The Lights of New York

Irish American journalist Dan Barry of the New York Times has just released a new book, City Lights, a collection of the best stories from his old column "About New York." CAHIR O'DOHERTY talks to the Pulitzer Prize winning author about his life and work, and his passion for the city where eight million stories unfold each day.

Born in Jackson Heights, Queens, Barry, 49, was raised in Long Island and graduated from St. Bonaventure University with a degree in journalism in 1980. Later at NYU he earned his master's degree and became a reporter for The Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecti-cut.

In 1987, he joined the Providence Journal-Bulletin, where he and the other members of the investigative team won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles about Rhode Island's corrupt court system.

It was heady career path for a cub journalist, and he thrived on it. "It helped me recognize that working for a newspaper could be a lot of fun," says Barry.

"The rush of writing two or three stories a day was wonderful. I once feared deadlines - and a journalist really should - but I found myself thriving on the challenge of concisely reporting the details of some god-awful school board meeting the night before, for example."

Like any ambitious young journalist, Barry occasionally angled for a job at The New York Times, but he suspected that for them he was still something of an outsider, an Irish American from a working class background, not the kind of credentials immediately associated with the paper of record.

And his keen awareness of this fact found expression in the mischievous cover letters he sent to the Times enquiring about employment. One letter acknowledged how well the paper's "Book Review" on Sundays had cleaned his aunt's windows.

Another concluded that he was aware that The Times had a proud history of nepotism, then mentioning a distant cousin who worked loading the paper's trucks. It was almost as if he was daring them to abandon their assumptions or embrace change. Unsurprisingly, they didn't.

"Eventually I forgot about writing for The Times and I just applied to be a clerk instead. On the day of my interview for the job I walked up Eighth Avenue and just a few blocks from the building some guy stumbled out of the Port Authority bus station and spilled a bottle of Colt 45 beer all over my blazer," Barry recalls.

"My appointment was at 10 o'clock with a very stern woman, and here I am, this guy with an Irish surname, walking in smelling like I'd stopped somewhere along the way for a pick me up. I didn't get the job. I bet for a few years after that they had a photograph of me at the security guard's desk."

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Nster.com