1998:
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A conversation with author Robert Lipsyte
with Robert Lipsyte on Jul 10, 1998
- Duration
- 15 min
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- Rating
with Robert Lipsyte on Jul 10, 1998
Robert Lipsyte is an American sports journalist and author.
Although he planned to move to California after graduating from Columbia as a nineteen-year-old English major, Lipsyte took a summer job as a copy boy in the sports department of the New York Times. Eventually becoming a sports reporter and then a sports columnist, he stayed with the newspaper for fourteen years. During that time, he co-authored ?Nigger? (1964) with controversial comic and activist Dick Gregory; published ?The Masculine Mystique? (1966); wrote his first and best-known novel, ?The Contender? (1967); and published an edited collection of his columns, ?Assignment: Sports? (1970).
After 1971, Lipsyte worked as a freelance writer, television scriptwriter, journalism professor, radio commentator (National Public Radio, 1976-82), and columnist for the New York Post (1977). He was a television sports essayist for CBS Sunday Morning (1982) and stayed with that network until moving to NBC in 1986. After leaving NBC in 1988, he hosted The Eleventh Hour on PBS (1989), winning an Emmy Award for On-Camera Achievement although the show was canceled after its second season. Returning to the New York Times to write a sports column in 1991, Lipsyte continued freelance writing while beginning a column in 1992 in the magazine ?American Health?.