Jack Newfield

Jack Abraham Newfield (February 18, 1938 – December 20, 2004) was a muckraking journalist, employed by The Village Voice, the Daily News and the New York Post. He covered the emergence of the New Left and the civil rights movement, and was a close friend of Robert F. Kennedy.^[1][2]

Career in journalism

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Newfield attended Boys High School and graduated from Hunter College with a degree in journalism in 1961. He was involved with SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) at the time it was founded in 1962, and was active supporter of anti-war, New Left politics in the sixties. He went to work for The Village Voice in 1964. His book, A Prophetic Minority, published in 1966, provides an account of early sixties sit-ins and de-segregation movement, creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involvement of white students in SNCC and voter registration drives in Mississippi, and rise of SDS. Newfield continued writing for The Village Voice until 1988, penning some 700 articles for the newspaper during his 24 years on its staff as columnist, reporter and senior editor. He was a columnist at the Daily News from 1988 to 1990 and at the New York Post from 1991 to 2001.^[3]

In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.^[4]

In January, 1969, Newfield published Robert Kennedy: A Memoir, considered by many to be the best book ever written about Robert Kennedy. Newfield's memoir was personal and passionate. While Newfield had a close relationship with Kennedy, he was tough-minded and determined to find the man within the myth—an unusual achievement for any Kennedy biographer. Newfield wrote:

(Robert Kennedy) was not ruthless, or an excessively ambitious politician, but a conflicted, vulnerable man, impatient with the small contrivances of politics. And he was not a divisive, unpopular figure, but rather a healing force. The root of my argument is that Robert Kennedy was the one politician of his time who might have united the black and white poor into a new majority for change -- an American liberalism hardly noticed.^[5]

In 1988, Newfield was writer, reporter, and co-producer of the acclaimed Discovery Network documentary, Robert Kennedy.^[6]

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.^[7]

Aside from providing exposes of abuse of power by government officials and by businessmen while at the New York Post, Newfield wrote ten books. Among them "Only in America The Life and Crimes of Don King" published in 1995 was serialized in Penthouse Magazine and later made into a 1997 motion picture titled "Don King: Only in America" co-written by Newfield and Kario Salem, and starring Ving Rhames in the role of King. Newfield's lifelong antipathy toward Don King resulted in numerous local and national television appearances as a commentator on King in particular and boxing in general.

Newfield's book "City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York" written with Wayne Barrett and published in 1988 was an acidic dissection of the corruption surrounding the mayoralty of Ed Koch once a personal friend of the writer. Newfield later applied his considerable City Hall acumen to his assessment of the mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani, publishing The Full Rudy which won the American Book Award in 2003.^[8]

Jack Newfield died in New York City, succumbing to kidney and lung cancer on December 20th, 2004.

Selected bibliography

• A Prophetic Minority. New York: New American Library, 1966. Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 66-26050
• Bread and Roses Too: Reporting About America. E.P. Dutton & Co., 1971. LOC No. 73-148476
• Robert Kennedy: A Memoir. Nation Books. 2003. ISBN 978-1-56025-531-4. 
• 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 0-688-10123-2, ISBN 978-0-688-10123-7
• The Full Rudy: The Man, the Myth, the Mania [on Rudy Giuliani]. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003. ISBN 1-56025-482-3

See also

• List of people from Brooklyn, New York

References

External links

• Jack Newfield at Find a Grave
• Jack Newfield: Journalist of Sacred Rage
• Tribute site and online Newfield resource

Authority control VIAF: 15699320 ISNI: 0000 0001 2021 4944

Persondata
Name	Newfield, Jack
Alternative names
Short description	American journalist
Date of birth	February 18, 1938
Place of birth
Date of death	December 20, 2004
Place of death