Title: How Jimmy Breslin Changed Journalism

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jimmy Breslin was a key voice in New York through some of the city's most turbulent decades. Over the course of his 50-year career, Breslin wrote columns for the New York Herald Tribune, New York Magazine, New York Daily News, Newsday, and more. He guided the reader through the tragic assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. He captured life in the Bronx as it was burning in the 70s.

He wrote about failures in police and government in the '80s and '90s and famously even corresponded with the Son of Sam. Breslin, a Queens native, was not an easy person to get along with or necessarily to work with, as my next guest can personally attest to. He famously had a racist outburst in the '90s that led to his suspension at Newsday. His straightforward prose, detail-oriented style, and his ability to capture emotion helped launch a new form of narrative nonfiction called New Journalism.

A new biographer from Breslin's former colleague, journalist Richard Esposito, chronicles Jimmy's life and career. It's titled Jimmy Breslin: The Man Who Told the Truth. New York City, New Journalism and the Career of America's Great Crime Reporter. Welcome to All Of It, Richard.

Richard Esposito: Welcome. Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Were you a fan of Jimmy Breslin's? What piece of his sticks out in your mind? What did you admire about his writing or his reporting? Our Phone lines are open. 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. The subject for the rest of the hour is Jimmy Breslin. What was your personal relationship with Jimmy?

Richard Esposito: I started as a copyboy, a clerk at the Daily News. My initial relationship was run and get what he wrote and run across the room and give it to someone else and don't stop. I later became the city editor, much later of Newsday. Then he would call every day, every morning to find out what's going on. He did that with everyone. He was relentless as a reporter. I had a good relationship with him for most of the time.

Alison Stewart: The subtitle of the book is The Man Who Told the Truth, yet there are some debates about how much he might have embellished about his life, his own stories. What do you think his relationship with the truth was?

Richard Esposito: I think that's the heart of the question that I try to answer in the book. His relationship with the truth was not about fair and balance, not about having two sides, but about telling you what he thought the facts really added up to, the truth. He and Tom Wolfe at the Herald Tribune in 1963, people doubted that the way they wrote was accurate. Tom Wolfe said he watched Jimmy from a few yards away. A man who worked relentlessly on deadline to get you the truth.

Abe Rosenthal from The Times doubted that these people existed. Then he went out to Queens and discovered no, there really was a 400-pound bookmaker. Yet he did composites in his effort to convey to you what was important.

Alison Stewart: How did you go about sorting fact from fiction in writing this book?

Richard Esposito: That's also a really interesting question. Jimmy burnished himself over time. It was as if his life was a story he was typing. When you went back, one year he said he went to college, another time he said he didn't go to college. One year he said he did X in high school, then somebody finds a picture and discovers he played the bugle. That didn't fit his image, so that went away. A lot of research is the answer and remembering that he loved to be a storyteller more than a factteller so you really had to nail him down.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with journalist Richard Esposito, author of the new biography Jimmy Breslin: The Man Who Told the Truth about the columnist's 50-year career here in New York City. Listeners, we want to hear from you. Were you a fan of Jimmy Breslin's? What piece of yours sticks out in his mind? What did you admire the most about his writing? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. The first chapter in the book is called Sam, of course, referencing Son of Sam killer who murdered six, left seven wounded. He reached out to Breslin. I remember this. Why did you want to start the book this way?

Richard Esposito: It's a good way to start a book with a big dramatic story. This was the story that in the minds of many people made him an overnight success. You know overnight success takes 20 years, really. He emerged as a national voice at that moment. Every person on the subway, if you can imagine what it was like with newspapers, parents were reading these stories, wondering, "What about my daughter? Is my daughter the next victim? She has brown hair. Maybe she should cut her hair."

It was a time when New York was not just Son of Sam, but there were blackouts, riots, the city had crime all over the place, and in the middle of it, you had a serial Killer. That's why I started the book with that. It is the story that propelled Jimmy into the national consciousness.

Alison Stewart: What did it say about Jimmy Breslin that David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, would reach out to him?

Richard Esposito: It tells you just what a good writer he was. David Berkowitz found someone who he thought would understand him as in his insanity. He didn't hide his insanity. His letters were dark. Jimmy became essentially his pen pal. There were two parts going on. Telling people the story and the Daily News milking the story for circulation. One of the editors said if they could have printed the stamp from the envelope and sold another newspaper, they would have printed the stamp.

He reached out to Jimmy because also Jimmy reached 3 million people a day and serial killers want fame as much as they want to kill a person. That's there underneath it all.

Alison Stewart: What did Jimmy think about the editor who said, "We would print the stamp. We could make money off of this?"

Richard Esposito: First of all, the editor was a gifted, great editor. He was just being honest about what it's like to be a 28-year-old editor with a story that's going to sell newspapers. That is part of the job. Jimmy thought he was a great editor. Jimmy worked with this editor very, very well as well as he worked with anyone. He also chased this editor around the room to make people dump their pockets because he had no money and he never had any money.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think Breslin was so drawn to the crime beat?

Richard Esposito: Breslin knew there were two things people really read. One was sports, where he came from. In the days of newspapers, some papers were sold on the newsstand with the back cover, so you knew what the Mets or the Yankees were doing. He came from sports and he knew the next big event.

His inspiration in many ways was Damon Runyon, and when Damon Runyon came to New York, he heard that Times Square was a bad place and he said, "How do I get there?" because he knew that's where the storytelling would be. These are the crimes, whether it's the heist of an airplane, a gangster killing another gangster, Son of Sam, a politician stealing from parking meters. These were the stories your reader couldn't wait for. That's why he was drawn. He knew these were the stories that you had to write.

Alison Stewart: We've got some good calls. Adolf is calling from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Hi Adolf, thanks for calling.

Adolf: Hi, good morning. I was fortunate enough to work with Jimmy Breslin from 1986 to 1990 at the New York Daily News, and because of this great guy, I became a photojournalist because of him. I moved to Albuquerque in 1990. I can still remember Jimmy telling me, "You know something Adolf? If you want to become a better journalist, you have to be on-site. You have to go to where the stories are, smell what those people are smelling, hear what they are hearing, see what they're seeing every day." All those great advice have allowed me to be a better journalist today.

Alison Stewart: Thank you.

Adolf: I recently retired from the Albuquerque Journal in Albuquerque as a photojournalist.

Alison Stewart: Adolf, thank you so much for calling in.

Richard Esposito: That was great, Adolf. You really summed up something that he did for many young journalists. When he died on Facebook, there was a list of people who you were surprised by saying things like you just said, "He taught me to get out there and get to where the story was. He made me a better reporter. That was a gift that he had and he shared with people. You really hit it on the head.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Ellen calling in from Woodstock. Hi, Ellen. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Ellen: Hi, good afternoon. I once was working for a publisher and we were putting out a book of short stories by Gary Adams, and Jimmy Breslin was supposed to write the introduction. He was very, very late. My bosses were going on a trip abroad, and they left the office with these firm instructions, Jimmy Breslin's phone number. I was to call him. I was to get the introduction, get it laid out into the book, and get it to the printer. I called him up and I said, "This is Ellen from Sheridan Square Press," and he said, "I'm working on it," and he hung up on me.

I thought, "Okay, well." Then about 20, 25 minutes later over the FAQ, this was in the '90s, and it came through over the facts. I typed it up, put it in, laid it out, but I got about 20 minutes left of that, I got a phone call. I pick up the phone and he says, "Well, was it okay?"

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. Let's talk to Brad from Manhattan. Hi, Brad, thanks for calling All Of It.

Brad: Hi. I remember Marvin the Torch, who was maybe a fictional character who was hired by the South Bronx landlords to burn down buildings. At the time, I knew some New York Times reporters like Bobby Campbell, Earl Caldwell, the [unintelligible 00:10:45] bigot who were reporting up there, as well as people with United Bronx Parents and The Real Great Society, Chino García, who were actually in Fox street trying to deal with that. As a teacher later on, I wound up teaching up there. What can I tell you? It was really happening, and it certainly resonated with me.

Alison Stewart: My dad was real into to Marvin the Torch.

Richard Esposito: He captured just what you said. Parts of the Bronx were burned down. Whole swaths of the Bronx had been destroyed by landlords. Marvin was Jimmy's tool for telling you those stories.

Alison Stewart: He was born in Queens in 1928. How do I know he's from Queens? If I had met Jimmy Breslin, how would I know that?

Richard Esposito: You just had to hear his voice. The minute you heard that accent, you knew he was from Queens if he didn't write about it every day. The people of Queens were the core of his audience in many ways. They were the Daily News reader. They were Newsday's reader. He knew he was from Queens.

Alison Stewart: He was raised mostly by women, surrounded by women. His father left the family when he was very, very young. How do you think that shaped him?

Richard Esposito: Pete Hamill, who was his contemporary, said there was a broken little boy left inside Jimmy. Jimmy's father walked out and left an impoverished family with a mother who could be an alcoholic. For the rest of his life, that little boy dwelled inside this guy who pretended he was a tough guy.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call from Dennis. Hey, Dennis. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Dennis: Hi. Good afternoon.

Alison Stewart: Good afternoon.

Dennis: I was calling because I had a wonderful experience with Mr. Breslin in 1999. I was a prosecutor in the Brooklyn DA's office investigating a case of a building collapse that killed one of the immigrant workers who was working on the project. Mr. Breslin and I knew each other from previous press contacts. He had reached out to the District Attorney at the time and asked if we would share information with him that was not confidential, but it was part of the investigation because he wanted to write a book about it.

He did eventually write a book called The Short Sweet Death of Eduardo Gutierrez. We spent hours and hours in my office because I had two or three boxes of files about the responsibility for the building collapse and building permits and who the owners were. While we never had a prosecution, he wrote this wonderful book, and during our hours together, he referred me to a 1939 book called Christ in Concrete, which was about the collapse of a building with an immigrant Italian worker, Pietro di Donato, and it was just amazing to put the two things together.

I'll tell you, the man worked hard. He was later in life. I knew him when he was younger and a little rough-edged. He was just so sweet, curious, interested, and wrote a wonderful book.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling, Dennis. Did you want to respond?

Richard Esposito: Just you're absolutely right. That plight of the immigrant worker which still goes on today, that book captured that plight and the taking advantage of people who these landlords thought, "I can get away with paying them less, giving them poor living conditions and poor working conditions." It really captured that story.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Richard Esposito, author of the new biography Jimmy Breslin: The Man Who Told the Truth about the columnist's 50-year career here in New York City. Listeners, we want to hear from you. Were you a fan of Jimmy Breslin's. What piece sticks out in your mind? What did you admire about his writing? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We'll meet back here after a quick break.

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Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Richard Esposito. He's the author of the new biography Jimmy Breslin: The Man Who Told the Truth. Breslin wrote during some of the most turbulent times in our country that covered the assassination of JFK, MLK. He was present during the shooting of RFK, which you write about in the book, covered blackouts, murders, police riots. How did covering such dark material affect his mental health?

Richard Esposito: I think there was no word PTSD when he started, but after the death of Bobby Kennedy, he got off the train back to New York, walked into a bar, and stayed there for three days. That's how it affected him. It was devastating. Bobby Kennedy was bringing hope to our nation. After JFK, he couldn't come to work for days. He just couldn't write. These things that reporters see, war correspondents, Jimmy saw three times a week. He did this for 50 years.

How does that affect your mental health? If you care about human beings and you see that amount of suffering and pain, it affects you deeply. Deeply.

Alison Stewart: In 1990, he was at Newsday. Breslin became angry at a female reporter who criticized one of his columns. She was Korean American. Breslin started yelling very racist things at her. He doubled down on them on Howard Stern. You were on staff at Newsday at the time and you had to ask Breslin to write an apology. How did that go?

Richard Esposito: Oh, that was a really pleasant part of my day. I called up to say, "The editors need an apology from you," and I heard every curse. "You were a clerk when I met you. You're still a clerk. You write it." Then I sat there and I wrote an apology and sent it back to him. The other editors thought it was okay. I was the youngest. He called back and said, "No, take this down. Once again, I am no good, Breslin."

It was the most bigoted thing publicly that he'd ever said. Was he a bigot? Some people would say, if you have one bigoted outburst like that, yes, you are because there must be others inside of you. People who knew him would say, look at the span of his work. Look at what he did. No, he had an ugly, nasty personality, and this is how he conveyed it. Just like the things he said to me that are in the book.

Alison Stewart: Yes, we cannot say. Let's take some calls. Let's call to Bruce. Bruce is on the Upper East Side. Hi, Bruce. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Bruce: Yes, hi. I'm interested in what you have to say about the coverage of Donald Trump taking the full-page ad in the New York Times about the Central Park Five. Could you talk about Jimmy's coverage before, during, and after that?

Richard Esposito: That is a great question. While people were still lauding Donald Trump as a wonderful developer, Jimmy said a few things about him. His only contribution to public conversation was tax abatements is one of the things. That ad ran in every newspaper in New York for $17,000. In essence, the newspapers, including my own, sold their souls. It was an ugly ad convicting five kids before a jury, a judge, a confession. He wanted to kill them.

Only Breslin told the story that way. Did he forget that story? No. When those kids were exonerated, Breslin went back to court, and what did he write that day? This was the great sense of history that he had. That day he wrote, there was only one person that wasn't in that courtroom, and that was Donald Trump. He doesn't forget. He didn't forget. I hope that answers a bit of what you were asking.

Alison Stewart: Yes, I think it did. Let's talk to Royo from Brooklyn. Hi, Royo, thanks for calling All Of It.

Royo: Hi. I just wanted to share a chance encounter I had with Jimmy Breslin. This was outside after the funeral of the great Mary Kempton, who I was a fan of and I couldn't even get in the funeral, but I was outside just immediately following. It was just milling with reporters and just all kinds of people. I had a copy of Mary Kempton's last book in my hand. I saw William F. Buckley, of all people. I was surprised he was there. He said, "This book is really inscribed to me." I looked at it, and it was.

There were no cameras. This was pre your camera on your phone and all that stuff. I said, "No one's going to believe this." I said, "Mr. Buckley, can I have your autograph?" He said, "Sure." I handed him the book, and he was scribbling in his photograph. Behind me was Jimmy Breslin. He said, "Oh, if you're going to get Buckley's autograph, you got to have mine." He grabbed the book and he wrote his autograph in the book and I have it in my hand right now.

Richard Esposito: Wow.

Alison Stewart: Love that story. Thank you for sharing it. Let's talk to Robert from Matawan. Hi, Robert.

Robert: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I haven't listened to the whole program, so I don't know if you've discussed this already, but I think my favorite Breslin column, and a lot of people's, was the one that he wrote on the day of JFK's funeral. Has that already been mentioned?

Alison Stewart: It has not. Go ahead.

Robert: There's a great documentary that was produced recently. I think it's called Breslin and Hamel. It was basically interviewing Jimmy and Breslin just less than a year probably before they both passed. He tells the story about how on the day of Kennedy's funeral, the night before, he thought, "Well, I'm not going to go to the burial service. Everyone's going to tell the same story. How do I do this a little differently?" He tracked down the man who was digging the grave for JFK.

He was a Black cemetery worker at Arlington, and he spent the evening with him and interviewed him about his feelings about not only digging graves at this sacred spot, but digging one for the President that he loved. You can find it on Google. Jimmy always wrote great columns, but it's probably one of his greatest.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much. It's mentioned in the book. Why was that a good example of what Jimmy Breslin did best?

Richard Esposito: That column, that's the one they teach in journalism school, the gravedigger, but what was the gravedigger? 10,000 people were watching Pennsylvania Avenue and the procession. Jimmy went to Mr. Pollard's house and watched him eat his breakfast, put on his coveralls, and go dig the hole into which he captured it wasn't just a president, it was hope, it was grief. He captured it all in one story by going and finding, how do you tell a story in a way that touches your reader's heart?

That's really what the gravedigger-- It's not just a technique. It's a technique to get you to feel. That was the kind of storytelling that Jimmy did.

Alison Stewart: One thing was that Jimmy Breslin was really good with a deadline, yet he always turned things in late. We heard from the caller. What do you mean when you say he was good with a deadline if he's turning things in late?

Richard Esposito: He was good on a deadline in that he'd get up at 5 in the morning, he'd go to where it was happening, he'd get in at 4:00, 5:00, the deadline is 6:00, and he would be late because he was getting what you needed to tell the story, but he'd always make the paper. The night that John Lennon was shot, he somehow got to the scene from Queens, covered it, and dictated it into the office in time for the last editions. That's an amazing feat.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Peggy from Brooklyn. Hi, Peggy. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Peggy: Hello, Allison. How are you doing?

Alison Stewart: Doing well, thanks.

Peggy: I just want to tell you, Allison, you've been an oasis of sanity in this Peggy political season. Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Peggy: This is aging everybody but I was in the courthouse at the time as a nurse, and there was a big diner across the street all the reporters would go to, and he was sitting at the counter. I recognized him, especially his voice. I'm pretty sure Hamel was with him. It was a big trial. Happened to be my brother's birthday. I had just called him and I said, "Jimmy, say hi to my brother. Say happy birthday." He looks at me, goes, "Is he on the phone?" I said, "Yes." He goes, "Give me the phone." He goes, "Happy birthday, Stephen."

Alison Stewart: I love that story. Thank you so much, Peggy, for calling. I do want to mention that you spoke to some of Breslin's kids for the biography. What did they tell you their dad was like at home?

Richard Esposito: They described a household of chaos where their mother, Rosemary, held the family together. She created expense accounts for him. They walked on eggshells when he wrote. When he needed to go somewhere, they all piled into the car because he couldn't drive. Rosemary drove him to the riots in Harlem with the kids in the car. The kids felt like they were hostages sometimes as he would take them to the beach, where he would go stand out at Rockaway, look at the water, and think.

They loved him, and they knew he loved their mother. The house was that combination that many homes have. There's love and there's immense tension. In his case, the tension was magnified by the fact that all he cared about was handing in his work that day.

Alison Stewart: Ae text says, "Can you ask the author who he thinks Breslin would have backed in this election, especially given Trump's appeal to the working class? What would Breslin have made of MAGA?"

Richard Esposito: There are two subjects he'd be writing about today. One would be Eric Adams and the other would be Donald Trump, because what else do you write about? What would he think of Donald Trump? If you heard earlier, he has a history of thinking about Donald Trump and calling what he sees. He would remind you, I think, and I thought about this this morning, "He's like Richard Nixon. He has no values at all." That's what he wrote about Nixon in his book, The Good Guys Finally Won.

What was wrong with Nixon was not what he did so much as he had no truth. That's what I think he'd write about Donald Trump. What would he think of MAGA? It would hurt to see working people deceived like that. That's how he would feel about that. With Eric Adams, to come back to New York, which is home for Alison and me, Eric wore a hat with both the Yankees and the Mets on it. How dare you do that? He would write about the man who had two hats and capture his cronyism and all the things that, for whatever his good qualities, are his bad qualities.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is Jimmy Breslin: The Man Who Told the Truth. New York City, New Journalism and the Career of America's Greatest Crime Reporter. It's by Richard Esposito. Thanks for coming into the studio and taking calls.

Richard Esposito: Thank you for having me.