When I interviewed Falk on the Burbank Studios lot in 1986 it was easy to see where the lovable Columbo got his eccentricities — and his raincoat. One of my favorite interviews in LA in the ‘80s was with the beloved actor Peter Falk, who died in 2011. 1986 “Columbo” the TV show may have…
Read More ...Q&A: Fred Singer, the proud godfather of global warning denial, dies at 95
In 2005 I did one of my weekly Q&As with smart, important, interesting or newsworthy people with Fred Singer, the brilliant scientist and reliable critic of climate change and the idiocy and hysteria associated with it. Global warming is always a hot topic in liberal media circles, where the political and scientific consensus is that…
Read More ...Hollywood hasn’t discovered my ’30 Days a Black Man’ history book yet. Perhaps no one out there has read the ‘haunting’ and ‘rollicking’ tale or seen these kindly blurbs from some smart and talented fellow journalists.
Editorial Reviews Juan Williams at FOX News —– As a story from the Jim Crow past, Bill Steigerwald’s recounting of Sprigle’s mission . . . reminds us of what an honest conversation about race can accomplish as we continue on the path toward a more equitable future. Paul Theroux, travel guru — This is a…
Read More ...Pittsburgh 1980
January 20, 1980 CALENDAR LAST PAGE PITTSBURGH: UP FROM THE SMOKY PITS BY BILL STEIGERWALD This is another in the running Calendar series on cultural scenes this one on Pittsburgh, whose Steelers probably will lose today’s Super Bowl game to the Rams. The writer, a native of Pittsburgh just back for a vacation visit, is…
Read More ...The NY Times blames a government ventilator scandal on the private sector
Wonder why the New York Times is accused of liberal bias and dishonesty? There’s a fresh example on Page 1 of today’s paper of record: The Times’ long, dull investigative piece tells the scandalous tale of how the U.S. government tried to build an emergency stockpile of ventilators for 13 years, but failed. According to…
Read More ...Another clueless & imbalanced Uber-hating article, this time from CityLab.com
In my never-ending mission to challenge the lazy & lame anti-Uber articles written by my fellow journalists who hate Uber, think Uber drivers should earn $60k a year with full health care, and have no clue how awful the typical urban taxicab monopolies were for 80 years, I may have gone overboard. But in case…
Read More ...My ‘Sprigle Lecture’ at the Carnegie Library
More than a hundred people jammed the International Poetry Room at the Carnegie Library in Oakland to hear me babble and rant about my Ray Sprigle book on Thursday July 6. I showed about 30 slides of Sprigle, his guide John Wesley Dobbs and various co-stars of my book. In the crowd was the amazingly…
Read More ...Bill's Q&A's
Q&A: Tucker Carlson, before he became King of Cable — and GOP presidential timber
Bill Steigerwald is a veteran journalist from Pittsburgh. His new nonfiction book "30 Days a Black Man" tells the amazing but forgotten story about an undercover mission by a Pittsburgh newspaperman into the Jim Crow South in 1948 that shook up the whole country. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette star reporter Ray Sprigle's nationally syndicated series "In the Land of Jim Crow" exposed the iniquities and humiliations suffered by ten million black Americans in the segregated South. It shocked the white people of the North, angered the South and started the first national debate in the media about ending America's legal apartheid. Kirkus Review said "30 Days a Black Man" is "a fascinating account of an anti-Jim Crow muckraking adventure..." that Steigerwald turned "into rollicking, haunting American history." ... READ MORE