Daniel McGowan - an unlikely Irish terrorist

Daniel McGowan

There are not many people in the world who have as complicated a relationship with that word as the Irish do.

Most obviously, the Irish were called terrorists when they more or less invented modern guerilla warfare in their efforts to gain independence from Britain.

And throughout the wretched decades marked by The Troubles in Northern Ireland, support for any aspects of the Nationalist movement could get you slapped with a Scarlet “T.”

And yet, as we saw this week in the deluge of 9/11 coverage, the Irish in America suffered greatly at the hands of terrorists.

We were reminded anew just how many people with Irish names perished that day. A total of 15 firefighters alone who were killed on 9/11 had last names beginning with “Mc” or “O”.

The 9/11 anniversary also reacquainted many with the Irish enclave known as the Rockaways.

“The peninsula suffered one of the nation’s most concentrated losses when the terrorist attacks scythed through generations of firefighters and Wall Street traders in the largely Irish-Catholic neighborhoods here.

“Fifty-nine people from Rockaway died; about 70 counting summer and former residents. One enclave, Breezy Point, lost 32 of its 5,000 people. A proportional hit to New York City would have taken 51,000 lives,” The New York Times reported on September 11 of this year.

The article, among other things, reported on a 9/11 charitable group called the RIBS Foundation, short for Rockaway Irish Boys. As befitting a Catholic neighborhood with plenty of cops and firefighters, the Rockaways can safely be described, yes, as union friendly, but also quite conservative.

As The Times put it, the area was “already patriotic.” After 9/11 “the neighborhood became more so.”

Perhaps that’s what makes Daniel McGowan such an unlikely “terrorist.”

McGowan was one of four children born in Brooklyn.  His father was a New York City police officer and the family eventually moved out to the Rockaways.

McGowan attended Catholic schools and was a business major at SUNY-Buffalo.
Currently, though, he sits in jail. He has been labeled a terrorist by federal prosecutors.

McGowan’s saga is the focus of a movie that is about to hit theaters, and which was also broadcast this week on the PBS series POV.

The name of the film is If a Tree Falls in the Forest, and chronicles McGowan’s journey from Queens kid to the subject of an intensive FBI investigation which dubbed him and others “domestic” or “eco” terrorists.

McGowan and others were charged with destroying or setting fire to property owned by universities or private companies.

In 2001, for example, members of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) targeted a lumber company in northwest Oregon which had plans to genetically engineer trees in such a way that ELF members claimed would be devastating for the eco-system.

All in all, it is believed that the loosely-affiliated environmental radicals McGowan ran with caused $80 million in damage.

Though you might not expect a radical environmentalist to rise from the streets of New York City, McGowan has said his youth in Rockaway influenced him greatly.

“I grew up on a peninsula so I had a beach and a bay and could do a lot more exploring and surfing,” McGowan said in a 2007 interview.

“I remember as a kid they tested the hair of the surfers. They were telling us to get out of the water and stop surfing because of the contamination. There were hypodermic needles showing up on the water in Rockaway.

“It left a really big impression on me how poor neighborhoods get the lion’s share of pollution. I didn’t need an environmental textbook to tell me that.”

After his arrest in 2005, McGowan had many friends and family members in court to support him.  He was sentenced to seven years in jail in 2007.

And though, these days, it might seem like an Irish kid from Rockaway could never be any kind of terrorist, there is one more interesting point worth making.

As part of his plea deal, McGowan acknowledged his role in several radial environmental acts. However, he refused to name the names of any others involved.
A terrorist may be bad, but an informer, apparently, is worse.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

9/11 Memorial: Remembrance of things past and Irish Americans lost

Officer Liam Callahan

Donald and Marcee Robertson do it by placing a candle and an illuminated shamrock in the window of their New Jersey home.  It is a particularly Irish way of remembering their son, Donald Robertson, Jr., who was 35 and an employee at Cantor Fitzgerald when the planes hit and the world changed 10 years ago.

“I put a candle in the window and it’s been there ever since,” Marcee told the Star-Ledger newspaper.  “When I put it on at nighttime I say, ‘I love you
Donnie.’  And in the morning I turn it off.”

Somehow, a decade has now come and gone.  The world has changed vastly.
Three thousand were murdered that day and you have to count the thousands more lost in Afghanistan and Iraq and other hotspots around the globe since.

And so for us, the living, we are left to remember, to reflect.  But how?
Solemnly?  Angrily?  How?

We know all eyes will be on the World Trade Center site, what used to be called “the pile,” and then Ground Zero, but where, now, a Freedom Tower rises 1,000 feet into the sky.

Also at the Trade Center site is the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum.  Perhaps more than any other place, this museum will represent the collective memory of New York City.

The memorial opens to the public September 12. The museum is slated to open next year. But we have been given a glimpse into the museum’s collection and it nobly preserves the memory of the Irish Americans -- of everyone -- who survived that day.

The museum’s displays include the dust-covered flashlight that once belonged to Port Authority Police Department officer James Lynch.

A 22-year veteran, Lynch was on medical leave that day, but nevertheless raced from his Woodbridge, New Jersey home to downtown Manhattan.

He ran into the burning South Tower. His body was recovered on December 7, 2001.
He was still carrying his flashlight, with his badge number, 775, still clearly etched on its barrel. Lynch’s family donated the flashlight as well as his bunker jacket and first aid kit to the museum.

Also at the museum is the Pipe Band hat belonging to Port Authority officer Liam Callahan.

Callahan, who had four children with his wife Joan, had already been recognized for his "heroic actions" while responding to the 1993 Trade Center attack.

There are also oral histories from Irish Americans. There is Brooklyn native and firefighter Adrienne Walsh, one of just 30 or so female firefighters in New York.  Walsh was off-duty that day, driving on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
As every other firefighter in the city did, Walsh raced downtown.

“I looked up and there was just this explosion of confetti in the air,” she recalls.

While riding on the outside of the rig, they approached the towers. “When you got to City Hall, it’s almost as if there was a curtain. The sky disappeared.”

Walsh speaks of “six inches of dust on the ground.”

When the first tower collapsed, she was still on the street and feared the worst.
She thought, "If I beat the cloud, I’ll beat the building.  And I said to myself as I started to run, ‘I’m not gonna beat this cloud.  It’s just moving too fast." When Walsh realized she was safe her mind inevitably turned to others.

“I remember drawing a line in the middle of my brain and putting those who I thought were dead on one side and those who I thought had a chance on the other,” she said.

Another Irish American, Tom Canavan, was working as a securities specialist on the 47th floor of the North Tower.

“Our offices face south when I looked out the window. I could see pieces of metal, pieces of glass, falling outside the window,” he said.

The roof of the nearby Marriot hotel was also on fire, as were many cars on the street. Smoke was already coming through the office doors.  Canavan and others made their way to the stairs.

Then, “there was a huge rush of air straight down...and the sound of - I’d like to say a locomotive.  But it was a thousand times louder than that.”

Canavan, too, believed he’d died.  The cuffs of his pants were on fire.  He told himself the bodies around him were mannequins, because there were department stores in the tower.

“I knew they weren’t,” said Canavan. Canavan, in the end, made it down what came to be known as the “Survivors’
Stairs.”

In the end, the memorial and the museum mean nothing unless we as New Yorkers remain vigilant in honoring the legacies of those lost that day.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Here comes a religious hurricane - the 9/11 Memorial

Father Mychal Judge.

Catholic League president Bill Donahue and many of his fellow Irish Americans are fuming mad at Mike Bloomberg.

No, they are not angry at the New York mayor’s handling of Hurricane Irene.

It is a religious conflict revolving around 9/11 which has many upset, and even calling upon the memory of 9/11’s first official victim, the sainted Irish American Franciscan Father Mychal Judge.

In short, we have the makings here of a different kind of hurricane, a full blown force of human nature which could leave a lot of destruction in its angry wake.

This week, Bloomberg announced that no members of any religious organizations would be speaking at the 9/11 anniversary ceremony. Bloomberg's office has argued the service should be focused on the families of the victims.

"There's an awful lot of people who would like to participate and you just can't do that,” Bloomberg noted.
Catholic League president Bill Donahue is having none of this.

“When it comes to granting the clergy their constitutional right to freedom of speech on the 10th anniversary of 9/11…(Bloomberg) simply elects to ban them,” said Donahue.

William McGurn, in The Wall Street Journal online, evoked the memory of the beloved Irish priest.
“The exclusion of religion from an important anniversary distorts an undeniable part of the 9/11 story, perhaps most vividly illustrated by its first recorded casualty -- a fire department chaplain named Rev. Mychal Judge.”

McGurn then quotes Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who said, "If the fear is that the inclusion of religious leaders at a public commemoration is divisive, we've really lost something."

Donahue offered this solution: “Mayor Bloomberg should reverse his decision, allowing a priest, minister, rabbi and imam to make a short statement.”

This certainly seems sensible. Sadly, it’s also absurd on its face.

First of all, clergy did not speak at the previous nine ceremonies. Then, obvious questions about Sikhs and Hindus and Mormons who died on 9/11 also arise.

Then there are the atheists who would inevitably enter the fray.

As it is, Republican presidential candidates such as Rick Santorum have already jumped into this battle, surely hoping to score political points as they paint themselves holier than every one else in the 2012 race.

Meanwhile, Donahue surely knows that a lot of people are enraged that imams and other Muslins are setting up shop two blocks from Ground Zero.

Seeing an imam actually at Ground Zero at the ceremony would surely whip up a lot of those hostile feelings.

Such an ugly fight, and possibly even lawsuits that would result, leading up to this solemn anniversary would surely taint the event.

No one denies religion did and should play a role in how families cope with this tragedy. But let’s also not be naïve.

Religion can divide as well as unite. Those familiar with Ireland can tell you a thing or two about that.
Same deal with evoking Father Mike. He was indeed an earthly saint. Yet many of his admirers also opt not confront obvious questions about his sexuality and the broader implications those questions raise about gays and the Catholic Church.

More simply, as a blogger at uscatholic.org noted: “With September 11 falling on a Sunday this year, there will be no shortage of religious ceremonies that day…There will certainly be opportunities for people to reflect and remember in a religious way.”

The broader, more disturbing problem here is the growing number of people in America who believe that, since the country is falling prey to evil secular forces, they need to fight harder to bring religion into the public sphere.

The first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, stressed that the U.S. Constitution would guide him, rather than any religious authority. That would probably get him booted from today’s Republican Party.

We live in a city of many religions and that is sometimes amazing, but let’s not pretend it is ever simple. Keeping religion out of the 9/11 anniversary is a bad decision -- with the exception, perhaps, of any other decision that could have been handed down on this very sensitive issue.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)

Some must-see Irish TV - ‘Whitey’ Bulger and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s ‘Ringer’ - VIDEO

Talk about a whacky neighbor!  This guy whacks people for a living!

There is word out of Hollywood that an acclaimed sitcom writer has sold an idea for a TV sitcom to Twentieth Century Fox.  The premise?

Imagine you were living right next door to Whitey Bulger, South Boston killer extraordinaire, and didn’t know it.

Writer Peter Mehlman, whose has worked for Seinfeld, among other TV hits, lives in Santa Monica, California, the same place the legendary Irish godfather laid down roots while he was hiding from authorities.  Bulger lived in Santa Monica with his girlfriend as well as their dog, until they were busted earlier this year.

Mehlman has said Bulger will not be a character in the show but definitely inspired the idea.

“I can’t imagine how many times I walked past (Bulger),” Mehlman was recently quoted as saying.  “And he has 19 murders under his belt.”

The Bulger comedy is one of several upcoming Irish-themed TV shows. BBC America is planning a show about an Irish immigrant cop in the Five Points during the
Famine era, and Sarah Michelle Gellar is playing addict/stripper twin sisters Siobhan and Bridget in the series Ringer, which debuts on the CW Network September 13.

It makes you wonder what other forms of Irish American dysfunction and misery can be exploited for comedy. What follows are some other TV ideas that folks in
Hollywood might want to consider.

The Irish Odd Couple: It’s the 1970s, and two lads from Belfast have just landed in New York in the hopes of leaving their troubled pasts behind.  But what happens when the boys – one Protestant and the other Catholic – go looking for a place to live?  They end up forced to share a one-room apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.

“It’s hell alright,” Liam, the Catholic fellow, says. “And I don’t mean all the
crime and drugs.”

Billy, the Protestant, counters, “It cold be worse.”

“How?” asks Liam.

“We could get another Paddy Papist in here.”

Don’t miss the episode when the boys get confused by all the explosions on the Fourth of July, as well as the heart-wrenching season finale when Billy and Liam finally become pals, since both agree that gays should not march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

The West Wing’s Awake: In this political comedy the Republic of Ireland needs a new president, and when voters look around and see what Irish-born folks have done to the country, they pass a law outlawing Irish-born folks from the position for 20 years.  (No Irish need apply, indeed.)

Hungry for new leadership, the Irish turn to a member of the diaspora – a celebrity who once played a president on television, and whose mother was born in Ireland.
But what seems like a new dawn turns into a culture-clash nightmare.

“Where’s the corned beef?” the new president proclaims during his inaugural address.

Things only get worse when the new president makes an appearance at a football match -- wearing a New England Patriots shirt and Notre Dame cap.

But things soon turn around for the new president when a Chinese bank forecloses on the presidential residence in Phoenix Park – showing the Irish people that this man of wealth and celebrity can sympathize with their problems.

The season cliffhanger has the new Irish president formulating a group of 21st century Fenians and pondering an invasion of China.

“This is finally our chance to learn from the mistakes of Canada,” the president intones solemnly.

Holy Crap!:  It’s bad enough a priest tried to put the moves on Kevin when he was growing up in the big city. He’s finally put the past behind him and moved to a new parish in the suburbs.

So he doesn’t think much of it when the parish is about to get a new pastor.
“Probably some dude from India,” he quips.

Not quite.  It’s the pervy priest from his past! It seems he’s simply been transferred from the big city to the burbs while the big wigs at the archdiocese sort out decades of abuse charges against the man who’s been called Father Feelgood.

“I’m not going into the confessional with that guy!” Kevin declares at one point.
The wacky next door neighbor (who is not a gangster on the run) adds, “Boy, he really wanted you to have a Good Friday, didn’t he.”

It’s Always Sunny in Butte, Montana: Pat, a rugged coal miner, wants his beloved daughter Rosie to be a respectable nurse or a schoolteacher.  But take one guess what she wants to be?

Hint, hint: She wants a lantern and a giant pick for her 18th birthday.
Is it any wonder why the Irish are so popular on TV?



(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

‘Irishmen Who Are Drunks’ - a reaction to FDNY's discriminatory remarks

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 looms, you see many stories these days about firefighters and their families, and how they are coping with the loss of loved ones and the passage of time since that terrible day.

But that’s not all you will hear about the FDNY these days.  For the past several weeks, Brooklyn Federal Court has been the setting for a federal discrimination trial against the New York City fire department.

The feds are looking into allegations that the FDNY discriminates against minority firefighters. So it is interesting that in this setting, one of the most blatantly anti-Irish statements I’ve ever heard was not only muttered, but entered into the public record.

Worse, there was not a peep from anyone that it was at least ironic that Irish stereotypes were being peddled at a -- wait for it! -- anti-racism trial.

There was no outrage from an Irish American politician or the national AOH, or even the Emerald Society of the FDNY.  Nothing.

These comments were made as the trial against the FDNY got underway earlier this month.  The topic of the day was the allegation that white FDNY candidates with criminal backgrounds seemed to be getting much more lenient treatment than minority candidates with similarly troubled pasts.

Former assistant commissioner for FDNY personnel Patricia Kavaler testified that FDNY big wigs might call members of a review board to vouch for white candidates with checkered pasts.

“You’re dealing with a lot of Irishmen who are drunks and they get into bar fights and they get arrested and they get arrested again.  They fight, they sock their girlfriends…they get arrested because they fought with the police when they got arrested.  This is boys being boys.  That type of thing.”

How does one even begin to deal with this?

First off, we have to let Kavaler off the hook.  It appears she was simply relaying what she had heard someone else say.  She apparently did not say these words herself.

However, since these drunken Irish comments were reported in exactly one news outlet -- the New York Daily News -- there were no follow-up questions seeking clarification.

So, let’s say Kavaler heard some other FDNY bigwig say this.  Isn’t this nearly as newsworthy as anti-black comments?

Look, I am not naïve.  Are there Irish members of the FDNY who like to drink?  I know several.  Do the Irish in general like to drink?

Often, Irish folks themselves put this message out.  When basketball great and Queens native Chris

Mullin was recently inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame, several stories linked his alcoholism with his Irish American upbringing.

Watch any episode of Denis Leary’s FDNY show Rescue Me and it will probably confirm every existing stereotypes.

Okay.  Fine.  So, let’s pretend the FDNY bigwig who claimed, “You’re dealing with a lot of Irishmen who are drunks,” is named Kevin O’Donovan, or something similarly Hibernian.  This is still inexcusable.

In a forum dedicated to correcting the wrongs of racial or ethnic bias, there is no way comments about drunken, brawling Irishmen should be allowed to pass unremarked upon.

Unless, that is, we are then going to discuss Mafia Italians and dumb Pollocks and cheap Jews or any other lame racial/ethnic/religious stereotype.

That all being said, it could be that the FDNY has a serious problem.  It simply does not look good that, in a city like New York, only 3% of firefighters are African American.

It is true that it is very much a job passed from father to son, which gives New York’s white ethnic groups a leg up, and it’s hard to pass a law against that.
It’s also true that other major cities have found ways to diversify their firefighting ranks. And that presumably goes for gender also.

We’ll let New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams have the last word. She recently lamented that the number of female firefighters has stayed at around 30 for the past several decades because the FDNY is “an old Irish club of sexists.”

It begs the question -- how can Irish firefighters find time to be sexist when they are drinking and brawling and getting arrested all the time?

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Finding hope in tragedy - three young lives cut short by horrific car crash

Jaime Malone, Michael Mulhall and Paige Malone

They are named Lynch and Galvin and Murphy and Mulhall and Malone.  Many of them are twentysomethings still in college or just completing college, and they live in Floral Park, a tight-knit section of Nassau County.  Many of their Irish American parents and grandparents grew up in Woodside and other Irish enclaves of Queens before moving out to Long Island.

One year ago, Floral Park was thrust into sadness when three of its brightest lights died in a car accident on the Meadowbrook Parkway.  The three victims, along with two other friends, were on their way to work at Camp Anchor, which serves disabled children and adults.

This Saturday, friends and family of the victims – many Irish American – have organized a special event at St. John’s University to remember their lost friends, raise money for causes that were dear to them, and console each other on this terrible anniversary.

“It’s really a community event.  We thought it would be a nice way to expand on Jaime and Michael and Paige’s love for athletics and charity events,” family friend Matt Galvin told the Irish Voice.

Galvin said he is one of about 40 people who have pitched in to help main organizer Joe Lynch create the Malone-Mulhall benefit basketball game.  The game will be held at 1 p.m. this Saturday, July 30, and will feature top-flight professional and college athletes, including Danny Green of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, Justin Burrell and Malik Boothe of St. John’s and Tyrone Nash of Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish.

In addition, New York City native and Irish American Mike Breen – the New York Knicks play-by-play broadcaster – will serve as host.

According to Galvin, money raised by the event will go to the Jaime and Page Malone Foundation, which was founded to help families in distress. Funds will also go to Camp Anchor.

“Physical education is a large part of the work done at Camp Anchor, and a day could hardly go by that you wouldn’t see Mike having a catch with a young child with Down’s syndrome, or Jamie teaching one of her campers with autism how to play soccer,” reads the event web site www.mmbenefitgame.com.

“It was a rarity not to find Paige chasing after one of her 6-year-old campers who had taken off with a basketball, insistent that the lines on the court had little bearing on the actual game.”
Reaction to the Malone-Mulhall benefit game has been strong.

“We knew we couldn’t have it at a local high school gym,” said Galvin, who added that while at least 1,000 spectators are expected, strong interest as the event approached this week could push the crowd to 3,000.
The world changed for so many Floral Park families on the morning of July 14, 2010.

Sisters Paige, 19, and Jaime, 22, Malone, friend Kelly Murphy, and Michael Mulhall headed off to Camp Anchor for another day of work.  Justine Mulhall, Michael’s sister, was driving.

Authorities said she lost control of the car.  The Malone sisters, as well as Michael Mulhall, 22, died in the wreck.

The kids in the car did not only have their whole lives ahead of them, they were willing to share their lives with others.

"This wasn't just a job for them, it was a lifestyle," a Camp Anchor coordinator later said.  A parent added, "They committed a huge part of their lives to helping our children.”

The benefit game is a fitting way to mark the memory of these selfless young adults, said Galvin.  The Malones’ father, Jim, is the basketball coach at Beach Channel High School in Queens.

On the day of the accident, as a way to cope, family members went to a nearby park to forget their sorrow and play basketball.

Paige Malone's boyfriend Joe Lynch was among those at the Malone house that day, and came up with the idea of a sporting event to remember Michael, Jaime and Paige, as well as to raise money.

“They had a love for athletics and passion for helping others, and we’re trying to emulate what they did,” said Galvin, who is 22 and just graduated from Tufts University.

Tickets are still available for the event.  For more details or to donate go to www.mmbenefitgame.com.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

To ‘Hell’ with newspapers - industry must reacts to the threats it faces

James O'Shea

James O’Shea has seen a lot in his four decades as a newspaperman.

And yet, even he was taken aback when Rupert Murdoch closed the News of the World tabloid in Britain in the wake of a hacking scandal. “That’s a pretty incredible step,” declared O’Shea.

At a time when newspapers are downsizing or closing, the News of the World was highly profitable.  And yet, when it came to light that some journalists at the Murdoch-owned paper were hacking into private information of (among other people) crime victims, the News of the World had actually been making lots of money.

Not that O’Shea is exactly weeping for the Australian-born media titan.
“Rupert Murdoch is a smart businessman,” said O’Shea.

O’Shea himself has had run-ins with powerful businessmen in the media world, and they are the subject of his compelling new book The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers (Public Affairs).

Just a little over a decade ago, O’Shea notes, newspapers across America earned $44 billion in advertising.  It was also around this time one of the most infamous business transactions in American history was being planned.  For better or worse, O’Shea had a front row seat.

Interestingly, as big wigs at the Chicago Tribune newspaper began plotting how to purchase the Los Angeles Times newspaper, a couple of other much smaller transactions were taking place.

Two little companies, Craigslist.com and Google.com, were going public, while a fellow by the name of Matt Drudge was -- literally -- looking through garbage cans for information for a gossip web site he’d started.
In the years that followed, Drudge, Google and many other Internet pioneers would be flying high.  And newspapers, even stalwarts such as the Tribune and the Times would be fighting for their lives.

O’Shea grew up in St. Louis.  His paternal ancestors, Jeremiah O’Shea and Margaret Sullivan, came to the U.S. just after the Famine.  His maternal family roots also runs back to Cork.

“Growing up,” he says, “I thought most of the people in the world were Irish Catholic and Democratic.”

A self-described weak student, he took to writing while in high school, a military school run by the Christian brothers.

He began a slow, steady rise up the ladder of the journalism world.  In 1984, this took him to Ballyporeen, Co. Tipperary, where he covered President Reagan’s trip to his ancestral village.

O’Shea had a made a name for himself as an investigative reporter and became a top editor at the Chicago Tribune, which, by the 1990s, was making a tidy profit for the Tribune company.

Hoping to become an even bigger player in the media game, the new owners of the Tribune Company purchased the prestigious Los Angeles Times (owned by the Times Mirror Company).

And O’Shea was tapped as top editor at the LA paper.  He was greeted with skepticism in the Times newsroom, seen as an outsider perhaps sent to do the bidding of the paper’s new corporate owners.

Meanwhile, as the 2000s progressed, the media landscape had changed dramatically.  All newspapers struggled to hold onto advertising, while the Internet boomed.

Corporate owners looking to save money chopped newspaper budgets, forcing journalists onto the unemployment line.

The last straw came when billionaire Sam Zell -- who had no experience running a media company -- purchased the floundering Tribune Company.  Soon after, the company was completely bankrupt and O’Shea was out as Times editor.

O’Shea’s book is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of how powerful executives injured the newspaper industry.

By now, the collapse of newspapers has been so widely discussed that it might have seemed inevitable.  But O’Shea disagrees. “I don’t think … the industry had to collapse.  It simply had to act sooner on some of the threats that were facing it.”

Over-reliance on advertising and slashing quality content, O’Shea contends, are what did newspapers in.

In the Internet age, O’Shea believes news organizations are simply going to have to charge money for their content if they are going to survive.
These days, O’Shea is editor of the Chicago News Cooperative, which partners with The New York Times and other outlets to produce quality reporting.

Aside from his trips as a reporter, O’Shea has been on several bike riding trips across Ireland and says, “I think it’s about time for another one.”