Lecture: Pete Hamill
Veteran journalist and author Pete Hamill advised journalism students to explore New York City and to remember its history when writing about the city during a reading of his newest book, Downtown: My Manhattan, at a recent New York University talk.
"[Reporters] don't cover enough of the history, the story of things people did," said Hamill, a former editor-in-chief of both the New York Post and the New York Daily News. "I wish the past was taught better at public schools, and I wish the city was marked better," he added, with signs to note its rich history.
Hamill, a best-selling author, read excerpts from Downtown: My Manhattan, a literary piece that he defined as "not a history, not a memoir, not a guidebook, but all of these." Among the sections he read were the history of legacies of two great newspapermen whose New York newspapers once called Park Row home: Horace Greeley, who founded the New York Herald, and James Gordon Bennett, who brought crime reporting to the front pages of the New York Tribune and invented the newspaper weather report and the personals column.
Bennett, Hamill said, created tabloid style reporting: He grasped that the tales of murders and love triangles in affluent neighborhoods sold newspapers. In his book, Hamill referred to such tales as "murders at good addresses."
"Nothing takes the place of a good murder story," Hamill said. "New Yorkers love calamity."
Hamill, who was born in Brooklyn in 1935 to working-class Irish immigrants, said that low crime rates in the city meant fewer sensational murders to report so newspapers were forced to report on murders of a smaller caliber.
"The Peterson case is not even a good murder," Hamill said with a smile, referring to the recent media coverage on the Scott Peterson trial for the murder of his wife, Laci. "It's not at a good address."
Hamill also said New Yorkers loved stories about disasters, like subway collisions, extreme weather conditions and political corruption. But corruption stories are harder to come by these days. "The trouble with Bloomberg is that he's so rich that he doesn't even need to steal," he joked.
In addition to his jovial demeanor, Hamill's voice captivated the audience including Marissa Harris, a 21-year-old theater and journalism student at NYU.
"He has this quiet voice that makes you lean in and struggle to hear," Harris said. "It's a wonderful quality for a storyteller to have. I didn't get his book before I came here. Now I wish I had."
Hamill shared his daily writing routine, which includes breakfast, research and an afternoon nap following lunch, saying that naps were necessary to help writers think. He also suggested keeping journals to clear out thoughts. He encouraged students to read, especially fiction authors, such as Ernest Hemingway and Charles Dickens, who began their writing careers in journalism.
He added that his development of fiction-writing skills benefited from having basic reporting skills, such as writing on a deadline.
"Journalism gives you speed and accuracy," Hamill said. "You learn to write as quickly as possible."
"Write things that you have credentials in. Write about what you love. Write books you'd want to read," he said.
For Hamill, Downtown: My Manhattan was a book for himself to explore the nature of New Yorkers.
"After 9/11, all of us had to think about why is the city like this. Why didn't the city panic? Why was it like that on Sept. 12? People were getting up and going to work," he said. He also mentioned that the book was for his 8-year-old grandchild.
"So when he's 20, and I'm pushing up daisies in Greenwood [Cemetery], I want him to know that this was my city too," Hamill said.