Bob Greene dies

No, not that one. A fine investigative reporter. I met him several times at seminars. If you ever wanted to learn how to dig for a story, this guy was well worth the time. Also, a hell of a guy to share a few drinks with. RIP

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-libob0411,0,5418917.story

 

Wow. For those interested, I recommend getting ahold of Robert Keeler's history of the paper, published in 1990. There are a few such books that do a good job of making you feel like you know the people being written about, but I thought Keeler's book did the best job of making those people seem three-dimensional. Obviously there's a lot about Greene and about the Pulitzer-winning heroin series.

 

Damnit, damnit, damnit.

He was my advisor my last year at Hofstra. He liked my future wife and I enough to recommend we pursue journalism jobs after college, even if it meant being far apart from one another. "He wanted us to break up," my wife just said, tears in her eyes and admiration in her voice.

He was just an incredible, incredible man with an insatiable thirst for information. The Arizona Project would never happen today. I admire him for remaining so passionate that he wanted to teach at an age when most folks are well into retirement. And I admire him the most for surviving the greatest tragedy one can imagine and coming out even hungrier and more determined on the other side.

RIP. When they made him, brother, they broke the mold.

 

Helping to form IRE or heading up the Arizona Project would be greater than most in this business have ever done.

He did both.

RIP to a man who had a great impact on what we do.

 

There was nothing close to unanimous approval for the Arizona Project at the time. Some called it "vigilante journalism." The Arizona Republic decided at zero hour not to print it. If I had been working in the state at the time, I'm not sure I wouldn't have taken the media swarm as an indication that the outsiders believed the desert rubes couldn't do a passable job of investigating the thing themselves.

http://www.azcentral.com/specials/special01/0528bolles-arizonaproject.html