Five best books about writing for newspapers

Bob Greene, a columnist and commentator for CNN, is the author of 25 books, most recently Late Edition: A Love Story.

One of his five best books on writing for newspapers, as told to the Wall Street Journal:

Winchell
by Neal Gabler (1994)

In this biography of the newspaper columnist whose work in the late 1930s, in print and on the radio, was said to regularly reach two out of every three adult Americans, Neal Gabler treats Walter Winchell with a scrupulous devotion to accuracy and a constant quest for fairness that Winchell himself often declined to offer the people he covered. Winchell was a fiercely talented wordsmith, a man whose uncontrollable ambition was equaled only by his unshakable suspicion that the world was out to get him, a writer whose confident staccato voice was recognized by all but who feared that the voices of others were forever whispering about him. By the last of the book's 681 airtight pages, readers will understand what Dorothy Parker meant when she said: "Poor Walter. He's afraid he'll wake up one day and discover he's not Walter Winchell."

Read about another book on Greene's list.

--Marshal Zeringue