Standing Eight notes with sadness the passing of one of the last great reporters, NYT's R.W. Apple.
And it's not just because he was a huge part of "The Boys on the Bus," the greatest political book ever; and not just because he resolutely maintained that reporters should 'remain amateurs,' representing their readers, rather than pretending to be experts, lecturing the people they cover, (an outlook that is sorely missed in today's shouting-match pundit punchbowl.)
It's also because he managed to attain before his death the one thing all writers want. He was mentioned in passing on The Gilmore Girls last season. Or the season before. Rory was in college, I remember that.
Okay, it's mostly the remaining amateur thing. Like many people I am by turns fascinated by and then repulsed by our national politics, and even when my interest was at it's lowest, (like all of last summer, and recently since pedophilia became more important than war,) R.W. was interesting, inspiring, and irreplaceable. Here's his Times obit:
R. W. Apple Jr., Globe-Trotter for The Times and a Journalist in Full, Dies at 71 - New York Times
If they don't have a good newspaper in heaven, they will soon.
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