by
Mitch Albom: "I'm on a very limited schedule with the Free Press and it’s mostly because I love Detroit."
Mitch Albom's hometown role as a prominent piñata is evident as Detroiters react to a Los Angeles writer's more-or-less positive profile.
His six No. 1 best-selling books have "simple messages, simply delivered," executive editor Doree Shafrir writes at BuzzFeed in an ambitious feature on the author, columnist, playwright, fund-raiser and promoter.
These are not complicated themes — they’re basically just infinite variations on "It’s a Wonderful Life" — and so it’s not surprising that in certain circles Albom has become a cultural touchstone himself, shorthand for a book or movie that is sentimental, possibly emotionally manipulative, and definitely oversimplified if not cliché.
The national news site signals its -- and others' -- mixed view of this pop culture phenom in a page-top blurb:
Dismissed by critics as hokey and by peers as being out of touch, Mitch Albom has sold 35 million books anyway, building a modern empire out of longingly gazing at the past.
"It’s not surprising that he has a flip phone," the new Mitch Albom profile says.
The 5,500-word article shows a deep dive of research and time. Shafrir accompanies the best-selling writer to a book tour stop in Santa Monica and a visit to the 40 children of Have Faith Haiti Mission orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which he has supported intensively for five years and where the head teacher says: "Mitch is definitely a godsend."
There's plenty to admire about the 57-year-old, as the writer notes:
- "Albom . . . visits the orphanage — one of 10 charities that he runs; the rest are in Detroit — one weekend a month, sleeping in one of the bare-bones guest rooms."
- "This weekend, his wife of 20 years, Janine, is home with Chika, a 5-year-old girl from the orphanage with a brain tumor for whom the couple have been caring, with their access to American medicine, for the last six months."
- "Albom first came to Haiti in 2010, right after the earthquake that devastated the country and left the orphanage in disarray. He got a team of friends from Detroit to help him rebuild it, constructing a three-room schoolhouse and installing bathrooms and a working kitchen.
- "Albom installed his sister Cara Nesser, a psychologist and educator, as the school director. She designed a bilingual French and English curriculum and hired Haitian teachers."
The profile also acknowledges that Albom sounds like a cranky old man resisting some 21st century changes. Shafrir summarizes his sense that "the modern world, and particularly the media and the Internet, has caused irreparable harm to society."
In Albom's books and his work for the Detroit Free Press, where he’s been a columnist for 30 years, there’s a longing for a simpler time, a world where Internet commenters don’t exist, where children respect their elders, where everything is slower, more thoughtful.
It’s not surprising that he has a flip phone. . . . Albom seems skeptical of almost everything involving the Internet. . . .
I ask Albom if it bothers him that people accuse him of being sentimental. “No,” he says quietly, looking away from me. “It doesn’t. I don’t know how else to say it but it doesn’t.”
Speaking of accusations . . .
Back in Detroit, the article serves as a tasty pre-Thanksgiving treat on social media, a bit of low-hanging fruit too juicy to resist biting into Wednesday under links to the article:
► "Hokey and out of touch, according to the story. They missed aloof. Met the guy in press boxes a few times and he always big-timed me. A very talented and giving guy, but extremely aloof. Always seemed as if he thought he was above everyone, including his media peers." -- Kurt Kosmowski, Northville sports PR executive,
► "My favorite Mitch thing is his overwhelming lack of understanding about what people under 30 do." -- Jessica Krcmarik, Dearborn Heights
► "Did Mitch even know what Buzzfeed was until they contacted him? Does he even know now? Is it fair to say out loud 'I'm on a limited schedule with the Freep' when half his co-workers are taking buyouts? . . . if he doesn't want to be a journalist, he shouldn't sit by while his not-nearly-paid-as-much coworkers are pushed out the door" -- Aaron Foley, Detroit author (from 2 posts)
► "I stopped reading him after he published fiction and claimed it was fact. I care more about the contents of my recycling bin than I do about him." -- Vic Doucette, Southfield
► "The writer gets to some (not all) essential truths about Albom, including his deep weirdness about children and modernity -- what a crank this guy must be at the family Thanksgiving table. I wish she'd pressed him on why he and his wife never had children of their own, and a few other things, including his residence in California. But that this guy is Bob Greene 2.0 comes through loud and clear. Now I need a shower." -- Nancy Nall Derringer, Grosse Pointe Woods writer
► "Like Mitch I, too, long for a simpler time . . . when Albom wrote about sports and hadn't yet turned into Andy Rooney." -- Tony Thomas, Riverview
End of Freep career near?
Actually, Albom's Detroit Press sportswriting and Sunday columns may not remain a piñata much longer, he indicates frankly.
"I'm on a very limited schedule with the Free Press" — he’s contracted for 30 columns a year, he says — "and it’s mostly because I love Detroit and I love that paper and I’ve been there a long time. But it would be an insult to the people who work full-time at that paper or anywhere else to say that I’m a full-time journalist." . . .
His days at the paper might be coming to an end. His longtime editor, Sports Editor Gene Myers, took early retirement in October after 25-plus years at the paper.
"I'm totally lost," says Albom. "I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I’m sure there’s no other editors that want to bother to do that with me, so that might be a signal that it’s time for me to get out."
That opens the way for predictions about what his final column will be like and whether it will be on Page One.
We can't even . . .
