
Tabloid titan Jimmy Breslin — the cigar-chomping, hard-nosed newspaperman who won the Pulitzer Prize for his Daily News’ columns championing ordinary New Yorkers — has died, according to two friends of his family. He was 86.
The cause of death was not immediately released.
The curmudgeonly ink-stained wretch — whose velvety and witty writing style uplifted the downtrodden and eviscerated the scoundrels — crafted scores of columns for The News, Newsday, the New York Herald Tribune and New York Journal American.
For more than 40 years, James Earl Breslin was a newspaper reporter New Yorkers trusted and clamored to read, and other journalists strived to emulate.