Clyde Haberman of the New York Times has written what he calls his “Thirty Column,” so called for his college days when graduating editors were given 30 column inches to write their final column.
Haberman did not say why his popular column “NYC” was being discontinued after 16 years. “Decisions were made. Let’s leave it at that,” he quipped. “My goal was simply to make a desperate stab at explaining the maze called New York City.” Haberman said of his column.
Haberman has been a columnist for The Times’s since 1995, when he returned to New York City after nearly 13 years as a foreign correspondent. His column appeared twice a week and his interests include anything and everything New York – politics, theater, baseball, the high life, the lowlifes.
While most found him crusty, others enjoyed his dry humor. He once wrote a humorous piece that mentioned the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. After the 9/11 attacks, there were expressions of love for New York all over the country. This seemed unnatural to Haberman, so he wrote that it was fine for people to hate New York again, giving readers a much-needed lift.
Before joining The Times foreign staff in 1982, Haberman was a staff reporter. During his years abroad, Haberman was based in Tokyo, Rome and Jerusalem covering such events as the collapse of Communism, the Persian Gulf War and the spread of militant Islamic terrorism, along with other major events. He also worked at the New York Post in the earlier part of his career.
In 2009 he was part of a Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the prostitution scandal that led to the resignation of Eliot Spitzer as New York governor. His columns frequently exposed hypocrisy and unfairness on the part of those in power.
It is a newspaper custom to put -30- at the end of a column to signify that there isn’t any more. Haberman signed-off his final column in the traditional way with -30-.
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