The paper's staff revolted, publishing a mutiny edition that kept Hamill's name on the masthead as he supervised from a nearby diner. (Bebeto Matthews/The Associated Press)īut when Hoffenberg was unable to buy the paper, ownership fell to Abe Hirschfeld, who fired Hamill. The celebrated columnist and author was 85 when he died. Pete Hamill appears during an interview at the Skylight Diner in New York in 2007. Hamill quickly hired four Black reporters and promoted a number of women and minorities, recalled fellow columnist Jack Newfield in his memoir, Somebody's Gotta Tell It. When financier Steven Hoffenberg gained control of the tabloid in bankruptcy proceedings, he hired Hamill as editor in chief in 1993. Hamill had a brief and disheartening turn editing the New York Post. His memoir covers his childhood in Brooklyn to the night he gave up drinking at a New Year's Eve party in 1972. His novels Snow in August and The North River also served up nostalgic and critically acclaimed tales of Old New York.

2003 novel, Forever, told the story of Cormac O'Connor, an Irish Jew who arrives in New York in 1740 and is granted eternal life as long as he stays on the island of Manhattan.

He spoke truth to power, lifted people up and celebrated his beloved hometown every chance he got. 'Pete Hamill was an inspiration to generations of reporters who reveled in his unique style of storytelling and his gifts as a writer and reporter who spoke truth to power,' the New York Press Club said in a statement.Īll you need to know about Pete Hamill is that his fellow reporters loved him and Richard Nixon hated him. He wrote screenplays, several novels and a bestselling memoir, A Drinking Life. 'I have the native son's irrational love of the place,' Hamill wrote in his 2004 book, Downtown: My Manhattan. 'New York is a city of daily irritations, occasional horrors, hourly tests of will and even courage, and huge dollops of pure beauty.' A prolific careerĪ Brooklyn-born high school dropout, Hamill was a columnist for the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Newsday, the Village Voice, New York magazine and Esquire. But he would always look back to the New York he grew up in, a pre-digital age best remembered through the dreamscape of black and white photography.

His topics ranged from baseball, politics, murders, boxing and riots to wars in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Lebanon and Ireland. Pete Hamill was one of the city's last great crusading columnists and links to journalism's days of chattering typewriters and smoked-filled banter. 'Pete was truly one of the good guys,' Denis Hamill said. Hamill died at a Brooklyn hospital from heart and kidney failure, his brother Denis confirmed in an email. Pete Hamill, the self-taught, street-wise newspaper columnist whose love affair with New York inspired a colourful and uniquely influential journalistic career and produced several books of fiction and nonfiction, died Wednesday morning.

Peter hamill forever