Jack Newfield

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Jack Newfield (1938-2004) was a muckraking journalist, employed by the New York Post. [1] [2] A native of Brooklyn, New York, he died on December 20, 2004, from kidney and lung cancer.

While the New York Post changed ownership in 1977 and changed from a liberal orientation to a conservative orientation, Newfield retained his liberal politics.

He was an activist, in addition to being a journalist. He was with New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy when the latter was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, in June, 1968. [3]

Aside from providing exposes (in his columns in the Post) of abuse of power by government officials and by businessmen, he wrote a number of books. His assessment of the mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani, The Full Rudy won the American Book Award in 2003.[4]

Jack Newfield graduated from Hunter College in 1961, was involved with SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) at time it was founded in 1962, and was active supporter of anti-war, New Left politics in the sixties, publishing a book, A Prophetic Minority in 1966, which provides account of early sixties sit-ins and de-segregation movement, creation of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involvement of white students in SNCC and voter registration drives in Mississippi, and rise of SDS. The book also details later rifts within SDS. Newfield also worked briefly in the 1960s as an assistant editor for The Village Voice.

[edit] Selected bibliography

A Prophetic Minority. New York: New American Library, 1966. Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 66-26050
The Big Apple: City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York (Harper and Row, 1988, ISBN 0-06-091662-1) [with Wayne Barrett]
Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King [on Don King]. William Morrow & Co, 1995, ISBN-10: 0688101232, ISBN-13: 978-0688101237
The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania [on Rudy Giuliani]. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003, ISBN 1-56025-482-3