SLATE MAGAZINE Why reporters won’t shut up about their encounters with the dead pop star By Jack Shafer I never interviewed Michael Jackson, making me one of the world’s few journalists who couldn’t capitalize on the singer’s death last week by writing a rush piece about my encounter with him. Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. mined an interview he had with Jackson almost 30 years ago for a piece last week. “He was an odd guy,” Pitts wrote. For a June 28 article, the Washington Post’s Kevin Sullivan reached back to a 30-minute encounter he and his family had in 1998 with Jackson in Seoul, South Korea. “We liked Michael Jackson,” Sullivan stated. The Los Angeles Times‘ retired pop critic, Robert Hilburn, recalled his last conversation with Jackson — a decade ago — in which the performer hung up on him. “The stage was... [read full story]
