Mike Barnicle

Michael Barnicle (born October 15, 1943 in Worcester, Massachusetts^[1]) is an award-winning American print and broadcast journalist as well as a social and political commentator. He is a frequent contributor and occasional guest host on MSNBC's Morning Joe and Hardball with Chris Matthews and is frequently seen on NBC's Today Show with news/feature segments. He has been a regular contributor to the country's longest-running, award-winning local television news magazine, "Chronicle" on WCVB-TV, since 1986. Barnicle has also appeared on the PBS NewsHour, CBS's 60 Minutes, ESPN, and HBO sports programming.

The Massachusetts native has written more than 4,000 columns collectively for the New York Daily News (1999–2005), Boston Herald (2004–present) and The Boston Globe, where he rose to prominence with his biting, satirical, and at times heart-wrenching columns that closely followed the triumphs, travails, and ambitions of Boston's working and middle classes. He also has written articles and commentary for Time magazine, Newsweek, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, ESPN Magazine, and Esquire, among others.

[edit] Early career

Barnicle graduated from Boston University in 1965 and began working for Robert F. Kennedy. He was a speechwriter for John Tunney, Edmund Muskie, and Sargent Shriver. Barnicle appeared in the Robert Redford film The Candidate. Barnicle then was asked to write a column in the Boston Globe, which ran for 24 years between 1974 and 1998.

The paper and its columnist won praise with their coverage of the political and social upheaval that roiled Boston after the city instituted a mandatory, court-ordered school desegregation plan in the mid 1970s. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (1986), J. Anthony Lukas wrote that Barnicle gave voice to the Boston residents who had been angered by the policy. Lukas singled out Barnicle's column ("Busing Puts Burden on Working Class, Black and White" published in The Boston Globe, October 15, 1974) and interview with Harvard psychiatrist and author Robert Coles as one of the defining moments in the coverage. The paper earned the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for public service.

Over the next three decades, Barnicle became a dominant voice in New England. His columns mixed pointed criticism of government and bureaucratic failure with personal stories that exemplified people's everyday struggles to make a living and raise a family. Tapping into a rich knowledge of local and national politics, Barnicle had unique takes on the ups and downs of luminaries such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. John Kerry, and longtime Congressional Speaker of the House Thomas Tip O'Neill as well as Boston mayors Kevin White, Ray Flynn, and Tom Menino. In subsequent years, Barnicle's coverage expanded as he reported from Northern Ireland on the conflict and resolution there to the beaches of Normandy, from where he wrote about the commemorations of World War II veterans.

Barnicle has won local and national awards for both his print and broadcast work over the last three decades, including from the Associated Press, United Press International, National Headliners, and duPont-Columbia University. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Massachusetts and Colby College.

[edit] Boston Globe Controversy

In 1998, Barnicle resigned from the Boston Globe amid allegations of fabrication and plagiarism, respectively, in two of his columns. The first column, from October 8, 1995, recounted the story of two sets of parents with cancer-stricken children. When one of the boys, a black child, died, the parents of the other boy, a white child who had begun to recover, sent the dead child's parents a check for $10,000. When the Globe could not locate the people in the story, who had not been publicly identified, Barnicle insisted nonetheless that the story was true. He said he did not obtain the story from the parents but from a nurse, whom he declined to identify. Walter V. Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor then in charge of the Globe's "Spotlight" investigative team, was unable to match a recorded death with the date of death claimed for the child.^[2]

The second column, more than 80 lines of humorous observations dated August 2, 1998, contained observations from the 1997 book Brain Droppings by George Carlin.^[3] After Barnicle said he had never read the book, the editor of the Globe issued a temporary suspension. However, after WCVB-TV subsequently aired a video clip of Barnicle recommending the book to viewers, the editor called for his resignation; this was rescinded under fire from readers and the suspension period doubled instead.^[2]

Barnicle has also been criticized for his tone in columns about Boston area mobster Whitey Bulger and for his friendship with Whitey's brother Billy Bulger.^[4]

[edit] 1998–present

Soon afterward, the New York Daily News and the Boston Herald recruited Barnicle to write for them.^[5] Barnicle told reporters that he had nothing but "fond feelings for 25 years at the Globe."^[5] Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy served as a regular commentator and guest host on Barnicle’s daily radio program on WTKK.^[6] Until recently^[when?], Barnicle was on the radio three times a week with Barnicle's View on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 6:55am and 8:55am [1].

Barnicle has since become a staple on MSNBC, including on Morning Joe and Hardball with Chris Matthews as well as on specials on breaking news topics.

Mike Barnicle was interviewed in Ken Burns's film Baseball in the Tenth Inning movie, where he mostly commented on the 2003-2004 Boston Red Sox.

[edit] See also

• The official Mike Barnicle website
• Alan Dershowitz: Controversies: Mike Barnicle
• Kennedy, Dan (August 20, 1998). "Barnicle's Game: Why he should have been fired — and why he wasn't". Boston Phoenix. http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/98/08/13/MIKE_BARNICLE.html. Retrieved June 6, 2010. 

[edit] Notes and references