‘Late Edition’ stirs good memories of newsrooms

Bob Greene Jr.’s book, “Late Edition: A Love Story,” about Greene’s days with the now-defunct Columbus Citizen-Journal, stirred fond memories for BJ newsroom retiree Tom Moore, who is in the midst of his annual six weeks in the Fort Myers, Florida sun with former BJ sports editor Tom Giffen’s Roy Hobbs World Series for older baseball players.

Author Bob Greene

Writes Tom:

“Just finish reading 'Late Edition' and it sure brought back memories since it’s about Bob’s years with the Citizen-Journal. He really tapped into the good old days of newspapering.

“I didn’t know him; he started at the paper a year after I left after seven years. But he writes about so many folks that I worked with while I was make-up editor, women’s editor and assistant news editor.

“Bob, thanks for the memories.”

Greene was a kid from the Columbus suburb of Bexley who was a nationally known columnist for the Chicago Tribune and was syndicated in 200 newspapers until he was fired by Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski for a sexual liason 14 years earlier with a 17-year-old girl. At a time when Greene was an advocate for abused children. 

His 33-year newspaper career crashed and burned.

Greene has two children, Nick and Amanda, from a 31-year marriage with Susan Koebel Greene, who died four months after the scandal broke. 

Greene has had a ton of books published, including about Michael Jordan (“Hang Time”) and Alice Cooper (“Billion Dollar Baby”) and is a regular contributor at CNN.

Greene has described “running to work” because he loved the job so much. I felt the same way about my time at the BJ.

As for Tom Moore, he has left a trail of belly-up newspapers behind: Zanesville News, Columbus Citizen and Columbus Citizen Journal. Hell, Tom killed an entire newspaper chain, Knight-Ridder, too.

And the BJ isn’t the healthy specimen it was when Tom ended his traipsing through faltering newspapers.

Tom’s claim to fame is that he began at the Bluefield, West Virginia Daily Telegraph in the legendary John S. Knight’s birthplace. JSK left town when he was 3 months old.

Tom and wife Dot have four children and live in Akron.

There’s a good National Public Radio interview of Greene by Bob Simon at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112363627