What Jimmy Breslin Told Me

By DAN ACKMAN

Jimmy Breslin, man and legend, spoke to Les Payne's news editing class yesterday, delivering a tour de force on New York, journalism and life.

For those who don't know-- and all should know-- Breslin was for decades a columnist at the Daily News before switching in 1988 to Newsday, where Payne is an editor. He has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize (of course) as well as a the George K. Polk Award and the Meyer Berger Award. He has also written many books including "The Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight" and his recent memoir "I Want to Thank My Brain For Remembering Me."

"You've got to make your living with verbs," Breslin said, opening his remarks. "And the verb has to move." This advice holds whether you're writing for TV, newspapers or the Internet.

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For Breslin, boredom is the one true sin. "That's the worst thing-- boring-- that's a felony."

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Not one to look back-- "the newspaper business is today and tomorrow"-- Breslin said certain verities do not change. In the age of e-mail, you still have to go to the scene to get the feel of the story, Breslin said. "That's where feeling comes from. The smell of the place sinks into the story."

Well known for his ability to climb stairs, Breslin noted that "no story in New York happens under the fourth floor." You have to be there to hear the sound of a mother wailing over the loss of her dead child. "All the news business," he said, "starts with the feet."

On the upcoming Senate race, Breslin said he wished only that Moynihan would stick around. Giuliani, he said, is "crazy" and a "dangerous moron." The mayor's problem starts with his lack of a home life, his wife having essentially left him, he said. Students laughed at Breslin's psychoanalysis of the mayor, but Breslin was serious. "These things are important," he said.

As for Hillary, Breslin's view is that she is "insincere."

Asked to pick between "crazy" and "insincere," Breslin found the choice impossible.

Breslin said he did miss a couple of things about journalism of years past: the noise and the drinking. "I know what's missing and I know that it's harmful-- it's the drinking. People went to bars and talked about the business." Conceding that some of his colleagues drank to excess, he still insisted the bar was a place where writers could share stories and listen to "old guys telling you something."

Today's reporters go to health clubs and home to the wife. "They're in fantastic health, but the fact is he wishes he was at the bar and the wife wishes he was at the bar."

"The other thing I do miss is the noise," recalling the sounds typewriters and printing presses in the Daily News newsroom at 5:30. "Words were a product of nervous energy and it showed in the excitement of the story."

Asked about sourcing, Breslin was emphatic: "'Off the record'? What's that? If a guy doesn't want his name used, what is he talking to you for?" When he sees quotes from "senior advisers" and other anonymous, deep background types, "I never believe any one of those quotes. I'm thinking the writer made it up."

But what if the reporter fears burning a source? Breslin's advice is not to worry. "I've never heard of a guy not talking again. A guy says he won't talk and two days later he's calling you on the phone."

The one thing a reporter must do is get the names right. After telling astory about how, on his first newspaper assignment at age 16, he was writing an obituary and he confused the undertaker with the deceased, Breslin said getting the names straight is half the battle. "If his name is in the paper and it's spelled right, he's got no complaint."

Breslin described how he takes notes-- "I write big, two, three words a page"-- and the way he conducts interviews. "Mostly I just want to listen. If I can not talk at all I figure it's a success. But you do want the name. Oh Jesus! You owe that to the guy you're writing about."

For Breslin, boredom is the one true sin. "That's the worst thing-- boring-- that's a felony." Even writing straight news, when you have to "keep the blatant opinion out," he said, "that doesn't mean you have to be dull and boring and stale. Put some life into it."

Read Balzac, or Dickens, or anything Russian, Breslin advised, because those stories are full "misbehavors." Balzac's "Lost Illusion," his novel about the news business is especially good-- "a dagger in every paragraph."

Breslin, who has survived a brain aneurysm (the subject in part of his memoir) looked pretty fit himself as he told the class that being reporter, his passion for the news, is his lifeblood: "That's the thing about the news business. The daily surprises prevents you from getting the common cold. I had the flu in 1968 and since then nothing. Of course you could get something big and it kills you."