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Title: Newswalker - A Story for Sweeney
Author: R. Thomas Collins
ISBN: 192892803X
Description:
In his memoir about life on a big city newspaper, NewsWalker - A Story for Sweeney, former reporter Tommy Collins explores his experiences at the New York Daily News, America’s first and best tabloid, in the days before 24 hour cable news and when a reporter’s tools still were a notepad, pen, manual typewriters and dial phones that worked on dimes. Working in Queens and Manhattan, Collins covered New Yorkers caught up in day to day tumult as well as the most notorious events between 1974-79 - Son of Sam, the Crash of Flight 66, the LaGuardia bombing, Blackout, Sultans of Smut, poverty barons, Midtown corruption, the Mob, and even the mystery behind the death of JFK - all the while writing on deadline for the biggest urban daily in the country. Collins told stories according to the tribal loyalties of New York City’s neighborhoods and discovered that in the end his abilities were not much better than the news walkers of the 19th century. Collins’ account shows how the challenge to report the facts grew into a consuming quest for Page 1 - a drive that brought ever-bigger stories but finally proved the Big One would elude his grasp. The narrative concludes as Collins realizes that the one story he needed to write was a personal story he could craft only if he reconciled with his father.
