Frank Rich as movie critic for NY POST pre Murdoch

I know it's late to add a comment but I was so excited about reading this book that I called my local-owner-operated bookstore and they are getting it in next week. I can't wait. I love a well-written column and I am guilty of cutting out news stories and pages from the New Yorker as well. I have a folder full of Molly Ivans columns, she was one of the best. PS: When I was a little girl (I'm 53 now), I used read Jimmy Breslin in The Daily News. I may not always have understood him, but I loved the way he wrote!

David Brooks? Friedman? Noonan? Surely you jest! The NY Times letters to the editor are far more erudite and informative than any of the above writers. If this is the caliber of writer and thinker you are including in the book, I won't be purchasing it anytime soon.

I really enjoyed Jim Dwyer when we was the subway columnist for New York Newsday. He told stories about real people and what it was like for those of us who rode the system every day. Everyone else wrote only news and gossip about (and leaked from) the unions, management and City Hall.

Vermont Royster was a favorite of mine.

Yes, also Bill Safire.

And having just finished reading "Boys of Summer", one of the unexpected pleasures was Kahn's ongoing discussion of the NY newspaper racket of the time and working under deadline.

BTW, back to Red Smith... what was his answer when asked what it was like writing a column 3 times a week?

Easy he said. You just open up a vein...

Sheryl McCarthy & Les Payne of the late lamented New York Newsday.

I'll never forget a comment that a Village Voice columnist made about the sports columnist Grantland Rice. She quoted a piece of purple prose and after it simply commented: "It ain't over till it's overwritten."

loveloevlove Nat Hentoff

I miss Robert Novak's column. It was surprisingly even-handed (though Novak was a righty) and ALWAYS had amazing beltway scoops

IF Stone?

I'd add Jose Torres

Russell Baker, Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote columns which are definitely keepers.

Thank you for this segment

I'm not a conservative, but I read a Bill Buckley column after the then-Soviet Union shot down Korean airliner 007 killing a US congressman that was just amazing. Angry yet measured, wise.

My favorite Russell Baker column: when he took personal responsibility for causing the NYC drought of the early 1980s. See for his whole career it never rained when he brought his umbrella to work, then his wife got him a collapsible umbrella which he put in his briefcase and forgot about for 2 years -- hence the drought.

Maureen Dowd has been phoning it in for years. Stop pretending she's any good. And Peggy Noonan stinks too.

are bloggers the new syndicated columnists?

Molly Ivins. Absolutely essential.
In sports, Red Smith.
I have a fondness for my hometown columnist, David Rossie of the Binghamton Press-SunBulletin.

The greatest column is, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" by James Francis in 1897.

Let's not forget the late, great Dick Schaap.
He could do it all and he was a real gent as well.

Growing up in Detroit, I read Mitch Albom's column in The Detroit Free Press regularly. His muscular, incisive prose inspired me to want to become a newspaper columnist (when this still seemed like a viable employment option, in those halcyon pre-blog days). I was so disappointed that when he came to more national prominence it was for the limp, treacly "Tuesdays with Morrie." Maybe this collection will help familiarize readers with more robust examples of his talent.

Royko was syndicated in the KC Star and is the first columnist I remember reading as a kid growing up in the heartland. Really expanded my horizons. Speaking of the Star, Joe Posnanski, now at SI, had one helluva great run as a sports columnist there in the last decade.

Jim Dwyer.

John Chancellor wrote a column in the NY Times listing the freedoms we Americans had lost in the previous few years. He could list even more today.

Does the political establishment ever heed the words of the columnists, especially those in the NY Times?

I always enjoyed the humanity of Red Smith's columns. They were only incidentally about sports....

And what about the great Alexander Woollcott?

John Avlon referred to Westbrook Pegler as a great columnist. Pegler advocated the assassinations of FDR and RFK. Please explain.

And the late Eric Brendl.

Twitter acct, TweetsofOld, celebrates sometimes very contemporary-sounding gems of editorial writing, from non-famous county paper editors. Real one-liners from old newspapers.

And don't forget Mark Twain.

Newspapers? Wot's dat?

Any list of greatest newspaper columnists must include Murray Kempton, Jack Newfield, Anthony Lewis, Tom Wicker, and Lars Erik Nelson.