Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, a self-described "street reporter" who chronicled New York City life for decades and won acclaim for his coverage of the "Son of Sam" serial killings, died on Sunday morning at age 88.
Breslin died at his home on Manhattan's West Side, said Michael Daly, a friend and a columnist at the New York Daily News, one of several newspapers where Breslin worked in his decades-long career. He had been ill with pneumonia, Daly said after speaking with the family.
"He died of reaching the finish line," Daly said.
Breslin was believed to be 86 at the time of his death, but the columnist's family and doctor checked his birth certificate after his death and it showed him to be 88, the Daily News reported.
Breslin was a hard-boiled newspaperman born in the New York City borough of Queens. The Irish-American in a rumpled suit with unkempt hair, a drink in his hand and a cigar between his lips held court in many New York City journalists' haunts.
He had a sharp eye for detail, a keen ear for dialogue and was plugged into sources ranging from the criminal underworld to the corner news-stand.
A deli counter man in Staten Island did not need a dictionary to read a Breslin column. He told his stories in an abrupt, straightforward style that New York magazine once described as "equal parts Dickens and Yogi Berra."
His writing also had a good bit of Damon Runyon, the legendary Prohibition-era New York newspaperman and the subject of a biography by Breslin.
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