Mike Barnicle

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Michael Barnicle (born August 24, 1944, Worcester, Massachusetts) is an award-winning writer based in Boston. He currently hosts a daily radio show on WTKK at 96.9FM.^[1] Barnicle is a veteran newspaper columnist who has written for the Boston Globe, the New York Daily News, and the Boston Herald.

He appears regularly on national television magazine talk shows on NBC and MSNBC, such as Hardball, Scarborough Country, and Imus in the Morning, as well as, for many years, the local Boston WCVB-TV magazine program Chronicle ([1], [2]). Barnicle occasionally guest hosts on Hardball

1 Most recent news
2 Background and early career
3 Boston Globe
4 Moving on
5 Miscellaneous
6 See also

[edit] Most recent news

Barnicle, a current contributor to the Boston Herald, is working in a consulting role to local business leaders --including former General Electric chief Jack Welch, adman Jack Connors and concessionaire Joe O'Donnell - who are discussing trying to buy the Boston Globe from the New York Times Company, a move supported by prominent business leaders in Boston ([3]).

[edit] Background and early career

Soon after graduating from Boston University in 1965, Barnicle began his career working for politicians, including the late Robert F. Kennedy. He was a speechwriter for John Tunney's California Senate campaign in 1970 and for Ed Muskie and vice presidential nominee Sargent Shriver in the 1972 presidential campaign. In 1972 Barnicle appeared in Michael Ritchie's film, The Candidate.

[edit] Boston Globe

In August 1998, Barnicle was forced to resign from his position as a columnist at the Boston Globe amid questions about the sources of at least two of his columns.

The first column to raise journalistic suspicion, dated August 2, 1998, purportedly contained unattributed material from the 1997 book Brain Droppings by George Carlin ([4]).

After Barnicle claimed he had never read the book, editor Matthew Storin issued a one-month suspension. Later that afternoon, when a local television station aired a video clip showing Barnicle recommending the book to viewers, Storin increased the suspension to two months.

Closer scrutiny of all columnists followed, because another Globe columnist, Patricia Smith, had resigned just two months before amid revelations that she fabricated people and quotations in four of her columns.

Review of hundreds of previous Barnicle columns revealed only a single possible fabrication in an October 8, 1995 piece. The column, titled "Through Pain, A Common Bond," recounted the story of two sets of parents with cancer-stricken children who had struck up a friendship during a stint at Children's Hospital in Boston in the summer of 1994. When one of the boys, a black child, died, the parents of the other boy, a white child who had begun to recover, sent the down-on-their-luck parents a check for $10,000. None of the people identified in the story could be located. When confronted with charges of fabrication, Barnicle said he did not obtain the story from either of the parents, but from a nurse at another hospital. When Barnicle did not produce the name of the nurse, and editors could not find a death that matched that of the child, Barnicle was asked to resign([5]).

[edit] Moving on

Despite a tumultuous end at The Boston Globe, later, in March 2004, Barnicle told his new employer, the Herald, which had covered the events surrounding his resignation, that he had nothing but “fond feelings” for his years at their rival ([6]). Soon afterward, both the New York Daily News and the Boston Herald recruited him to write for them ([7], [8]).

Despite Barnicle's earlier departure from the Globe, its sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy is a regular commentator on Barnicle’s daily radio program on WTKK ([9]).

[edit] Miscellaneous

For years Boston radio host Howie Carr has sparred with Barnicle, even during the short time they worked as Boston Herald colleagues, calling him a "hack" and referring to himself as the Herald's "nonfiction columnist" ([10]).

Barnicle called Carr "a pathetic figure" and asked "Can you imagine being as consumed with envy and jealousy toward me for as long as it has consumed him?" [11]).