Robert Bernard Greene, Jr.
(born March 10, 1947) is an American journalist, best known as an award-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune
newspaper, where he worked for 24 years. Greene has written books on subjects varying from Michael Jordan, to small towns, to U.S. presidents. His Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael Jordan
became a bestseller. Greene has two children, Nick and Amanda, from a 31-year marriage with Susan Koebel Greene.
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Early life
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 while touring with
rock musician
Alice Cooper and portraying
Santa Claus during the show.
Newspaper column
Greene's primary focus remained his newspaper column, for which he won the
National Headliner Award for best column in 1977 from an American journalism group. Shortly afterward, Greene was hired by
Chicago Tribune
and began making occasional guest appearances on local television, eventually landing a commentary slot on the
ABC news program
Nightline
.
[1] He also wrote the "American Beat" column in
Esquire
.
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. The movie
Funny About Love
(1990) was based on a Greene column. In 1993, his novel
All Summer Long
was published by
Doubleday, and his columns are collected in several books.
Though Greene was popular with readers, critics accused him of excessive sentimentality, heavy writing and repetitive coverage of the same subject,
most notably 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, although he covered the subject with a hundred columns in which he strongly took the side of the adoptive parents. Greene claimed that the biological parents, the Kirchners, did not respond to his requests for interviews. The
Chicago Reader
ran a derisive column, "BobWatch: We Read Him So You Don't Have To," penned pseudonymously by
Chicago Sun-Times
columnist
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
.
Dismissal from the Tribune
In September 2002 Greene was forced to resign from his newspaper column after admitting to an extramarital sexual relationship 14 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. 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 bestselling
Good Morning, Merry Sunshine: A Father's Journal of His Child's First Year
. Neil Steinberg said on
CNN that Greene was "famous for using his position as a columnist... to try to get women into bed."
The young woman with whom Greene had a relationship was 17, 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 told
Esquire
that he demurred at going further, telling her, "You should wait to do this with someone you love".
Four months after Greene's resignation from the
Chicago Tribune
, his wife Susan died of heart failure following a month-long respiratory illness.
Current books
Greene did not return to newspaper or magazine journalism. He continues to write books and is a contributing writer to CNN.com. His 2006 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 it as follows:
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.
His next book,
When We Get to Surf City: A Journey through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams,
was released on
May 13,
2008. It is a chronicle of a 15-year period when he intermittently toured with surf-rock legends
Jan and Dean, singing backup and playing guitar.
His latest book,
Late Edition: A Love Story
was released on
July 7,
2009. In it, he wistfully chronicles his days as a copyboy and other apprentice positions at the
Columbus Citizen-Journal
and the
Columbus Dispatch
.
Awards and honors
In 1977, Greene won the National Headliner Award for writing the previous year's best column.
In 1995, Greene was named
Illinois Journalist of the Year. In the same year he was awarded the
Peter Lisagor Award for Public Service Journalism for his reporting on courts failing children in need.
Bibliography
- Late Edition: A Love Story
(St. Martin's Press, 2009) ISBN 978-0312375300
- When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams
(St. Martin's Press, 2008) ISBN 978-0312375294
- And You Know You Should Be Glad: A True Story of Lifelong Friendship
(William Morrow, 2006) 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, 1997) (collection of columns) ISBN 0-670-87032-3
- Rebound: The Odyssey of Michael Jordan
(Viking, 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)
References
- Anatomy of Bob Greene