Know more about the man whose work helped define an era of New York City
Pete Hamill, the legendary newspaper reporter who has made a valuable contribution in New York Media has died at the age of 85, on Wednesday. His brother Denis confirmed the news in an email that Hamill died at a Brooklyn hospital after suffering from heart and kidney failure.
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Hamill had worked for major newspaper organisations like the old New York Herald Tribune, the New York Post, and the New York Daily News, known to be one of America’s largest-circulating newspaper.
Hamill received heartfelt tributes from various journalists on Twitter, and many of them regarded him as a mentor, and the quintessential New Yorker. Governor Andrew Cuomo defined him as the “voice of New York.”
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A life dedicated to reading and writing
Hamill was born and brought up in Brooklyn, which he defined as an immigrant nation, where everybody had an old country. He grew up reading, and eventually started writing books. In fact, he’s written enough books to fill the shelf on one of his favourite places – the Brooklyn Public Library.
When asked for his best advice to give a young journalist, Hamill replied, “Read. You can’t write unless you read. Read the classics.”
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HBO had made a documentary on the lives of Hamill and his contemporary Jimmy Breslin, and together they were known as the “princes of print”, in the period were newspapers were the biggest source or media.
When asked if he defined himself as a journalist, he replied saying that he was a reporter, and not a journalist. “I don’t know what those words mean. I just go out and report, chase news. And in the chasing, you always run into something.”
(Cover: New York Post)