Bob Greene
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Bernard Greene, Jr. (born March 10, 1947) is an American journalist, best known as an award-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune newspaper for twenty-four years until he was fired for sexual misconduct. Greene is the author of books on subjects varying from Michael Jordan to small towns to U.S. presidents. He is also the author of the national bestseller Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael Jordan. He has two children, Nick and Amanda, from a 31-year marriage with Susan Koebel Greene.
Originally from Bexley, Ohio (a suburb of Columbus), Greene attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and became a reporter and feature writer for the Chicago Sun-Times upon graduating in 1969, receiving a regular column in the paper within two years. Greene first drew significant national attention with his book, Billion Dollar Baby (1975), a diary of his experiences touring with rock musician Alice Cooper, where he played Santa Claus during the show. Greene's primary focus remained his newspaper column, for which he won the National Headliner's Award for best column in 1977 from an American journalism group. Shortly afterward, Greene switched to the competing Chicago Tribune and began making occasional guest appearances on local television, eventually landing a commentary slot on the ABC news program Nightline.
During the 1990s, Greene spent time covering Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls basketball team, forming an unlikely friendship that Greene documented in two best-selling books. In 1993, his novel All Summer Long was published by Doubleday, and his columns are collected in several books. He was named Illinois Journalist of the year, and was credited with the Peter Lisagor Award for the Public Service Journalism in 1995, for his reporting on how the courts fail children in need.
Greene was popular as a columnist but also had critics for what they perceived as excessive sentimentality, heavy writing and repetitive coverage of the same subject, most notably on the Baby Richard child custody saga. A therapist for the birth parents in the custody case, Karen Moriarty, claimed in the book Baby Richard: A Four-Year-Old Child Comes Home that Greene never spoke to the parents in the course of writing a hundred columns on the subject, in which he strongly took the side of the adoptive parents. The Chicago Reader ran a derisive column called BobWatch: We Read Him So You Don't Have To, penned pseudonymously by Neil Steinberg. Greene's experiences as a roadie were parodied by comics writer Steve Gerber in the background of the villain Dr. Bong in the 1970s Marvel comic Howard the Duck.
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[edit] Dismissal from the Tribune
Greene was forced to resign from his newspaper column in September 2002 after admitting an extramarital sexual relationship fourteen years earlier with a high school student. The student had visited Greene at work for a school project and became the subject of one of his columns. The admission of the affair attracted considerable attention, partly because Greene had made a name for himself as an advocate for abused children and family values, notably in his best-selling book Good Morning, Merry Sunshine: A Father's Journal of His Child's First Year. Neil Steinberg, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, said on CNN that Greene was "famous for using his position as a columnist... to try to get women into bed."
The student with whom Greene had a relationship was seventeen, legal age in Illinois, and had graduated from high school in the months between their first meeting and his invitation to take her out to dinner. Their sole hotel tryst was euphemistically described as a "sexual encounter that stopped short of intercourse" in the Chicago Tribune, and Greene claimed to Esquire that he demurred at going further, telling her, "You should wait to do this with someone you love."
Four months after Greene's ouster from the Chicago Tribune, his wife Susan died of heart failure following a month-long respiratory illness. He has not returned to newspaper or magazine journalism, though he continues to write books. His most recent book, And You Know You Should Be Glad: A True Story of Lifelong Friendship, is a personal account of the illness and death of his lifelong friend Jack Roth at age 57. Publishers Weekly reviewed:
- Bestselling author Greene... looks back on his youth in Bexley, Ohio (pop. 13,000), where he and his four pals grew up together, calling themselves ABCDJ (for Allen, Bob, Chuck, Dan and Jack)... Greene met Jack in kindergarten, and they remained best friends for life. Remembering people and places they shared, the two revisit old haunts, discovering that their beloved Toddle House, where they once went for late-night chocolate pie, is now a Pizza Plus. Greene's repetitive, rambling free associations recall everything from his Halloween costume and old songs to ice cream parlors, state fairs and clothing fads. Unfortunately, the author's dusty attic of lost Americana is cluttered with clichés, nostalgia and overly sentimental yearnings.
[edit] Bibliography
- And You Know You Should Be Glad: A True Story of Lifelong Friendship (William Morrow, 2006) (personal account of a friend's death) ISBN 0-06-088193-3
- Fraternity: A Journey in Search of Five Presidents (Crown, 2004) (interviews with ex-presidents) ISBN 1-4000-5464-8
- Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen (William Morrow, 2002) ISBN 0-06-008196-1
- Duty: A Father, His Son, And The Man Who Won The War (William Morrow, 2000) (half about his relationship with his father, half on Paul W. Tibbets)ISBN 0-380-97849-0
- Notes on the Kitchen Table: Families Offer Messages of Hope for Generations to Come (Doubleday, 1998) (co-authored with his sister, D.G. Fulford) ISBN 0-385-49061-5
- The 50-Year Dash: The Feelings, Foibles, and Fears of Being Half-a-Century Old (Doubleday, 1997) ISBN 0-385-48502-6
- Chevrolet Summers, Dairy Queen Nights (Viking Press, 1997) (collection of columns) ISBN 0-670-87032-3
- Rebound: The Odyssey of Michael Jordan (Viking Press, 1995) ISBN 0-670-86678-4
- To Our Children's Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come (Doubleday, 1993) (co-authored with D.G. Fulford) ISBN 0-385-46797-4
- All Summer Long (Doubleday, 1993) (novel) ISBN 0-385-42589-9
- Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael Jordan (Doubleday, 1992) ISBN 0-385-42588-0
- He Was a Midwestern Boy on His Own (Atheneum, 1991) (collection of columns) ISBN 0-689-12117-2
- Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned from Vietnam (Putnam, 1989) ISBN 0-399-13386-0
- Be True To Your School: A Diary of 1964 (Scribner, 1987) (reconstructed high-school diary) ISBN 0-689-11612-8
- Cheeseburgers (Atheneum, 1985) (collection of columns) ISBN 0-689-11611-X
- Good Morning, Merry Sunshine: A Father's Journal of His Child's First Year (Atheneum, 1984) ISBN 0-689-11434-6
- American Beat (Atheneum, 1983) (collection of columns) ISBN 0-689-11397-8
- Bagtime (Popular Library, 1977) (collection of columns written with Paul Galloway, from the perspective of fictitious supermarket bagboy Mike Holiday, under which name the book was published; also turned into a stage play and TV movie) ISBN 0-445-04057-2
- Johnny Deadline, Reporter (Nelson-Hall, 1976) (collection of columns and other journalism) ISBN 0-88229-361-3
- Billion Dollar Baby (Atheneum, 1974) (account of roadie work for Alice Cooper) ISBN 0-689-10616-5
- Running (Regnery, 1973) (journal of 1972 presidential campaign)
- We Didn't Have None of Them Fat Funky Angels on the Wall of Heartbreak Hotel (Regnery, 1971) (collection of columns and other journalism)
The movie Funny About Love (1990) was based on a Bob Greene column, and Greene was given writing credit on the film.
