Sam Smith -The Washington Post reports that “Tom Shales, a Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic for The Washington Post who brought incisive and barbed wit to coverage of the small screen and chronicled the medium as an increasingly powerful cultural force, for better and worse, died Jan. 13 at a hospital in Fairfax County, Va …As The Post’s chief TV critic starting in 1977, he worked at a newspaper still basking in the cachet of its Watergate glory, his column was widely syndicated, and his stiletto-sharp commentary on TV stars, trends and network executives brought him national attention and influence.”
What the Post didn’t mention is how Shales got there. Long before the Progressive Review, I was editing an underground newspaper called the DC Gazette. My wife Kathy thought the Gazette ought to have an arts section. While I played jazz, had flunked Fine Arts 13, seldom read cultural criticism and regarded myself pretty much a philistine. I finally told Kathy that if she really wanted an arts section she'd have to find someone to write for it. She shortly came back with Joel Siegel to cover movies and Tom Shales to write about drama. Siegel went on to be a local cinematic guru and Shales was hired by the Washington Post's Style section, becoming its syndicated television critic. When the Style section began, Tom had written a Gazette column in which he quoted someone as saying, "What the Post needs now is a section called Substance." After he went to work for the Post, Shales continued to write for the Gazette under the pseudonym of Egbert Sousé, a W.C. Fields character. A Post editor, however, discovered the disguise and the Gazette lost its drama critic.
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