot)

By the time I looked out, Malcolm had been shot down.

In the Audubon, a uniformed cop asked if anybody had any chalk.

(typewriter clacks)

Hamill: We're lecturing people in Detroit

and Newark about violence,

when we're using violence to attain

the same ends that they think they're after.

I think it's quite clear that some of the domestic programs

are going to be cut back because of the war...

Kathy: Bobby Kennedy was getting ready to run for president.

Denis: Bobby was on the fence about running,

and Pete wrote him a letter.

♪ ♪

Hamill: Dear Bob.

In Watts, I didn't see pictures

of Malcolm X or Ron Karenga on the walls.

I saw pictures of JFK.

That is your capital in the most cynical sense.

It is your obligation in another.

The obligation of staying true

to whatever it was

that put those pictures

on those walls.

Denis: Two days later, a telegram came.

"I've decided to run. I need your help."

I think he had learned from his brother

that you can't postpone everything.

-(crowd cheering) -(typewriter clacks)

Kennedy: So, uh...

My thanks to all of you,

and now it's on to Chicago and let's win there.

-Thank you very much. -(cheering)

Man: Senator! Senator...

(indistinct chatter)

And then, bang.

Senator Kennedy has been shot. Is that possible?

-Is that possible? -(screaming)

Oh my God.

Senator Kennedy has been shot.

Pow-pow-pow!

Pow pow! Five shots.

(indistinct shouting)

(yelling continues)

(Hamill speaking)

(indistinct yelling)

Hamill: And there was Sirhan with his arm out

like this and a long...

group of us...

leaped on him.

Breslin: What's his name, Sirhan.

I'm on his feet,

and sat on him.

(yelling continues)

Hamill: Robert Kennedy was on the floor.

His eyes were open.

And the blood coming from back here.

He had a look that was...

fatalistic. He never said a word.

Man: Move back! Move back, please.

Hamill: He got rushed to a hospital.

He lived through all that night into the morning,

and then died.

Did you go with him to the hospital, Jimmy?

(siren wails)

Breslin: They took him back into the hospital,

and I went right into the first cab

there or something.

'Cause I had to make a deadline.

Robert Kennedy is on his back.

His lips are open in pain.

He has a sad look on his face.

You see,

he knows so much about this thing.

It affected me

even worse because I had made a terrible mistake

as a journalist.

I had become friends with Robert Kennedy.

You know, I liked him,

and I was friends with him, and that was a mistake.

I never was friends with a politician again.

Right after it happened, we went to the hospital,

and we were both still drinking in those days,

and we bought a bottle of booze, and we sat on the curb

right across from the hospital, and got drunk.

In the days after, Pete was...

you know, he was depressed.

Hamill: I went into a funk.

Wasn't writing,

and I had lunch

with Paul O'Dwyer, one of my favorite Irishmen.

He said, "What are you doing now?"

I said, nothing, Paul.

I have a kind of a writer's block.

He says, "For Christ's sakes!

You're not important enough to have a writer's block!"

And I laughed out loud,

and I started writing as soon as I got home.

♪ ♪

Hamill: For almost 20 years...

Hamill: On a national stage,

-cultivating the haters... -(cheering)

...the resenters, the paranoids.

He played on the very worst instincts of Americans

on his way to power.

And when he finally attained power,

he did not change.

(indistinct chatter)

At Kent State,

two boys and two girls were shot to death

by men unleashed

by a president's slovenly rhetoric.

If that's the brave new America,

the hell with it.

Cronkite: Vice President Agnew

charged that the liberal news media

are so irresponsible and thoughtless,

that the American people are beyond

being shocked by what they read and hear.

In the United States today, we have

more than our share of

the nattering nabobs of negativism.

Hamill: Then to find out that by writing

what in fact is happening

that you're under attack for being vicious, outrageous, etc.

by the president of the United States, is a little strange.

Interviewer: Agnew attacked you at one point, right?

Hamill: Oh, yeah. He said, "But worst of all is Pete Hamill

"of the illiberal New York Post.

Listen to his irrational ravings."

I used it as the name of my first book of journalism.

Irrational Ravings.

Interviewer: What was it like to be on Nixon's enemies list?

Hamill: Oh, it was an honor.

There were a lot of good people on that list.

They call my people

the white lower middle class these days.

It is an ugly, ice-cold phrase.

All over New York City tonight,

in places like Inwood,

Corona, and Bay Ridge,

men are standing around saloons,

talking darkly about their grievances,

and even more darkly

about possible remedies.

(Hamill speaking)

Kosner: Pete was drinking all through hisPostperiod,

and he got sent home once.

He didn't think anybody knew he was drunk,

but Paul Sann, the executive editor, spotted it.

Pete always felt that he was undereducated,

and he was kind of an outsider.

That these guys were towering

journalistic talents,

and so the drinking probably helped then.

And then I guess, at a certain point, it kind of tipped over,

and he felt it wasn't helping him,

and he wasn't in control of it anymore.

Interviewer: So, you quit in 1972, right?

Hamill: Yeah. I had exhausted the good times,

and I had other things to do.

I had Deirdre, my daughter, and Adriene,

who were in my custody, and I didn't wanna be

an asshole in front of them.

♪ ♪

One night, drunk again, I came home,

and lurched into the inner door,

smashing the window.

(Hamill speaking)

Hamill: They'd awakened with the crash,

and there, suddenly, was their father.

Their eyes were wide in fright or apprehension.

I handed each of them a rose,

and told them I loved them.

I did,

but I'd broken too many things.

I realized,

I don't wanna do this anymore.

On a different level,

I wanted to see how big my talent might be.

I had no idea.

And I couldn't do that while

semi-conscious part of the day.

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

Jonathan Alter: In the 1970s,

theNew York Daily News, which was then

the largest-selling newspaper in America,

scored a coups. They had both Jimmy and Pete

in the newspaper at the same time.

Some people preferred Jimmy's column.

Other people preferred Pete's column.

Lupica: At a time when most people

are trying to do Jimmy's act,

Pete never tried to do Jimmy's act.

Hamill: I didn't feel a rivalry at all.

I was a big fan.

Alter: Jimmy, by then, was the most famous

print journalist in the United States.

But he did all this other stuff.

He had run for city council president of New York

on a ticket with Norman Mailer for mayor.

Gloria Steinem: Jimmy came to me and said,

he wouldn't do it unless I ran as controller.

I said, Jimmy, no way I can do this.

I can't speak in public. I had never

spoken in public in my life.

Breslin: The first step should be taken to start New York

on its way to becoming the 51st state.

We've been trying to live under a system

where a man from an upstate county,

which has more cows than people,

decides the destiny of our public school system.

...and let Harlem run its own businesses.

Start getting the white guys out of your lives. Start running it yourself.

Steinem: It was never intended to win.

It was trying to insert

new ideas into the atmosphere, which I think it did.

Breslin: I'd like to say that I am mortified

to have taken part in a process

which required

the bars to be closed all day.

(laughter)

Nothing gets my Irish up more

than a soggy, wishy-washy cereal.

I'm Jimmy Breslin...

Krulwich: He was famous for being famous.

He was really famous.

It's a good drinking beer.

That's how I describe Piels. It's a good drinking beer.

♪ Piels! It's a good... ♪

I don't think there's ever been

another journalist

bigger than Jimmy Breslin.

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, Jimmy Breslin!

-(music playing) -(cheering)

Hamill: Occasionally, someone in the subway would say,

"Are you Jimmy Breslin?"

And I'd laugh and say,

no, I'm the other guy.

♪ ♪

Lupica: There was a time at theDaily News

when you'd smell the smoke

before you got to the office

because Jimmy's smoking cigars

on this side,

and Pete's smoking cigarettes on this side.

And if secondary smoke can kill you,

it would've killed Anne Marie,

who sat between them, often,

you know, like Switzerland.

Caldwell: Anne Marie was the secretary.

She knew a lot of stuff that was going on,

you know, in...

Interviewer: Organized crime.

(laughing)

There is a name for everything, isn't there?

I knew she had connections.

Her dad was a guy named Quiet Dom.

Patrick: My father wrote something about

Tony Salerno once,

and Anne Marie came in the next day and said,

"Mr. Salerno says thank you."

That's when my mother said, "Anne Marie is...

she's hardcore."

Lupica: And then you'd hear Jimmy yelling,

and Pete laughing.

It was like a carnival.

And if you were going to add it up,

one of them was a bit more of a handful to manage than...

(chuckle) than the other one.

Breslin: All these people today, they run around

and they put their arms

around each other's shoulders,

and they say how much they like each other,

and they hope the new year is better than the old year.

(Breslin speaking)

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

Lupica: Every phone conversation we ever had

would begin the following way.

"Yeah?"

What kind of greeting is that!?

Barnicle: "Yeah?" That's when you know Breslin's on the line.

"What are you doing? What are you doing?

The fuck are you doing?"

I was the media critic at Newsweekon deadline,

on a story about Jimmy that was a little critical.

The phone rings. All I hear is,

"Alter! You fuck with me, I will fuck you good

'cause I'm the fucking John Gotti of journalism!"

Daly: "JB Number One!"

My kids'll go, "It's Mr. Breslin on the phone."

"JB Number One."

Who says that!? Nobody says that!

Pileggi: It's like he starts talking to me

before he gets to the phone.

Then he gets to the phone, he dials. Then I answer,

and he's in the middle of the conversation.

And then he says, "okay!" Boom! And he hangs up!

But then he'd call and my wife Nora would answer the phone.

And he'd be this sweet guy on the phone.

And she's, "Eh, Jimmy's on the phone!"

Jim Dwyer: There was a fire in Brooklyn.

The editor had one of the clerks call him.

"Uh, Mr. Breslin..." "What, what, what!?"

"There was a fire in Brooklyn and..."

"How many dead?"

Kid said, "Well, there's two people dead." He said,

"More must die before Breslin goes!"

And then he hung up the phone.

Cuomo: My father would answer the phone

and just say, "Yep! Yep!"

So I would imitate my father's yep.

That's all it took to start

the Jimmy Breslin machine.

And he would just go, "F-ing this, that."

Just a string of profanity,

which I enjoyed.

And I would say, "Oh, Mr. Breslin.

You must want my father."

To which he would take off again

with a string of expletives.

"You little this, you little that--" Click!

Breslin: I'm very rude in the course of business

because I got no time.

I'm always late and I'm always nervous about deadlines.

Bombast never hurt anybody.

Kevin: We grew up in Forest Hills Gardens,

which is a very elite neighborhood.

All our neighbors were doctors.

Everybody, and their wives, were perfectly quiet.

And he were the Breslins, who's bombastic.

He always worked hard.

You thought a machine gun was going off inside.

(imitates typing)

With the cage, he'd slam it.

He built the office right next to the kitchen refrigerator.

You couldn't open the refrigerator.

You'd open the door,

"Aah!" he'd scream.

"I can't hear sounds!

I have to think!"

Breslin: I've decided that boring people

are the true criminals.

In a world where you live for about a minute and 40 seconds,

what right does anybody have to deaden one moment of time?

Kevin: He's like a mad scientist.

Everybody would walk on eggshells

because he was writing.

Jimmy, of course, would sweat over every single word.

Pete would either phone in from the Hamptons,

or come in,

dash out a column in 45 minutes,

and disappear.

♪ ♪

Interviewer: So, what do you mean by hearing the music?

You write about that. What does that mean?

I wanna see whether while I'm reading,

my foot starts to keep time

to the rhythm of the sentences.

I remember reading an interview with Gene Krupa.

"You're keeping a rhythm going for the band.

What keeps the rhythm going for you?"

And he said, "I have a sentence

"I use all the time.

"Lyonnaise potatoes, no pork chops.

Say, "Lyonnaise potatoes, no pork chops."

♪ Lyonnaise potatoes and some pork chops ♪

Hamill: Was trying to get a rhythm into the language,

and still tell the story.

♪ ♪

Man: Pete was this dashing guy

who you saw everywhere,

with his shirt sleeves rolled up.

Brokaw: He was...

so authentically male.

Man: He dated Jackie Kennedy.

Brokaw: I was on a boat with Jackie Kennedy

and Pete Hamill one time.

He was wearing a bathing suit that came out of

Queens, 1948, (laughing) and...

there was the elegant first lady.

So I thought, that's Yin and Yang,

if you ever want to describe it.

You couldn't walk down the street with him.

Ron Galella was a famous paparazzi photographer,

and he hounded Jackie Onassis.

And Pete wanted to whack him out a couple of times.

It made the old Brooklyn come out.

♪ That's the way to live ♪

You never knew who the hell

he was bringing to Thanksgiving dinner.

One day, Linda Ronstadt came walking into my house.

Talese: I thought, what does he have?

I mean, what is he, Mr. America in the bed?

What is the deal with him?

He knew how to listen. And these women,

they didn't have men who gave a shit about what they said,

and they didn't know how to listen.

And listening is the route to sex and grammar.

And Pete Hamill, who went to high school,

maybe, and not much further,

seemed to pick up that this is the key

to a glamorous life, with some damn glamorous women.

Man: I got to know Shirley MacLaine through Pete Hamill.

♪ ♪

MacLaine: His assuredness in what was fair

and what wasn't really moved me.

I loved that he was from Brooklyn.

We lived in Brooklyn for a while.

We had so much fun doing nothing.

I loved our long walks in New York.

But Jimmy, I remember, called me up one day,

and said, "God damn it,

"I hope what you're writing is all made up.

You can't believe that shit, can you?"

I said, no, Jimmy.

I'm believing what I'm learning,

from other dimensional truth, Jimmy. Um...

(Breslin speaking)

Denis (laughing): And then God damn Breslin writes a column!

And then Pete's sitting in New York,

and he sees this column!

Breslin writing about Shirley and Jackie!

Breslin: Shirley should get another guy

and go out on Pete Hamill.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Denis: Shirley hit the roof,

but Jackie got a big kick out of it. You know...

And he finally got Breslin on the phone,

and in classic Breslin,

Breslin said, "I needed it!"

Like he was stuck for a column!

Breslin was a notorious thief.

You could give Jimmy an idea,

you'll find it in his column the next day.

MacLaine: I called Jimmy and raised hell.

What the hell are you doing?

Think of something more

advanced where your intelligence is concerned,

than who Pete dates, for God's sake.

Interviewer: So, talking about Jackie,

were you in love with her, Pete?

Uh, I wouldn't tell you that.

I'd really agree with

Garcia Marquez, who said once,

that everybody's got three lives.

Public life, a private life,

and a secret life.

Private life is by invitation only.

The secret life is nobody's business.

(typewriter clacks)

♪ ♪

Newsman: In New York, the search continues

for the .44 Caliber Killer, Son of Sam.

His victims, mostly young women

with shoulder-length dark hair,

usually shot at very close range,

while sitting in parked cars at night.

They've been shot with a .44 caliber, Bulldog revolver.

(gunshots)

(alarm ringing)

Breslin: I was living in a section of Queens

called Forest Hills Gardens.

He killed one young woman, Christine Freund,

five blocks from my house.

Five weeks later, at virtually the same spot,

Virgina Voskerichian, walking from the subway

after classes at Barnard College in Manhattan,

had a gunman suddenly crouch in front of her.

(Breslin speaking)

Patrick: Anne Marie called and said, "Jimmy,

"I got the scariest letter in the world

here at the paper."

♪ ♪

Breslin: "Hello from the gutters of NYC,

"which are filled with dog manure, vomit,

"stale wine, urine, and blood.

"Hello from the sewers which swallow up these delicacies

when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks."

It was printed in big, backslash printing,

marvelous cadence.

Signed, Son of Sam.

All of a sudden, you get a letter from Hannibal Lecter

saying I wanna talk to you. Holy smokes!

What kind of power did he have? I mean,

that gives you an indication of the...

seductiveness of those columns he wrote.

He got into people's heads

in a way that most writers can't do.

"Oh wow, he wrote to Breslin! He wrote to Jimmy Bre--"

But like in those days, Jimmy Breslin was a big enough

star, where you'd be like,

oh, it's a little crazy, but yeah. (laughing)

Yeah, why not Jimmy Breslin?

Breslin: The police called and said,

"could we meet you at the 109th Precinct?

This is a letter from the fella."

He said now, "What do you think you could do with it to help us?"

Clark: Jimmy comes up to the squad room. It was like,

"What the hell is that guy doing here? You know,

he hates cops. What is he doing up here? Who let him in?"

This is the guy who brought us the letter from the Son of Sam.

Roberts: The police urged us to

print the letters and Jimmy to reply to the letters,

in hopes that he would continue writing,

and there would be more clues to his identity.

Interviewer: What would you wanna talk to him about?

-You wanna talk to him about his writing? -I mean, he writes so well.

It's a shame to waste it out there!

I thought Hamill wrote the thing, it was... to me.

I'm not kidding! It's a well-written piece.

The guy could make a living writing!

He told me, "We're telling the guy he's a good writer."

I was like, what!? You're using the newspaper

to see if he can sucker a guy?

And he said, "Well, basically, yes."

He probably is the first

killer that I can ever recall

who understands the use of the semi-colon.

I think he's had some kind of training, obviously.

Clark: There's no doubt in the world that

Jimmy was very instrumental in keeping attention

on the case. I mean, he was a major player in the thing.

♪ ♪

Shane Smith: "The only way for the killer

"to leave this special torment

"is to give himself up to me.

"All he has to do is call or write me at theDaily News.

"It's simple to get me.

The only people I don't answer are bill collectors."

So, he's asking a serial killer

to give himself up to him.

Fantastic. Takes balls.

Man: I am very pleased to announce that the police

have captured

a man whom they believe to be the Son of Sam.

Newsman: David Berkowitz, 24,

spent his days sorting letters in the post office,

so meek and mild and quiet, nobody ever noticed him.

Newsman 2: He had a faint smile

as police moved him around the city today

for booking, to court,

finally, to a mental ward.

He made a statement, "Well, you got me."

Newsman: In the end, it was this parking ticket

that lead police to Berkowitz.

Breslin: There was a woman in Brooklyn was out the night

Son of Sam had shot the last two people.

And she had seen the car

and remembered it had a parking ticket in the car.

And when she told police what she had seen,

it was bingo.

Interviewer: Did you ever have a moment saying,

"Jeez, did I cause this?

Did this column trigger this nut?"

No. And in reading the psychiatric report

on Berkowitz, it just would-- when it's released finally,

it'll just reinforce that, too. I mean...

Garry Trudeau: The Son of Sam story

raised all kinds of horrible questions about,

you know, how this is taking new journalism

into new territory by having

a public dialogue with a serial killer.

You know, I think it came to the fact that,

explaining why that original letter was published in the news,

which I have a lot of problems with,

-it's the police-- -You have problems with

publishing that letter?

Then obviously, you're not in the news business.

You never even considered that that

might have prompted him to do a killing that particular time?

Well, then, what should we do? Not write?

I think you wrote a good deal too much about it, yeah.

I certainly do, and I think that...

The strips that I did were a parody

on this exploitation of a very terrible story.

♪ ♪

In the strip, I had a fictional character named

Son of Arnold and Mary Leiberman,

call into the New York Daily News, and try to pitch his story

before he'd actually started committing murders.

And over the week,

he couldn't get a hold of Breslin,

because Breslin's too busy negotiating

the movie rights for Son of Sam.

And by the end of the week, he gives up.

Interviewer: Do you think that that was the biggest story of your career?

Oh, God forbid, no, I hope not.

What was the biggest story of your career?

-Me. -Why were you the biggest story of your career?

Read! You'll see.

(thunder rumbling)

♪ ♪

Breslin: My first wife Rosemary and I lived together

in love and affection that was deeper

when she died in the middle of a rainy night in June in 1981,

than when I met her on a Saturday night

in the spring of 1952.

She came running into the Crossroads Bar.

The car had dropped dead across the street

on the way home from the wedding.

She came through the door laughing

and with rain on her face.

"I caught the bride's bouquet," she said.

She threw the flowers to me.

"Now you caught it! You wanna get married?"

♪ ♪

I knew she was gone just as fast as I fell in love with her.

She had an operation for breast cancer in 1976,

and then seemed fine for years.

She ran my life, and those of her children, almost totally.

She leaves us with a tradition of decency

that we must accept to carry on.

As was said of another aristocrat such as this one...

"Earth received an honored guest."

He was devastated.

Completely devastated.

♪ ♪

James: It was really the end of the era in Forest Hills.

The door on that house, for him, was closed.

He did not have the ability

to, you know, really deal with

the single-parent family.

Patrick: I've never seen a person

who cares about people so much,

but doesn't express it directly to that person.

And I don't even think I saw him cry at my mother's funeral.

And he wouldn't let us do it either.

♪ ♪

Breslin: My wife died and that took me out of here.

I walked out. I couldn't even look at the place.

Gone!

Get me out.

I don't want any memories.

♪ ♪

I always went to work the next day.

What do you-- Do you wanna sit home?

Oh...

Not I.

He came up to the bedroom in Forest Hills.

It was six o'clock in the morning. Kicked my bed, told me to...

I'll speak truthfully, "Get the fuck up and go to work."

That was the day after my mother was buried.

"Stop your crying.

Life goes on, the clock doesn't stop."

I remember those quotes.

They're burned in my brain.

The clock doesn't stop.

Time is the most valuable thing on Earth.

♪ ♪

Ronnie Eldridge: He thinks there's nothing

as lonely as the sun on a blade of grass,

and nothing as beautiful as a crowded street in Brooklyn.

He thinks boring is a felony crime.

He loves New York

and thrives on its energy and excitement.

And finally, he's been my husband for almost 20 years.

Together, we have nine children,

and 10 grandchildren.

So, welcome to my program,

Eldridge & Company.

-Yes. -Can you believe that you've been married to me

-for almost 20 years? -Yes.

Been delightful. Why, you haven't liked it?

No, it's been a challenge, but it's been great.

It's never boring. As we've already said,

-you don't like that, right? -No.

Anybody out there that is thinking

of getting married, and gonna take on

step-children from two marriages,

under the same roof,

do me a favor, I'll give you the home number. 212-496--

-Host: Oh, I wouldn't do that. -(laughter)

Call me! 7616.

Call me, I'll tell you the truth.

Don't even try it!

(laughter, applause)

Everybody hated everybody.

It was beautiful.

Eldridge: Jimmy is very supportive of me and my career.

He wanted me to run for office.

I don't think I would've if he hadn't really prodded me.

He taught me a lot because he has that ability

to go to the heart of an issue.

You know, shortly after we were married,

I'd pick up the news, and it's Jimmy saying

he's gonna go and live on the street.

He's gonna be a homeless man.

He had had a feud with the Koch administration

'cause they had moved a homeless man off a highway.

This homeless man had been living there

in a beach lounge chair and holding his cup out.

And Jimmy wrote about him,

and the next thing you knew,

Jimmy became a homeless man.

Every homeless person in New York,

it seemed to me, came to visit him.

Interviewer: When he finally got his Pulitzer,

it was for that connection to ordinary people.

And putting faces to AIDS patients.

To me, he won the Pulitzer Prize for that,

in a time when AIDS was scaring people half to death.

(typewriter clacks)

(crowd shouting)

James Duff: All around us, there was a crisis.

I lost 70% of my friends.

David Camacho was

the first big love of my life.

When David got sick,

we went to dinner with 10 people.

And everybody else was served

with plates and silverware,

and we were served with plastic dishes

and plastic forks and knives.

And this is the kind of willful ignorance

in which people were living.

And into this walked Jimmy Breslin.

Jimmy was looking for a way to tell this story,

and asked David if he...

would be willing to talk about it.

David was, "Absolutely.

I want people to know this is happening to human beings."

Breslin: He had two good weeks in July,

and then the fever returned

and he was back in the hospital

for half of last August.

He got out again and returned to 8th Street.

The date this time doesn't count.

(Breslin speaking)

Tell me about living with David.

Duff: Well, let's see.

He came home from work one day

with a temperature of 104 degrees,

and he was bright red.

He had those damn things

-that show on your face. Those... -The lesions, yeah.

He didn't care about the lesions, out he was going.

But you can't convince a government that a disease is...

No, this person, this person, who went to Rutgers,

who worked his, his heart out...

Mmm.

for the rights of the...

underprivileged in this country,

is not considered a human being by this government.

-Hmm. -And so, what does it matter?

It's just one more faggot

in a graveyard.

♪ ♪

After the interview Jimmy did with me,

I was working at a theater restaurant,

and Jimmy would come in,

and he would ask for a coffee.

And he said to me,

"What are you doing, James? What are you doing here?"

I didn't come from a wealthy family.

I had to work.

And I also thought I was probably gonna drop dead soon.

And Jimmy was like, "But, what if you don't drop dead?

"You don't wanna do this the rest of your life.

You should be writing something."

And I would say, "Well, I don't know what to write."

And he goes, "Like that makes a difference.

"I don't know what to write most of the time.

"I go outside, I find something to write about.

Write something."

He would hector me.

He came in a difficult time,

and he could have just walked away.

He got everything he needed.

And he didn't.

Carillo: We're looking at the Manhattan Mini Storage facility

in Lower Manhattan, and this used to be the New York Post.

This is where I worked for many years.

Right on the river, between the Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridges.

Any time there was a Brooklyn Bridge jumper,

everybody would rush to the window,

and the photographer would put a long lens on the camera,

and follow the guy. Click, click, click, click, splash!

It was quite an experience for a young man.

And this is where I knew Pete Hamill.

(typewriter clacks)

Alter: In the '90s, when newspapers were hemorrhaging cash,

and often changing hands,

Pete somehow managed, at different times,

to be editor of both the New York Daily News and the New York Post.

Avlon: Pete Hamill goes on an editor's track.

He notably goes and tries to be editor-in-chief

at theNew York Post, in a time of real flux,

trying to turn the tide

during the death of print.

Kosner: Pete is a wonderful editor.

And he was a wonderful manager

because he's a wonderful person. Everybody loved him,

and people respected him.

Carillo: He'd come to you, and he'd say, "Well,

you know, that lead, maybe you should try..."

He would never say, "Do this!"

And you'd realize, oh, he's right. He's right.

I think this man knows what he's talking about, and he certainly did.

I did not fire Pete Hamill.

(crowd shouting angrily)

Newswoman: Two days after a bankruptcy judge awarded ownership

of thePost to Abe Hirschfeld,

Hirschfeld held a news conference announcing

Wilbert Tatum to run the paper.

This is what happened when Hirschfeld told workers

he didn't fire Hamill.

(angry shouting)

♪ ♪

Newsman: Hirschfeld shot back today

by firing 71 employees,

and threatening to fold the paper

if it doesn't publish tomorrow.

Man: This is for Abe Hirschfeld,

this is a cheap two-dollar tie that he gives out as a gift.

This is a cheap piece of shit.

We're gonna burn it here.

Fuck you, Abe! Fuck you!

Hamill: More than anything else,

I'm sad about the possibility

that this paper is in mortal danger.

Alter: In defiance of Abe Hirschfeld,

the inmates, basically, took over the asylum.

And with Pete barred from the building,

the staff put out a paper that trashed their owner.

Carillo: The opponent's weapons are money and power.

Our weapons are only words and images.

So, we fight with what we've got.

Newsman: After Hirschfield got a court order

banning Hamill from thePostbuilding,

the renegade editor conferred with his reporters and editors

from a diner next door.

When I picked up today's paper and I saw what those guys did,

laying their entire careers on the line,

to put out a newspaper that was totally fearless,

I had no choice.

Carillo: So, Pete sat in the South Street Diner,

and the layout sheets were brought down to him,

so he could edit the paper, and they went back upstairs

with ketchup and vinaigrette dressing on them.

And it was really glory days.

People got a vicarious thrill

about the wild west element of theNew York Post.

-(shutter clicks) -(laughter)

Newsman: It was a zany scene

outside bankruptcy court,

as prospective New York Post publisher,

Abe Hirschfeld, kissed and made up

with the editor he fired last week.

The slaphappy ending came

after the judge worked out a compromise

in which Editor-in-Chief Pete Hamill

gets editorial control,

and Hirschfeld has legal control of the business.

Carillo: The revolution was a thrilling thing,

and even though it wound up to be, sort of, in a losing cause,

it was unforgettable.

♪ ♪

Newsman: The nation's oldest,

continuously published newspaper,

is now officially bankrupt.

Newswoman: Enter thePost's former owner,

Rupert Murdoch.

Alter: When Murdoch demoted Pete,

he quit, and that chapter was closed.

Jimmy was also in the headlines around that time,

but not in a way you would wanna be.

Dwyer: I think Jimmy is a genius

who spent a good part of his life

trying to persuade people that he's not.

He does this by being boorish,

by being impossible,

making up lists of people he's not talking to this year.

And it's an act, but sometimes,

as they say, the dancer becomes the dance.

♪ ♪

Newsman: Jimmy Breslin is in a heap of trouble

for alleged racial slurs,

and the staff of Newsday's in an uproar.

Newsman 2: It all began when

New YorkNewsday columnist Jimmy Breslin

wrote this column last week,

complaining that his wife

was not spending enough time at home with him.

Enter Ji-Yeon Mary Yuh,

25-year-old reporter working for the same newspaper.

Yuh: It seemed off from the image

of Jimmy Breslin, the columnist,

that I had in my mind.

And so, I sent him an email,

saying that I was disappointed with his column today,

and outlining my reasons why.

Newsman: She sent a message to Breslin,

saying the column was sexist.

Breslin reportedly stormed into the newsroom,

taking aim at Yuh's Korean heritage.

The tirade went something like this.

"I can't stand people who don't know their place.

"The explicative doesn't know her place.

"She's a little dog. Just a little cur,

"a cur running down the street.

"She's a yellow cur.

Let's make it racial."

Esposito: He insulted the woman.

Jimmy was a big commodity,

an important part of the paper,

but Newsdaywas a very ethical place,

and so this was taken very seriously.

So, I said, well, you know, you have to write an apology.

And he goes, "This is my apology.

"Once again, I am wrong.

JB Number One."

It was like...

that's it?

Okay, that's the apology?

It's not an apology, of course.

It's an acknowledgment that he was wrong.

So I write, you know, an apology for him.

Yuh: He did send me a note.

It wasn't quite an apology.

"I'm sorry if I offended you," I believe is what he said.

But,

after I received that note,

is when he went on the Howard Stern Show.

(recording playing)

♪ ♪

Esposito: He made it worse.

He dug himself in and he made it worse.

So, we had a meeting.

And there was a debate as to whether we would fire Jimmy.

I objected. I thought

that was too big a price to pay.

So, they said, "Well, we'll suspend him."

At which point they told me, "You do it."

I was like, "Thank you very much.

I'm the youngest person in the room."

So, I call Jimmy up, and I say,

"Look, you're suspended, two weeks."

He just lets me have it.

"You're just a clerk. You were always a clerk.

You're no good."

Patrick: I think the suspension probably killed him,

'cause I don't think he had a bigoted bone in his body.

We weren't brought up to be like a lot of the other people

in our neighborhood who, you know,

were bigots. True bigots.

Costas: Suppose I work next to you, and you're 20 years,

and there's a general level of respect,

and I didn't think you didn't have your fastball one day,

or you missed the point and I say, "Jimmy,

that column wasn't very good."

-Gonna take a swing... -No, you don't come up and say,

"How could you write such a thing?"

"How could write such a thing about women," or something.

"How could you write such a thing about men?"

I do what I please, and you shut up, huh?

Do me a favor. And that's the way it must go!

-I've got to-- -To anybody, or just to Jimmy Breslin,

because he's Jimmy Breslin?

Because I've gotta do it tomorrow.

I don't know what you're doing tomorrow.

I have to do my thing tomorrow, and I don't wanna be bothered.

You know, Jimmy is an impulsive

guy from the streets,

and I thought, you know,

he just made a huge mistake.

In anger, he said a really dumb, destructive thing.

Eldridge: You know, I said, how could you have done that?

But he never realizes

the impact of what he says on other people.

He doesn't.

I don't even know if he knows what he said,

but he doesn't like it when other people criticize him.

Esposito: It's been said of Breslin that

no sleight was too small

for him to elevate to a feud.

That you are gifted,

that you are creative, doesn't mean you're wise.

Doesn't mean you're balanced.

Doesn't mean you're not an insecure,

sniveling little child inside

who takes an insult from a rookie

and turns it into a war.

Like anyone who's so self-involved,

that was part of who he was.

Collins: He was terrible in many ways, but...

his sense of sympathy

was just amazing.

♪ ♪

Caldwell: From the time that I met Breslin,

he had such a feel

for the plight,

condition of black people.

Breslin wasn't

afraid to go into their homes.

He wasn't afraid to go into their communities.

He asked me to take him a lot of places.

"I want you to take me to

the roughest black bar in this town."

And I told him, if he went down there, you might get hurt.

I can't defend you down there.

I don't even like to go there myself!

We went down there,

and he went right talking to people,

and they were acting sensibly to him.

(typewriter clacks)

-(yelling) -(glass breaking)

Reporter: Demonstrators gathered again near the site

of a car accident that left a child dead,

and set off violence in that Brooklyn community,

where blacks and Hasidic Jews live as neighbors.

(yelling)

Reporter 2: Angry protesters took to the streets,

tossing Molotov cocktails,

overturning cars,

setting fires...

Daly: I remember coming home. On the TV,

there's a picture of a burning yellow cab.

I say to myself, there's only one person on Earth,

first of all, who's dumb enough to take a cab to a riot.

Second of all, could get the cabbie to do it.

And I was right, it was him.

-(yelling) -(police radio beeping)

(yelling continues)

(siren)

Breslin: The cab I'm riding in

suddenly is running into a wall of young black kids.

-(yelling) -(glass breaking)

Into the cab, they piled, the young and the angry.

One of these young guys was up on the hood of the cab,

and he swung a baseball bat at the windshield,

until the windshield turned seafoam green.

They were throwing punches, holding me,

ripping up my clothes

for the only thing they wanted at the moment.

Money.

(yelling)

Quinn: They ripped his clothes off,

and he's there in his underwear.

Jimmy probably had, like, the old-school underwear.

You know, just those old-school,

you know, tighty-whiteys and T-shirt.

Eldridge: We had to go to the hospital

to have stitches in the eye.

He didn't make it a big issue.

Other people made it a bigger issue than he did.

The thing he made a big thing of was

that what stopped the crowd was some black man

there recognized Jimmy,

and pulled-- got everybody away from him.

That was what was important to him.

♪ ♪

Costas: Did the irony of this occur to you?

You spent a whole career...

-Breslin: Yeah. -...as a champion of blacks...

-Yeah, sure. -...for decades,

putting their words and their concerns in the paper,

-and now, you were just another white guy. -So, what?

I've been for them all their lives,

what do they care? What does that mean?

You've been for me all of your life,

well, you didn't do very good for me,

I'll tell you that 'cause I'm still here.

(yelling)

Daly: The cops came and basically said,

"How do you like all your stinking friends now, huh?"

Real happy you've been championing these...?

Some cop said, "How do you like the animals now?"

That was a cop.

-Interviewer: What did Jimmy say? -Fuck you.

Breslin: I get down to the police station.

They were standing outside. "What happened?"

I says, get lost,

and I got in the cab and went.

I didn't even want them.

I got beat up. I wouldn't even go in there.

How do you like that? Now that's carrying a feud good.

-You gotta gimme that, right? -(laughing)

Payne: Jimmy's an Irish American.

And the Irish, over time, occupied

a dominant space in the New York City Police Department.

Breslin: People with Irish backgrounds

in the city of New York

have hardly been in the forefront

of the drive towards civil rights. In fact,

they might have been on the other side of the fence

too much and there was...

I've had quarrels with them over that.

Barry: He famously referred to the Irish as having those

shopping center faces.

In other words, the Irish had come up

and struggled in a city that didn't initially

welcome them, and now, we're not as receptive

to others who had come up behind them.

Daly: Crown Heights, that just shows

that it was all genuine.

Here's a guy who actually

believes and feels what he writes.

If you go and you read him,

you see what's wrong about us

and what's right about us.

Interviewer: You didn't have even a touch of bitterness about

the fact that you'd just gotten the shit kicked out of you?

No, it's part of the game!

I really believe that.

If Jimmy Breslin would just put it down in plain words,

you know, short sentences, and build,

build little bricks of beauty

from small little parts...

Pete Hamill was like Mahler.

♪ ♪

Hamill: A great gray cloud

billowed in slow motion,

growing larger and larger, like some evil genie

released into the cloudless sky.

Sheets of paper fluttered against the grayness,

like ghostly snowflakes.

Anybody who can place you in the moment,

and make you feel what he was feeling in that moment,

has done all the job you can ever ask

for a reporter or a columnist.

And Pete did that that day.

(inaudible)

Woman: Oh my God!

-(rumbling) -(people screaming)

Hamill: I yelled to my wife, "Run!"

And we start together, and this immense cloud,

perhaps 25 stories high,

is rolling at us.

Bodies come smashing together in the doorway of

25 Vesey Street,

and I can't see my wife.

I keep calling her name and saying,

"I've gotta get outta here! Please, my wife!"

Go, go, go, go!

I thought he is following me.

Finally, I turn back and,

"Oh my gosh, he's not here!"

And I said, oh my gosh, I...

made the worst mistake in my life.

I felt that I had failed her somehow.

That I should've been with her,

hand in hand all the way.

♪ ♪

The street before us is now a pale gray wilderness.

There is powdery white dust in gutter and sidewalk,

and dust on the roofs of cars,

and dust on the tombstones of Saint Paul's.

Dust coats police and the civilians,

white people and black,

men and women.

It's like an assembly of ghosts.

(Hamill speaking)

That moment where I opened the door,

and she was right there coming out,

tried to find me.

Uh...

it was like, phew!

♪ ♪

-Woman (on phone): Hi, Mr. Breslin. -Hi.

I just finished your daughter's book, and I really enjoyed it.

I thought she was very honest and courageous,

and I just wanted to know how she's doing right now.

S'all right.

You know, this week, fine. Thank you.

She's got a blood disease. That's what that's about.

-(hospital chatter) -(machine beeping)

♪ ♪

Eldridge: You know, she was sick for 16 years,

and he never missed a visit.

Never.

Dunne: Every doctor's appointment.

Every infusion. Every transfusion.

Jimmy was there,

100%.

Culkin: She had her mother's name,

and because Rosemary pursued writing,

I think the apple of Daddy's eye was exactly who she was.

(beeping)

Patrick: What Tony Dunne said to my father

while my sister Rosemary was deathly ill,

he goes, "You know, JB, we love you. I love you.

Rosie loves you." And my father, he...

the word was hard to say. But he gave you a little dip.

A little hit with his right shoulder.

And that's a big thing,

to get the shoulder.

I knew exactly what that meant.

You know, it meant...

It meant, "Thank you. I love you, too."

Interviewer: But he would never say it.

I don't think he ever could.

I don't think he ever could.

♪ ♪

Maria: His column after Rosemary's death,

Jimmy had this vision.

In the last moments of Rosemary's life that

her mother came to her.

(Breslin speaking)

...as if to the first day of school.

♪ ♪

Eldridge: He would always talk about the fact that

three women in his life died.

His wife Rosemary, his daughter Rosemary,

and his daughter Kelly. Always.

He would just say it. "Three women in my life died."

Death's taken a lot out of Jimmy.

Jimmy, Jimmy gets angry.

Jimmy's angry at the people who've been taken from him.

Interviewer: When are you absolutely the happiest?

You're not put on this Earth to be happy.

You're really not.

Eldridge: Jimmy...

What do you want?

You have... a thing about

people dying. I mean, you say you don't have any feelings.

But, you know, the other day,

we were looking up a number in your phone book,

and you looked at the page and you said,

"God, everybody's gone." Right?

And what do you do when they die?

You write what?

What's that? Oh, in the book? What do I write?

-1-800-Heaven? -Oh yeah.

-So what does that mean? -That's his number.

So, you do believe they're in Heaven?

I don't know. I'm rooting for them.

I don't think they deserve it, if I knew them.

(Eldridge laughing)

Interviewer: Are you scared of dying?

Breslin: No, it's too late.

I'm gonna be 87.

So, what does it matter

whether I wanna go or I don't wanna go?

The game-- (chuckles) look at the scoreboard.

How exciting can it be when you're in the last inning?

♪ ♪

(indistinct chatter)

One, two, three!

-(blowing) -(laughing)

-Man: Give him a hand. One for good luck. -Woman: Woo hoo!

-(clapping) -Happy birthday!

Look at that.

(indistinct chatter)

Jim, I'll talk to you later.

Yeah. I'll call you, I'll give you a call.

(typewriter clacks)

Man: There aren't anymore Breslins and Hamills.

This was the last expression

of great 20th-century,

muscular American journalism.

Journalism that's gone.

It's gone.

♪ ♪

Hamill: When I got the news that Jimmy had died,

it was like 25, 30 people had just left the room.

He had adapted certain masks

to get through life.

I never mistook the masks

with the complicated human being that he was.

-(typewriter clacks) -(chatter)

Breslin: I wrote the day seen exactly as it was.

I always figured that this was the only game.

Just go to any neighborhood where the poor live,

and tell the truth about what you see.

Please do not put out a sermon.

That is for Sunday.

Avlon: The old newsroom culture,

that he came out of, certainly is gone.

But the heart of it

is absolutely real and transcendent,

which is real reporting with a ton of voice,

that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.

And that's eternal,

as long as the press is doing its job in a free society.

The need for narrative is never gonna go away.

It is why we've been sitting around campfires

for 100,000 years, listening to stories.

But it's gonna change form.

So, it may be the same content in different bottles.

It's more democratic.

There's more public access.

On the other hand, there's more public access

to a lot of bullshit.

You know, I think if you hooked

the craft up to technology,

I think it would be greater than we ever imagined.

I think you just get older and you die.

It's over, and some other guy will pick it up and...

do something that we've never seen before.

I mean (laugh), it's that simple.

There's always gonna be new people.

Hopefully who take up the time,

and keep moving forward.

Whatever it is, this chaos of the moment,

will resolve itself eventually,

and those people will swim into place.

They're there.

♪ ♪

Hamill: Journalism, if it's any good,

becomes history.

(birds chirping)

It's always being adjusted.

It's always being enriched by the new people that come,

who, in turn, get enriched by

the old people who are here.

This tree is a symbol of it.

This tree has watched the change.

Has lived through it. Has survived.

It's held up with help,

like most old creatures.

It's got a cable running across it

to help some of the branches.

But, here it is.

And so this tree reminds us

of the passage of time,

and the ache we have,

and the joy we have,

being able to find out and say,

it's still here, God damn it.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪