“Jimmy Breslin, the New York City newspaper columnist and best-selling author who leveled the powerful and elevated the powerless for more than 50 years with brick-hard words and a jagged-glass wit, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 88 and, until very recently, was still pushing somebody’s buttons with two-finger jabs at his keyboard.” The NYT: Legendary New York City Newspaper Columnist Dies at 88. (He was a great New York storyteller who became one of the great New York stories.)

+ “It’s news reporting, and that consists of using your two feet. The only lesson, then, that you could give people is how to climb stairs, because there are no stories on the first floor. Anything you’re looking for is four and five flights up.” NY Mag: He Knew How to Play This Game.

+ The rest of us just started writing about Trump and the media. Jimmy Breslin was writing about the topic, and getting it exactly right, decades ago. Here are three Breslin columns on Trump. “Donald Trump, who must have been spending about half of each day on the phone with reporters and editors, owned the news business.”