Mike Barnicle

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Michael Barnicle (born 13 October 1943 in Fitchburg, Massachusetts) is an American newspaper journalist and has been a newspaper columnist for more than 30 years for The Boston Globe (1974-1998), the New York Daily News (1999-2005) and the Boston Herald (2004-present). He has also written for Esquire, George magazine, ESPN Magazine, Newsweek.com and Huffington Post.

Barnicle also provides commentary on MSNBC, where he has been under contract for the last 10 years, and frequently is seen on NBC's Today Show with news/feature segments. He has been a regular contributor to the country's longest-running, award-winning local television news magazine, "Chronicle" on WCVB-TV. Barnicle has also appeared on PBS's NewsHour, CBS's 60 Minutes, ESPN and HBO sports programming. Barnicle is also a regular guest on Imus in the Morning.

He has won local and national awards for both his print and broadcast work over the last three decades, including from the Associated Press, United Press International, National Headliners and duPont-Columbia University. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Massachusetts and Colby College.

Barnicle graduated from Boston University in 1965, and began working for Robert F. Kennedy. He was a speechwriter for John Tunney, Edmund Muskie, and Sargent Shriver. Barnicle appeared in the Robert Redford film, The Candidate.

In 1998, Barnicle was forced to resign from the Boston Globe amid questions about the sources of two of his columns. The first column, dated August 2, 1998, allegedly contained unattributed material from the 1997 book Brain Droppings by George Carlin.[1]

Review of previous Barnicle columns by the Globe revealed another possible fabrication in an October 8, 1995 piece. The column recounted the story of two sets of parents with cancer-stricken children. 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 dead child's parents a check for $10,000 USD. When the Globe could not locate the people in the story, Barnicle said he did not obtain the story from any of the parents, but from a nurse, yet did not produce the name of the nurse. When editors could not find a death that matched that of the child's in the piece, Barnicle was asked to resign.[2]

Soon afterward, the New York Daily News and the Boston Herald recruited him to write for them.[3] Barnicle told reporters that he had nothing but “fond feelings for 25 years at the Globe."[3] Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy served as a regular commentator and guest host on Barnicle’s daily radio program on WTKK.[4]

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[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ Former Boston Globe Columnist Is Returning, but to a Rival The New York Times. Accessed 12 July 2007.
  2. ^ Barnicle resigns from Globe The Boston Globe. Accessed 12 July 2007.
  3. ^ a b Barnicle signs on as Herald columnist The Boston Globe. Accessed 12 July 2007.
  4. ^ Mike Barnicle's Bio 96.9 FM Talk. Accessed 13 September 2006.