Katie Couric thinks you need a bath

Once was a time when network news nabobs considered everything between the New York-DC corridor and Los Angeles as "flyover country"-- the vast middle of America that looked eastward for guidance and leadership, and west for news of dead celebrities and earthquakes.,not worthy or economical for coverage beyond the occasional natural disaster or shooting spree. That time passed abut twenty-five years ago, as cheap satellite technology made it possible to set up camp in any part of the world, and the advent of tabloid television era broke the elitist network news grip on coverage and influence and changed the news coverage palette for good.

So it's quaint at the least to see that "Katie" Couric, who's taken over as "anchor" of the anachronistic CBS Evening News, still refers to everything West of the Hudson as "this great unwashed middle of the country."

"Unwashed" or "Great unwashed" is a derogatory term for the multitude of "ordinary" people.

CBS News handout photo

Now you know why you haven't noticed those network news shows, and why it's probably a good idea, as Howard Kurtz's article in the Daily Beast indicates, that she stay on the job for a few more years at a reduced salary.

Steve Dunleavy sighted in New York City

Tabloid legend Steve Dunleavy has been sighted in New York City, looking good-- and smoking!

Dunleavy (center) was with bigshot political and journalism pals at the Water Club Friday afternoon, when he was photographed with a pair of ageless tabloid television veterans who've each racked up legendary status of his own. Frank Grimes and Steve McPartlin reportedly bumped into Dunleavy as he was on his way outside for a cigarette.

Sightings of the NY Post columnist, formner editor, A Current Affair star and Elvis What Happened author have been few and far between since his retirement in 2008.

This American Life can't find American stories?

Ira Glass is a public radio star whose show called This American Life got turned into a series on Showtime. He and his team go out into "America" and find the kinds of interesting, offbeat stories that were the fodder of the tabloid television era and that the old media usually overlooks: "traveling to Iowa pig farms, following a first-time filmmaker in California, photographing a raucous night at an Illinois hot dog stand. The result is true stories that are dramatic, emotional, and often funny."

As in the tabloid television era, a lot of the stories from This American Life get turned into movies. They do six half-hour shows a season. But Ira says he may be cutting back from a mere six to a few specials a year because they can't find enough stories.

He tells Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel:

"We need stories with real drama, things unfolding, something at stake and characters we can relate to — ideally, with people doing something that has a visual component to it. It's incredibly important to have something interesting to look at."

Something's not right here. In the tabloid days we'd find a half dozen of these stories a week. Does Ira need a new research staff or does it have something to do with the Showtime deal?

How tabloid inspired a country doctor

Dr. Crystal Bailey Gary and her husband Dr. Thomas Gary are family physicians who run the North Georgia Family Medicine center in Blairsville, Georgia. Dr. Crystal is one of those special people, dedicating her life to doing vitally important work and making other people's lives better.

And who'd think she was inspired by tabloid?

Dr. Crystal is the daughter of a legend: cameraman and mentor Lewis Bailey, who's guided the shoots and made the name of many a producer in tabloid television and network news (you'd surprised at how the two intertwine, then again if you read Tabloid Baby, you wouldn't be). Many of those producers knew Crystal back in the day as Lewis' fetching young assistant.


Dr. Crystal writes, and writes quite well, about the roots of her raising on the NGFM site:

"There is something to be said for kids 'from the sticks.' Growing up in the shadows of the Appalachian Mountains afforded me opportunities that others might consider obstacles. Life blesses some folks with silver spoons while others it simply blesses. I know that I belong in the latter category.

"The second of five children, I grew up where I was born-- in the tiny town of Young Harris, Georgia. As far as my memory will stretch, I recall that my parents always reinforced with my siblings and me a deep respect for hard work, persistence, and dedication. We balanced our summers working in the garden or water-sealing our driveway with exploring the surrounding woods and creeks. Any given day might find us decked out in makeshift 'jungle attire' which closely resembled my father’s safari hat and faded Muppet-Baby sheets, and armed with nothing more than a pair of trusty contraband scissors to ward off the perils of the forest. If the mountains of North Georgia could talk, they would tell tales of our imaginative exploits that paralleled the equally captivating adventures beamed to us from our analog satellite television receiver.

"In spite of our inherent rural ways, technology like the satellite dish, played a large role in our existence. My father owned a television production business that comprised a camera crew and equipment. I was almost thirteen when I began filling in for sick crew members, working as a sound technician and grip on location for such productions as Entertainment Tonight, 60 Minutes, and Dateline. These experiences exposed me to a world that even the most cosmopolitan person rarely encounters.

"For instance, how many other people can plead guilty to accidentally whacking Patrick Swayze in the head with a boom microphone? It did not take many production shoots with Hard Copy for me to learn that life encompasses a wide variety of people, all of whom have singularly interesting personal stories. I listened to the diversified complaints, questions, and afflictions that dominated the lives of these storytellers. These experiences opened my eyes to the burden that one ailment or worry can create. That knowledge gave direction to my life.

"From an early age I learned to appreciate the uniqueness of each individual. After learning to listen, I became interested in doing more than just lending an ear to these personal life stories-- I wanted to intervene. A profound respect and love for human life drives my desire to help improve the lives of those around me. What better role than 'family doc' enables a person to fulfill this aspiration? Not to mention, something tells me that I might consider staying away from any career choices that involve boom microphones.

"Thus, after twenty-odd years of stumbling through an amalgamation of turnip greens and UHF cables, I can honestly say that I was born to be a family doctor."

When Steve Dunleavy wrote about Tabloid Baby

"I normally would have sued
the son-of-a-gun
for what he wrote about me,
but I can't-- it's all doggone true."

When Tabloid Baby was published in November 1999, New York Post superstars Steve Dunleavy and Neal Travis hosted a launch party for the book at Elaine's restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Duneleavy also appeared at numerous events to promote the book in which he was featured controversially-- and wrote the following review of Tabloid Baby for The New York Post.

It was published on November 14th, 1999.

Thanks again, mate.

MY FONDEST 'AFFAIR': WHEN WE WERE TABLOID-TV KINGS
By STEVE DUNLEAVY

JOHNNY Lester had just gotten out of the slammer after 13 years for canceling the ticket of a guy who insulted his wife.

He wasn't a victim of nightmares in his cell, but he thought he was witnessing a miracle when Rafael Abromovitz appeared at the bar room door.

"My God," Johnny exclaimed. "That must have been some operation to get Raf back on his feet."

On the television show "A Current Affair," Raf was always pictured sitting down at a word processor in various parts of the country.

"All the guys in prison thought he was disabled. We all felt sorry for him because we didn't know he could walk."

Johnny was typical of the crowd that surrounded "A Current Affair." Con men, criminals, celebrities, politicians - all seemed to remain part of the show's extended family, even when we beat them up.

Burt Kearns, in his new book "Tabloid Baby," takes us on a delightful and raucous romp through that world.

It was a world that will never be seen again. The wildest bunch of pirates imaginable. I know because I was there.

In eloquent if sometimes brutal prose, Kearns, a senior producer on the show, unmasks all the usual suspects, which would guarantee that Tom Brokaw wouldn't let himself be buried in the same cemetery as any of us.

Kearns sums up the spin when he describes being offered a job at CBS:

"There was something about CBS that didn't smell right.

"Something cultish in the way employees saw themselves upholding a sacred tradition, carrying out some grand mission to spread the CBS orthodoxy."

Well, Dan Rather we weren't, but more like a brazen bunch of bandits who ambushed, conned, begged, borrowed, bought and charmed to grab that story.

"We'd taken television to a delirious and dangerous edge," Kearns writes.

In varying doses of scandal, celebrity, crime, politics and morality, the tabloid television tales riveted a nation for a decade and Kearns grabs it all in print.

Like stories of the exclusive video of Robert Chambers, the "Preppy Killer," secured by Abromovitz, which wiped the networks' clocks.

And the sex tapes of brat-packer Rob Lowe, which bewitched millions although Kearns admits to hijacking the tape.

But if the elite networks turned their noses up at the menu, then shrieks of silence followed when they saw the "A Current Affair" SWAT team in action when the Berlin Wall came down.

The team, led by Kearns, consisted in part of Maury Povich, a class act, the giant Gordon Elliott, and scrappy reporter David Miller.

When the Rathers, Jennings and Brokaws saw Gordon Elliott climb the wall and then start chipping away with a pick ax as the cameras rolled, the networks knew who was doing the driving.

Kearns actually admits to a borderline kidnapping of a German from New York and a forced reunion with a brother in East Germany, who hated his guts.

"We were the f-ing champions of the world," Kearns exults in the book.

At the helm of the hysterical high-tension hijinx was the gentle genius producer Peter Brennan and executive producer Ian Rae. They were ably aided and abetted by a marvelous maniac called Wayne Darwen. Also on board was Scotsman Dick McWilliams.

The news room resembled something out of a rerun of Hildy Johnson's "Front Page."

The air was blue with language, political incorrectness and cigarette smoke. And while there may not have been a whiskey bottle in the bottom drawer, there was plenty of the stuff at the bottom of the stairs and across the road at The Racing Club.

The title of the book, "Tabloid Baby," tells you how it all went full circle until Kearns goes respectable, marries beautiful British TV anchor Alison Holloway and has a lovely son called Sam. All wrapped up in Los Angeles suburbia.

Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine.

Of course, I normally would have sued the son-of-a-gun for what he wrote about me, but I can't - it's all doggone true.

Video: New York Post covers Dunleavy send-off

The New York Post
October 3, 2008

A NIGHT OF POMP-ADORE
SENDOFF FOR POST'S DUNLEAVY

By CLEMENTE LISI

Cheers, mate!

Some 400 friends and colleagues of legendary Post columnist Steve Dunleavy marked the retirement of the tabloid titan at a big bash in the Theater District - calling him a "man of the people" who'd do anything to score a scoop.

Dunleavy, famous for his oversized pompadour and trademark cigarette, called it quits following a 55-year career that included chronicling the famous and infamous while collecting big bar tabs and even bigger stories. "I'll miss you all," Dunleavy, 70, told the crowd packed inside Bourbon Street Bar and Grille on Wednesday night.

Those who honored Dunleavy included News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch, Post Editor-in-Chief Col Allan, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy and former "A Current Affair" host Maury Povich, accompanied by his wife, Connie Chung.

"Your dedication to your work, your inspiration to others and loyalty to the paper defies description," Murdoch said as Dunleavy and wife Gloria looked on. "It's exceptional. I've never seen anything like it my whole life."

A defender of cops and firefighters, the Australian-born scribe famously arrived in New York on New Year's Eve 1966 with 10 bucks in his pocket and joined The Post a decade later.

Although he covered presidents and dictators, Dunleavy made a name for himself as the defender of the little guy. In his columns, Dunleavy pulled no punches - lambasting liberals and sticking up for cops. "He's larger than life," Kelly said of Dunleavy. "Everyone in uniform loves him."

Dunleavy, who traded newsprint for TV in 1986 to work as a reporter for "A Current Affair," returned to The Post in 1995.

Cassidy, who presented Dunleavy with a fire helmet, said, "your success is related to the fact that you've never forgotten the common man."

clisi@nypost.com

Steve Dunleavy Tabloid Master Class Part 6: What can be learned from his infamous TV brawl with Michelle Cassone

Journalism legend and cultural icon Steve Dunleavy wrestled a bear on A Current Affair.

He also wrestled Michelle Cassone, who implicated Sen. Edward Kennedy in his nephew Willie's 1991 rape case in Palm Beach, Florida.

Steve talks about the story behind fracas above.

(From the Tabloid Baby-Frozen Pictures production: Steve Dunleavy: The Man and His Music.)

Steve Dunleavy Tabloid Master Class Part 5

On the occasion of his retirement, journalism legend and cultural icon Steve Dunleavy will be feted by Rupert Murdoch, friends, colleagues, admirers and competitors at a party in Manhattan this evening.

In celebration of his influential career, we continue with Steve Dunleavy's master class on tabloid journalism.

This morning's lecture is entitled:

"All's Fair in Love, War & Newsgathering."

More to follow. Stay tuned here.

(From the Tabloid Baby-Frozen Pictures production: Steve Dunleavy: The Man and His Music.)

Sydney's Daily Telegraph honors Steve Dunleavy

The Daily Telegraph

Steve Dunleavy,
hard-nosed legend
with ink in his veins

By Piers Akerman
September 30, 2008 12:00am

LATER this week a special edition of The New York Post will mark the retirement of the last of the great journalists of the pre-electronic era - the Australian Steve Dunleavy.

Dunleavy, or as he occasionally introduced himself, Steven Patrick Francis Aloysius Dunleavy, is that rare thing in these times of five-second celebrities, a genuine legend.

To put his 70-year-life and 55-year career into some perspective, Dunleavy's name was known from Hong Kong to Halifax, Melbourne to Miami, in a period pre-dated computers and fax machines and the now ubiquitous mobile phone.

When he began as a cadet on the old Sydney Sun, many homes didn't even have a telephone, and calls were made from coin-operated telephones found in quaint weatherproof boxes generally located on street corners.

Interstate telephone calls had to be booked in advance from operators who worked for the Postmaster-General's department in each capital and newspapers relied on banks of telex machines for their national and international news stories.

Reporters didn't go to Google looking for stories, or to idiot-traps like Wikipedia for their "facts".

Newsrooms were packed with experienced professionals who had learnt their craft after progressing through a series of rounds designed to instil in them a love of words and a reverence for truth.

The sub-editors' desk was a repository of collective memory and institutional wisdom, experts could be found there on almost every topic, and most were willing to take likely beginners through their stories, word by word, paragraph by paragraph to help them get it right.

Good editors knew what a story was, knew how to campaign, and didn't need to sit behind one-way glass listening to focus groups fantasise about visions and perfect worlds.

There were no media studies degrees and no courses in journalism in Australia, and when they did emerge, they were largely staffed by those who hadn't been able to make it in a professional news organisation.

If anyone did appear with a qualification in journalism, it was assumed they had not made their name on the road.

There was probably the same ratio of misfits and malcontents attracted to the media as there is today, and the bars near newsrooms had their share of psychologically damaged souls who had never heard of stress counselling. Alcohol and mateship carried those who had seen scenes they would never wish upon anyone through their torment.

In this world of clattering typewriters, ringing telephones, and cigarette-etched desks, Dunleavy was king.

He had a nose (quite a feature of his handsome face, actually) for a story. He had charm and personality to spare.

If he could get through on a telephone, he had the story half-written, if he could get his foot in a door and speak face-to-face with his subject, the story was on its way to the presses.

While some reporters began their day with a prayer which started: "Lord, forgive us our press passes", Dunleavy's began with cold beer.

He would pounce on a telephone as soon as it rang, in case there was someone with a story to tell. He was a great listener, and a great charmer, and the stories of his extraordinary success with women are all true.

He did have his ankle broken by a passing mini-van when he was making love on a drift of snow formed between some parked cars (he spread his coat on the snow as a blanket for his friend) across from Elaine's nightclub during a New York blizzard, and such was his devotion to the moment that he didn't realise what had happened till he was dancing later that evening.

He did romance one of Ted Kennedy's "boiler-room" girls to get the inside story on the events that led to Mary Jo Kopechne's tragic death in Ted Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick in 1969, and his then-wife, Yvonne, did co-author The Happy Hooker with Dutch madam Xaviera Hollander.


While he graduated from the university of hard knocks, he knew his way around enough to guide me on my first visit to Harvard more than 30 years ago. That we were en route to the maximum security Walpole prison to visit the Boston Strangler, Albert de Salvo (above), is another story.

He later wrote a weekly column, This I Believe, which ushered in the Reagan era and the restoration of American pride, and he became a star of a tabloid television show produced by another old Sydney reporter, Peter Brennan.

He stood up for cops and firemen and servicemen and women, and he wrote of his pride and tears when his own son, US Army Captain Peter Dunleavy, went to Iraq in 2004.

Tomorrow night, Australia's global media giant Rupert Murdoch, the editor-in-chief of the NY Post, Col Allan, and a galaxy of media greats will stand up for Steve as he turns in his NYPD press card.

Big drinks will be taken, even bigger stories will be told, and the final paragraph will be written on the reporting days of a man who fiercely burnt the candle at both ends and in the middle, living the life he loved.

Steve Dunleavy Tabloid Master Class Part 4

We continue our special presentation of journalism legend and cultural icon Steve Dunleavy's master class on tabloid journalism.

This morning's lesson:

Aussie rhyming slang.

Steve's being feted by Rupert Murdoch at a retirement party tomorrow night.

This is the place where we're cutting through the jealousies and politics show why Dunleavy is so influential. And so good.

More lessons to follow. Stay tuned here.

(From the Tabloid Baby-Frozen Pictures production: Steve Dunleavy: The Man and His Music).

Steve Dunleavy Tabloid Master Class Part 3

Journalism legend and cultural icon Steve Dunleavy talks about objectivity in this special master class on tabloid journalism.

Rupert Murdoch and The New York Post are throwing Dunleavy a retirement party on Wednesday.

More lessons to follow. Stay tuned here.

(From the Tabloid Baby-Frozen Pictures production: Steve Dunleavy: The Man and His Music).

Steve Dunleavy Tabloid Master Class Part 2

Journalism legend and cultural icon Steve Dunleavy continues his master class on tabloid journalism with his thoughts on the elements of a good story.

More lessons to follow.

Stay tuned here.

(From the Tabloid Baby-Frozen Pictures production: Steve Dunleavy: The Man and His Music).

Steve Dunleavy Tabloid Master Class Part 1

They're throwing Steve Dunleavy a retirement party in a saloon on West 46th Street Wednesday night. Time to cut through all the spinners-- the snarky gawkerstalkers, hoity-toit print libs and twenty five-dollar-haircuts-on-twenty-five-cent heads who read the network Teleprompters-- and understand why the man who wrote Elvis What Happened? is so beloved, so important and so influential.

Heck, most of you only know Paul Newman from the supermarket shelves.

So begins a master class in tabloid journalism from the master.

More lessons to follow.

Stay tuned here.

(From the Tabloid Baby-Frozen Pictures production: Steve Dunleavy: The Man and His Music).

The New York Times praises Steve Dunleavy

In tomorrow's (Monday's) paper:

A 'Tabloid Guy' Calls It a Night
After 41 Year With Murdoch

By TIM ARANGO

Published: September 28, 2008

There are so many stories about the life and times of Steve Dunleavy, the longtime New York Post columnist and even longer-time Rupert Murdoch acolyte, that some, inevitably, have evolved over the years.

Many of the tales involve copious amounts of alcohol. But not this one. It goes like this: As a young copyboy in Australia 55 years ago, Mr. Dunleavy was so hungry for a story that he popped the tires of his father’s car at a murder scene. His father, a photographer at a rival paper, could not get to the post office to transmit photos, and Mr. Dunleavy, then about 15 years old, earned his paper a big scoop.

That is how Mr. Murdoch remembers it.

Mr. Dunleavy tells a different version. Yes, he punctured the tires of a car, but it was owned by his father’s newspaper and he did not know his dad was there. And it was not a murder but the story of a group of missing hikers.

“That story gets told and told, and each time it gets a little bit more whiskers on it,” Mr. Dunleavy said.

After 55 years in journalism — 41 of them spent working for Mr. Murdoch — Mr. Dunleavy is seeing the curtain come down on his career. He has been an unabashed friend to police officers, firefighters, civil servants and the occasional mobster and the scourge of polite society and liberals.

In his heyday, Mr. Dunleavy was the personification of Mr. Murdoch’s brand of tabloid journalism, both in print and, for 10 years beginning in the mid-1980s, on television. He was an on-air reporter for “A Current Affair,” a news magazine whose sensationalized mix of crime and celebrity inspired a lot of what is on television today, like TMZ.com, Court TV and Fox News Channel.

“Steve was very much involved in educating America about the joys and pleasures of tabloid journalism,” said Col Allan, editor in chief of The New York Post. “In many ways, Steve has represented the News Corp. culture — that is, hard work, hard play, laughing.”

Mr. Dunleavy also tweaked the political landscape of the city, proving that populism in New York City could come from the right and not just from the cadre of well-known left-leaning columnists of the time, men like Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, Murray Kempton and Jack Newfield.

“Politically, the notion that there could be a populist, right-wing columnist in New York seemed almost inconceivable at the time, but that’s exactly what he was,” said Jonathan Mahler, author of “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning,” a chronicle of New York City’s turbulent times in 1977, and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine. “All of the iconic New York columnists were liberal, and Dunleavy was like the party crasher.”

There were times when his political instincts seemed to lead him astray, such as his championing of Wayne DuMond, who had been convicted in Arkansas of raping a distant cousin of former President Bill Clinton, who was governor of Arkansas at the time of the rape.

Mr. Dunleavy wrote a series of columns defending Mr. DuMond, who was eventually paroled, only to be convicted of murder in Missouri. And of course, Mr. Dunleavy has steadfastly refused to accept any criticism of the police — perhaps most notably by supporting the officers who were convicted in the case of Abner Louima, who was assaulted in the bathroom of a Brooklyn precinct in 1997.

But Mr. Murdoch has always liked party crashers, being one himself. Long before the News Corporation, his media conglomerate, conquered the world with cable news, movies and satellite television, it was an Australian newspaper company looking for a toehold in the United States. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Dunleavy was working in New York for United Press International, the wire service, which had its office in a building that also housed the foreign correspondents for Mr. Murdoch’s newspapers. It was there that Mr. Dunleavy met Mr. Murdoch, whom he now refers to simply as “the boss.”

In a nearly three-hour chat last week at Mr. Dunleavy’s home in Long Island, where he lives with his wife of 37 years, Gloria — hours in which he drank just two cans of Budweiser — he was uncharacteristically contemplative, melancholy even, but funny all the same.

He is in frail health, he says, because of back problems, which prevent him from moving around easily — although he insisted on fetching his second beer himself. Mr. Dunleavy and his wife have two sons, one a police officer, the other a soldier who has served in Iraq.

“I always had dreams of dying at the desk,” he said. “It’s frustrating not doing what I love best, and serving, I know it sounds corny, the one who I admire the most. Murdoch. The boss.”

It is a relationship that has spanned more than four decades, one that put Mr. Dunleavy, now 70, at Mr. Murdoch’s side as he popularized tabloid journalism.

“He was livelier than Solomon, and he was always the most entertaining reporter,” Mr. Murdoch recalled in a telephone interview last week.

Of Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Dunleavy says, “even though he’s done so well in TV and movies, I think if you asked him, he’d say he’s first a newspaperman.”

After working for several years as a correspondent in New York for Mr. Murdoch’s Australian and British papers, Mr. Dunleavy was tapped for a Murdoch start-up business in New York, The Star, a supermarket tabloid to compete with The National Enquirer. In 1976, Mr. Murdoch bought The New York Post, which was then a liberal newspaper.

“Murdoch took it over and Murdoch-ized it,” said Mr. Mahler. “And Dunleavy was at the center of it.”

In 1977, Mr. Dunleavy’s reporting on the infamous Son of Sam serial murder case reinvigorated The Post. Before Mr. Dunleavy hopped on the story, The Post had basically conceded it to The Daily News’s Jimmy Breslin.

“They kept spiking his copy,” said Mr. Murdoch, “while Breslin was leading every day. It was just killing The Post and killing Dunleavy. So I made a change because of that.” Mr. Murdoch brought in new editors, and Mr. Dunleavy began earning his own scoops — in one instance by sneaking into a hospital, dressed in clothes that looked like hospital scrubs, to interview a victim’s family.

“Steve is one of the three people in America who loves Rupert Murdoch,” said Mr. Breslin. “In a time of listless reporting, he climbed stairs. And he wrote simple declarative sentences that people could read, as opposed to these 52-word gems that moan, ‘I went to college! I went to graduate school college! Where do I put the period?’ ”

Mr. Hamill used to drink with Mr. Dunleavy at Costello’s, an old Manhattan saloon favored by reporters.

“He always had this energy,” Mr. Hamill said. “I always thought he was writing his columns like he was double-parked. He was a tabloid guy in every fiber of his body. If it didn’t have conflict, he didn’t want to write it.”

In 1988, the federal government forced Mr. Murdoch to sell The Post because he had bought a television station in New York, WNYW-Channel 5 (five years later, he reacquired the newspaper out of bankruptcy). It was around this time that Mr. Dunleavy’s television career was born on “A Current Affair.”

Recently, invitations went out to a slew of New York city journalists, police officers, lawyers, firefighters — and who knows who else — inviting them to a party given by Mr. Murdoch this week to celebrate Mr. Dunleavy’s retirement. Note that the party is not being held at Langan’s, the Midtown Manhattan bar around the corner from The New York Post’s newsroom that for years served as Mr. Dunleavy’s office.

He had a routine, normally arriving at Langan’s around lunchtime for a day of reporting. “You’d always know if he was hung over from the night before because he would have a cold beer right away,” said Des O’Brien, the owner of Langan’s. “He’d work the phone all day and various people would come in and out. He’d put in a full workday.”

If Mr. Dunleavy seems like a character out of a movie — the gruff, hard-drinking troublemaking journalist — that is because he is. Robert Downey Jr.’s role as an Australian TV reporter in Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” is said to have been based on Mr. Dunleavy. He was also a character in “The Bronx Is Burning,” which was made into a mini-series on ESPN.

“When I first came around, there was some very good newspapermen in New York,” Mr. Dunleavy said. “But increasingly, they started leaning on this Columbia School of Journalism thing. That you wanted your mom to be proud. That it was a profession.

“Journalism is a craft, like being a master plumber. We wore white collars, but we were blue collar.”

This generational clash became evident to Mr. Dunleavy years ago when he was on the campaign plane for Robert Dole, the former senator who ran for president in 1996, and saw younger reporters heading off to health clubs at the end of the day.

“As soon as we’d stop, we’d go have a gargle,” he says. “I think the younger generation is far better served going to the gym rather than the gin mill. No question about it. But we learned from our elders.”

Mr. Dunleavy gets to Manhattan infrequently nowadays, usually only when he has to see doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital, leaving voids at Langan’s, The Post’s newsroom and Elaine’s, the Upper East Side restaurant that was Mr. Dunleavy’s other favorite nightspot.

One night last week at Elaine’s, Elaine Kaufman, the proprietor, recounted the time that Mr. Dunleavy left the bar with a woman during a snowstorm and was hit by a truck. “He didn’t want to go the hospital,” recalled Ms. Kaufman. “And then there he was on the gurney.”

Mr. Dunleavy has not written much lately — he has been in a sort of unofficial retirement while he tends to his health. If he never writes again, his last byline was a tribute to his friend Tim Russert, the late NBC newsman.

“I laugh easily and loudly, but like so many of us, sometimes not sincerely,” Mr. Dunleavy wrote in June. “But with Tim, you responded with more than just a belly laugh — you’d end up in hysterics with tears streaming down your face.”

Probably more than a few can say the same about Mr. Dunleavy. “He’s a legend in his time,” said Mr. Murdoch.

Exclusive! Steve Dunleavy: A Man and His Music

Anyone who's read the book Tabloid Baby knows that Steve Dunleavy is the greatest and most influential journalist of the past fifty years. And for all the mainstream, highfalutin, latte-sipping scribes and network newscopiers who publicly look down their noses at him, there are hundreds of reporters, writers, editors, producers, newsreaders and execs who were lucky enough to learn at his fancy feet.

This is the first in a series of exclusive clips from the Tabloid Baby-Frozen Pictures production, Steve Dunleavy: The Man and His Music.

A Steve Dunleavy sighting!

With his long absence from the pages of The New York Post, Jim Brady's interview that read like one of those New York Times video obituaries where people get to talk from beyond the grave, and what we've been hearing secondhand, we were getting a bit worried that tabloid legend, superstar and damn good guy Steve Dunleavy would soon be knocking back vodkas with Elvis.

So it was heartening to receive this email this morning from a mutual friend:

"I just ran into Steve Dunleavy on the street. He was impeccably dressed in a dark blue suit, crisp white shirt and a power tie. Aside from the cane he looked great (after all those things I'd read about his ill health)."

We'll drink to that!

Barry Nolan's O'Reilly attack gets new attention

With the story picked up a week after it broke by the influential Wonkette political media site, it looks as though former tabloid television host Barry Nolan has gone and changed his obit with his campaign to deny former Inside Edition host and current tabloid television superstar Bill O'Reilly a special Emmy in Boston-- the TV market O'Reilly left behind and to which Barry returned after the TMZ-centric tabloid television business swept him aside.

Today, Wonkette posts:

'Mental Case' Bill O'Reilly Urged Not To Attend Boston Emmys

A Boston area cable news host thinks Bill O'Reilly is such a dangerous "mental case" that he should not be the guest of honor at the Boston/New England Emmys. This brave crusader even offers up evidence that O'Reilly's crazy loofah rants are signs of an actual personality disorder or something.

CN8 personality Barry Nolan got ahold of an Indiana University study that offers incontrovertible truth that Bill O'Reilly is a frightful asshole. According to this scientific report, O'Reilly "calls a person or group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds on average," which proves he is a mental case.

For this reason, O'Reilly should be run out of town on the short bus instead of being honored at this swank local television affair. But awards organizers disagree, arguing that O'Reilly's nuttiness and douchebaggery pale in comparison to the wonderful fact that he worked in Boston once.

Wonkette not only failed to recognize Barry as a former tabloid television star (and member of Mensa), but left out the most amusing part of his ill-advised name-calling campaign-- his promise to bring actual mental case (and O'Reilly aura leech) Keith Olbermann to the awards show as his "date."

Meanwhile, the attention-grab has led Barry, who is now a panelist on a radio quiz show and apparently the host of a local cable TV entertainment show (a New England version of Dr. Ruehl?), to be ridiculed as an out-of-touch liberal pinhead and opponent of Free Speech-- an image problem compounded, after our initial report, by his decision to attack our editor, Tabloid Baby author Burt Kearns, as a drama queen and liar-- and accuse him of being sober.

It also triggered an immediate backlash from New Englanders, the media in general, and most embarrassingly, a former chancellor of Boston University, who said O'Reilly was not only deserving of the award but "a remarkably evenhanded journalist... a credit to our school and a worthy mentor to students."

But with the continuing interest in the story, and its slow build across the Internet, there's clear that Barry may one day be remembered less as a former host of Hard Copy than as a footnote in a future edition of an O'Reilly biography

Exclusive. Barry Nolan goes berserk; attacks readers, attorney & memory of character actor David Dukes; claims to own Truth; misses point

Former tabloid television host Barry Nolan has come out of the woodwork kicking and screaming as he takes on Tabloid Baby readers mano-a-mano in an attempt to explain his headline-grabbing stunt aimed at denying former tabloid television host and current cable news titan Billy O’Reilly a local Emmy.

The actor and radio quiz show panelist made national headlines Friday when he used a gossip column in a Boston tabloid newspaper to launch a vicious personal attack against O’Reilly, who’s set to receive a local Emmy honor for rising so far above his roots as a local TV newsman.

Barry, was quoted as being “appalled, just appalled” that the locals would honor “a mental case,” and said he would make a statement by bringing O’Reilly’s comic foil Keith Olbermann to the ceremony as his "date."

After we suggested that Barry should “get a grip” (after all, local Emmys aren’t exactly hometown Nobel Peace Prizes-- they’re self-promoting sops divvied up among the competitors each year-- even Tabloid Baby author Burt Kearns has a NYC news Emmy honor in a box somewhere), and that despite our animus toward O’Reilly (see Marvin Kitman’s O’Reilly bio, The Man Who Would Not Shut Up), Barry's use of Olbermann, an actual mental case, as his punchline, blew the joke, Barry attacked Burt!

He called his former producer a liar, and, what’s worse, actually accused him of “getting sober”!

Now Barry is taking on our readers, and again he appears to be missing the point, continuing to insist that he doesn’t want to give Olbermann an award, even though no one-- not us, not a reader— has suggested he did!

Barry vs. “Tom”: “Grab your ankles”
Last night, Barry got a bit condescending with a thoughtful reader:

Tom said...Barry, what does bringing Olby to the event prove? Sure, he'll be pissed, but you're a grown man, and by all accounts so is Olby.

And please explain how and why you believe the left wing media reports the truth, where as the right wing media does not.

Do you really think the schlock that comes from that former sportscaster who lies on a regular basis, smears those that dare disagree with him, never deviates from his regular guest list cause he can't stand to have people on his show who don't preach to his choir, and throws softballs to Dems and doesn't have the balls to go toe to toe with anyone is legitimate journalism???

You're a legitimate journalist right? And you believe Olby to be the same?

Hey, at least you'll never be WPITW, along with Bin Laden.

Barry responded:
I will type it again slowly so maybe you can read it: I do not suggest that Olberman is worthy of an award - or is an example of someone NATAS should give a award to. Nor is O'Reilly. It is an award that is meant to recognize high standards - and both personal and professional integrity. I grew up in the 60's. If you thought something morally wrong was being perpetrated - you protested (bringing Olberman ((sic))) you didn't just bend over and grab your ankles and say "yes sir may I have another".

What O'Reilly calls the "left wing" media - what other people call the news - gets things factually correct - whereas Falafel Boy is challenged that way. Read (this) for instance, summed up in Wikipedia thusly:

A poll conducted between June and September of 2003 asked people whether they thought WMD had been discovered in Iraq since the war ended. They were also asked which media sources they relied upon. Those who obtained their news primarily from Fox News were three times as likely to believe that evidence confirming WMD had been discovered in Iraq than those who relied on PBS and NPR for their news, and one third more likely than those who primarily watched CBS.

Spend 10 minutes on Google - there are abundant examples of O'Reilly getting it wrong while insisting he is right, bullying, bloviating, threatening. The wrong guy to give an award to unless perhaps you are David Dukes.*

*We’ll give Barry a break on that last point, and assume he got the name wrong,” and actually means “David Duke,” the former Ku Klux Klan wizard. David Dukes is the late character actor.

David Dukes, late actor; David Duke, racist

Barry vs. The “O’Reilly fanboys”

This morning, Barry twice responded to a group of commenters, one of whom who suggested that he is a “pompous ---hole” and a “motherf-cker” who should be sued because of what he wrote about us.

Barry said...
In chapter 3 of his book “Kids Are Americans Too,” Fox News host Bill O’Reilly wrote that “the Constitution guarantees all of us, in a famous phrase, ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’” On the Jan. 2 edition of his show, O’Reilly read a letter from Courtney Yong, a young girl from San Francisco, who pointed out that the “famous phrase” actually came from the Declaration of Independence, rather than the Constitution. Despite clearly having made an error in his book, O’Reilly refused to admit that he made any mistake.
Then Barry said...
To give himself a semblance of credibility, he repeatedly claimed he won a Peabody Award. The fact is, he did not. His old show, Inside Edition, won the much less prestigious Polk Award – after O’Reilly left the show.

Just of late, he has wrongly claimed that US soldiers massacred Nazi soldiers after the battle of Malmedy. When in fact it was the Nazi who massacred our GI’s.

O’Reilly had to settle the sexual harassment suit against him for an estimated $10 million. And need I remind you that the priggish moralist was the married father of two at the time of his great Falafel exploits.

So is this the caliber of man that you and your fawning O’Reilly Fanboys would give an award? The man you would set as an example for your children to follow? And you suggest that I should get a grip? Perhaps you should nurture in yourself some regard for facts, truth and decency. And as for the dipstick lawyer who wrote in suggesting you have been libeled? Bring it on. The truth will be an adequate defense.

Don’t worry, Barry, were not going to sue you. Sticks and stones and all that. We’re tabloid. We welcome and encourage the free exchange of ideas from everyone.

But we do gather from your comments that after your return to Boston from Hollywood, marriage to a documentarian and college professor (mazel tov), move to public radio, the flaunting of the Mensa membership card and use of words like “thusly,” that you’ve become something of an elitist and are somewhat ashamed of your own tabloid past (Editor’s note: Barry’s lasting contribution to the genre is the Hard Copy-derived Paramount VHS docudrama alleging that Marilyn Monroe died from a suppository force-rammed up her butt— and yes, Barry read Burt’s words on that one). And you’re falling into O'Reilly's trap of applying the tactics he attributes to pointy-headed liberals, in effect becoming hoist by your own noisy petard by using personal attacks against those who disagree with you ("Got sober"??).

The bottom line is, if you'll read more slowly, you'll see that most of us don’t disagree with you about O’Reilly. We just view him as an entertainer, like you are. We give “the public” more credit than you do. And by standing on your soapbox, throwing around weighted words like “truth” and silly phrases like “I’m appalled,” “I grew up in the 60s,” and “Perhaps you should nurture in yourself some regard for facts, truth and decency,” (sheesh...) well, we think you’re taking the local news Emmys, and yourself, a tad too seriously and that you need to get a grip.

Barry Nolan responds to Tabloid Baby re: O'Reilly

Yesterday we suggested that former tabloid television host Barry Nolan's campaign to deny a Boston Emmy honor to tabloid television host Bill O'Reilly was unfair, and that his description of O'Reilly as a "mental case" was misguided, especially in light of Barry's praise of actual mental case Keith Olbermann.

Barry must have Googled himself, for he responds this morning:

Dear Burt;

While you always had quite a flair for the dramatic, you never had much regard for the truth.

The issue for me with NATAS is simply what it says to students and journalists everywhere - when you give an award to someone like O'Reilly who mangles the truth on a daily basis. You and your pals would tell them; lie, bully people, conflate the facts, call people names like "wetbacks" on TV, sexually harrass your staff, and maybe one day you too will be honored. I do not suggest that they give an award of any kind to Olberman (sic).

Apparently you can't be bothered to read anything carefully. Maybe that is why you, like O'Reilly make half your crap up.

Glad to hear you finally got sober.

Barry Nolan

Hey! Who said Burt got sober? (And open Tabloid Baby to page 348 -- Chapter 28, "Where's The Bag, Mr. Kardashian?"-- to find out what happened to Barry the last time he played the "drinking card" against his mentors.)

And by the way, what did we get wrong? Here's the original article:

BOSTONHERALD.COM
Inside Track

Barry Nolan pleads: Give Bill the boot!

By Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa
Friday, April 11, 2008

CN8’s Barry Nolan says Fox News bigfoot Bill O’Reilly is “a mental case,” and Nolan’s crazy mad that the local Emmy Awards will honor Mr. No Spin Zone at their 31st annual back-slapfest next month.

“I am appalled, just appalled,” Nolan told the Track. “He inflates and constantly mangles the truth . . . and his frequent target is the ‘left-leaning’ media - the ones who do report the news fairly. And those are the same people who will be sitting in the room honoring him.”

Nolan, citing an Indiana University study that claims O’Reilly - a former Channel 7 anchor - calls a person or group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds on average, has been busy ringing up local TV types to get their support for his “Rescind O’Reilly” effort. He claims former WBZ anchor Liz Walker is on board.

“I hope people will express their displeasure to the board of governors and they’ll rescind their decision,” he said. “It’s morally unacceptable.”

That’s not happening, said Boston/New England Emmy Awards cheese Tim Egan.

The local awards gurus think O’Reilly’s career is something to be celebrated since he came from the Boston market then made a name for himself nationally with “Inside Edition” and the FOX News Channel.

“You may not agree with him, but you can’t say he hasn’t increased the political conversation in this country with his style of broadcasting,” Egan said.

But Nolan insists that O’Reilly is “a mental case” who shouldn’t be held up as an example of journalistic integrity to budding TV journos from Boston University and Emerson College.

“This is who you should aspire to be like? Is this what we’re telling them?” he fumed.

Despite his reservations about his fellow Boston TV veteran, Nolan claims he will go to the May 10 shindig at the Marriott Copley Place to support his CN8 comrades. But since his wife will be out of town, Barry has invited O’Reilly’s nemesis, MSNBC yakker Keith Olbermann, as his date.

Oh, this should be good!

The pair of cable channel blowhards have been sparring since 2003, when Keith fired the first salvo by comparing O’Reilly to Sen. Joe McCarthy.

We called Bill O’Reilly’s office for comment. But he was unavailable to rant.

Be sure to catch Barry Nolan on National Public Radio's witty and entertaining "Says You" (like, Barry, a show of "words and whimsy, bluff and bluster")-- which is one of our favorite radio shows.

Barry Nolan needs to get a grip

So Barry Nolan, the former host of Hard Copy, has popped up to bluster that it's "morally unacceptable" for Bill O'Reilly, the former host of Inside Edition, to get a local Emmy honor because he's a "mental case" and a bad example to budding TV journalists.

"I'm appalled, just appalled," Nolan tells tells The Boston Herald. "He inflates and constantly mangles the truth... and his frequent target is the ‘left-leaning’ media-- the ones who do report the news fairly. And those are the same people who will be sitting in the room honoring him.”

Barry, who's now settled in Boston where he performs on a word quiz show carried on National Public Radio, was always an amiable if a bit pompous chap who'd brag that he was a Mensa member and was elevated to the Hard Copy gig because his solid looks and acting experience allowed him to inhabit the "anchor role." But he never really "got it" when it came to tabloid, and his O'Reilly campaign shows that he still doesn't "get it."

Barry's lack of a clue is revealed not only in his claim that the "left-leaning media... do report the news fairly." In what's probably meant as a witty Bostonian coup de grâce, he really blows it when he says he'll not only attend the local Emmy bash next month, but is inviting O'Reilly's TV nemesis Keith Olbermann as his date.

As everyone in the industry knows, Olbermann, who was a Brylcreemed local sportscaster while Nolan and O'Reilly sold the tabloid revolution, is a bonafide mental case.

We could write a book about the post-tabloid career of the producers, reporters and hosts of the past television era (and, in fact, we sort of did), because most of the ones who soldiered the revolution slipped quietly into a new landscape that was irrevocably changed by their unheralded work. O'Reilly is one of the few prominent tabloid television veterans to go on to even greater prominence. So whether you like the guy's TV persona, or agree with his politics (and we have our issues with O'Reilly), you've got to hand it to him.

"Appalled? Just appalled? Morally unacceptable?" Sheesh. Barry. What are you, some former writer for the LA Times or something?