| Mitch Albom | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 23 1958 Passaic, New Jersey, United States |
| Occupation | Novelist, Columnist |
| Genres | Sports Non-Fiction, Fiction |
| Debut works | BO: Life, laughs, and lessons of a college football legend |
| Influences | Morrie Schwartz |
| Website | http://www.albom.com |
Mitchell David Albom (born May 23, 1958 in Passaic, New Jersey) is a U.S. novelist and newspaper columnist for the Detroit Free Press, radio host, and TV commentator.
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Early life
Albom graduated from Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy located in Merion, Pennsylvania. He went on to graduate from Brandeis University as a sociology major and earned master's degrees in journalism and business administration from Columbia University. Before becoming a journalist, Albom was briefly an amateur boxer, nightclub singer, and pianist.[1]
Sports Columnist
Albom first gained fame as a sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press newspaper. Between 1985 and 2000, Albom wrote several sports columns each week, as well as a regular column in Playgirl Magazine. Presently, his columns appear on a sporadic basis. During that time, Albom also provided regular sports updates on local radio stations. Each year his sports columns were entered in the Associated Press Sports Editors contest. Albom competed against columnists at newspapers with a circulation above 250,000. All entries are judged anonymously. Preliminary judging is done by more than 90 sports editors, then senior news executives at papers throughout the country make the final awards. The judges change each year. Albom is the most decorated winner in the history of the contest. Between 1985 and 2000, Albom won first place in column writing thirteen times, and between 1991 and 2000 he won first prize in feature story writing seven times. During a strike at the Detroit Free Press in the mid-1990s that gained considerable national attention, Albom crossed the picket line and returned to work.
Author
Sports Non-Fiction
Albom's first book was Bo: Life, Laughs, and the Lessons of a College Football Legend), a biography of Bo Schembechler that he helped co-write. The book was published in August, 1989 and became Albom's first New York Times best-seller. Albom's next book was Fab Five: Basketball, Trash Talk, The American Dream, a look into the starters on the University of Michigan men's basketball team that reached the NCAA championship game as freshmen in 1992 and again as sophomores in 1993. The book was published in November of 1994 and also became a New York Times best-seller. Albom has also published Live Albom volumes I-V, which are compilations of his newspaper articles.
Memoir
Albom wrote Tuesdays With Morrie in 1997, a memoir of his favorite college professor, Morrie Schwartz, compiled from meetings with Morrie on Tuesday's during his fight with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease). After being featured prominently on Oprah Winfrey's show, the book became a New York Times best-seller. Oprah Winfrey produced a television movie adaptation for ABC starring Hank Azaria and Jack Lemmon. The television movie adaptation of Tuesdays with Morrie was the most watched television movie of 1999 and won four Emmy Awards.
Fiction
After the success of Tuesdays with Morrie, Albom's next foray was in fiction. His next book was The Five People You Meet in Heaven published in September of 2003. This book was a success and again launched Albom onto the New York Times best-seller list. It was turned into a television movie for ABC, starring Jon Voight, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Imperioli and Jeff Daniels. Albom's second fiction book, For One More Day, published in 2006, was about a son who gets to spend a day with his mother who died eight years earlier. Again a New York Times best-seller, the success of the book propelled Oprah Winfrey to adapt For One More Day into a television movie which aired on December 9, 2007, and starred Burstyn and Imperioli. Harpo Films produced the film under its "Oprah Winfrey Presents" banner for ABC.
Controversies
Albom was suspended from the Detroit Free Press for pre-writing and submitting an article about an event that didn't occur. [2] In a column printed April 3, Albom described two former Michigan State basketball players, both now in the NBA, attending an NCAA Final Four semifinal game on Saturday. The players told Albom they planned to attend, and Albom, filing Friday before the game, wrote as if the players were there, including that they wore Michigan State green. But the players' plans changed and they never attended. He issued an apology regarding his misreporting that the players attended the game but never apologized for fabricating particular descriptions. Albom was forced to testify at Chris Webber's perjury trial. Webber had been a member of the University of Michigan's basketball teams of the early 1990s. He was a member of the "Fab Five" and the subject of a book by Albom. Webber and 3 Wolverines who played later in the mid to late 1990s were alleged to have received over $600,000 in improper loans from a man considered to be a booster of the University of Michigan, although amounts were never verified. The 4 other Fab Five members were not implicated and the school was cleared of any direct involvement or knowledge of the loans, which were made to players and their families. [3]
Personal life
After his experiences with Morrie Schwartz, subject of Tuesdays with Morrie, he started a Detroit volunteer group in 1998 called "A Time to Help". Every month, the group (affiliated with Volunteer Impact) does a project to help serve and improve the Detroit community. Projects have included work at homeless shelters, food banks, senior citizens homes, and orphanages. Albom and radio co-host Ken Brown lead each project and try to use the group as a catalyst to increase volunteerism. Albom is also part of a rock band, The Rock Bottom Remainders, whose members are all published writers. Albom also co-wrote the Warren Zevon song Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song} which featured David Letterman singing vocals. Albom appears regularly on ESPN's The Sports Reporters and SportsCenter. His radio show airs on WJR radio in Detroit from 5 to 7 p.m. ET, with Mondays having an extra hour for just sports as of 2006. The radio show was simulcast on MSNBC in 2001. Albom also has many Podcasts in the iTunes store that are available for free.
References
- ^ "About Mitch Albom", freep.com.
- ^ Johnson, Peter, "Will Albom's woes taint journalism?", usatoday.com, April 13 2005.
- ^ Hagy, Alyson, "Webber's World", nytimes.com, February 23 2003.
