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Degree and Year: BJ '52 Title: Freelance Writer and Critic City and State: St. Louis, Mo. What do you do? I am a retired newspaperman now free-lancing. I write, accepting or declining assignments from editors. I also am the theater and film critic for the local NPR station and I write about restaurants for a local Web site, saucecafe.com and for its related monthly publication, Sauce Magazine. How did you get your job? The Post-Dispatch came to me in 1972, offering me the post of film and theater critic. I retired in 1995. Best professional lesson learned at the J-School? Keep writing. Write brightly and briefly. Try to emulate A. J. Liebling, who said, "I can write faster than anyone who can write better, and I can write better than anyone who can write faster." What do you consider to be your greatest professional achievement? A desire, and an ability, to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted. What makes you good at your job? The ability to write well, being knowledgeable about the subject matter, knowing how to compose grammatical, readable sentences, using words that are spelled correctly and have the meaning I want them to have, adequately defending my points of view, and having a historical perspective on what I do and why I do it. What did you want to be as a kid? A professional baseball player, and when I learned I could not hit the curve, I decided I wanted to become a sports writer -- and I did. What is one thing you wished you had done? Been a regular baseball beat writer. 
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| Revised: 20 April 2007. Copyright © 2008 The Curators of the University of Missouri | Contact the J-School | |
