Mitchell David Albom (born May 23, 1958) is an American author, sports journalist, talk show host, and philanthropist. As of 2021, his books are reported to have sold 40 million copies worldwide. Having achieved national recognition as a sports journalist early on in his writing career, Albom turned to writing inspirational stories and themes—a preeminent early one being Tuesdays with Morrie.
Albom was born on May 23, 1958, in Passaic, New Jersey; he lived in Buffalo, New York for a little while until his family settled in Oaklyn, New Jersey, just outside Philadelphia. He is Jewish. He graduated from Haddon Township High School in 1976.
Albom earned a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1979 from Brandeis University. After forays into music and journalism, he returned to academia to earn graduate master's degrees in journalism (at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism), and business (from Columbia University Graduate School of Business). Albom paid his tuition in part through playing the piano.
While living in New York, Albom developed an interest in journalism. Still supporting himself by working nights in the music industry, he began to write during the day for the Queens Tribune, a weekly newspaper in Flushing, New York. His work there helped earn him entry into the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. To help pay his tuition he took work as a babysitter. In addition to nighttime piano playing, Albom took a part-time job with SPORT magazine.
After graduation he freelanced as a sportswriter for Sports Illustrated, GEO, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and covered Olympic sports events in Europe – including track and field and luge – paying his own way for travel, and selling articles once he was there. In 1983, he was hired as a full-time feature writer for The Fort Lauderdale News and Sun Sentinel, and was eventually promoted to columnist. In 1985, having won that year's Associated Press Sports Editors award for best Sports News Story, Albom was hired as lead sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press to replace Mike Downey, a popular columnist who had taken a job with the Los Angeles Times.
Albom's sports column quickly became popular. In 1989, when the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News merged weekend publications, Albom was asked to add a weekly non-sports column to his duties. That column ran on Sundays in the "Comment" section and dealt with American life and values. It was eventually syndicated across the country. Both columns continue in the Detroit Free Press.
Many of his columns have been collected into anthology books including Live Albom I (Detroit Free Press, 1988), Live Albom II (Detroit Free Press, 1990), Live Albom III (Detroit Free Press, 1992), and Live Albom IV (Detroit Free Press, 1995).
Albom also serves as a contributing editor to Parade magazine. His column is syndicated by Tribune Content Agency.
Game attendance error suspension
In 2005, Albom and four editors were briefly suspended from the Detroit Free Press after Albom wrote a column that stated that two college basketball players were in the crowd at an NCAA tournament game when in fact they were not. In a column printed in the April 3, 2005 edition, Albom described two former Michigan State University basketball players, both in the NBA, attending an NCAA Final Four semifinal game on Saturday to cheer for their school. The players had told Albom they planned to attend, so Albom, filing on his normal Friday deadline, but knowing the column could not come out until Sunday (after the game was over) wrote that the players were there. But the players' plans changed at the last minute and they did not attend the game.
Ultimately, The Detroit Free Press suspended the four editors who had read the column and allowed it to go to print. Albom was in attendance at the game, but the columnist failed to check on the two players' presence. A later internal investigation found no other similar instances in Albom's past columns, but did cite an editorial-wide problem of routinely using unattributed quotes from other sources.
Carol Leigh Hutton, publisher of the Detroit Free Press at the time of these events, later told BuzzFeed, that she regretted the way it was handled. "It was a stupid mistake that Mitch made that others failed to catch but not at all indicative of some problem that required the response we gave it. I allowed myself to believe that we were doing this highly credible, highly transparent thing, when really in hindsight what I think we were doing was acquiescing to people who were taking advantage of a stupid mistake."
As of 2021, Albom's books had sold over 40 million copies worldwide.
Albom's first non-anthology book was Bo: Life, Laughs, and the Lessons of a College Football Legend (Warner Books), an autobiography of football coach Bo Schembechler co-written with the coach. The book was published in August 1989 and became Albom's first New York Times bestseller. Albom's next book was Fab Five: Basketball, Trash Talk, The American Dream, a look into the starters on the University of Michigan men's basketball team that reached the NCAA championship game as freshmen in 1992 and again as sophomores in 1993. The book was published in November 1993 and also became a New York Times bestseller.
Albom's breakthrough book came about after he was rotating the TV channels and viewed Morrie Schwartz's interview with Ted Koppel on ABC News Nightline in 1995, in which Schwartz, a sociology professor, spoke about living and dying with a terminal disease, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease). Albom, who was close to Schwartz during his college years at Brandeis University, felt guilty about not keeping in touch with him so he reconnected with his former professor, visiting him in suburban Boston, and eventually coming every Tuesday for discussions about life and death. Albom, who was seeking a way to pay for Schwartz's medical bills, sought out a publisher for a book about their visits. Although rejected by numerous publishing houses, Doubleday accepted the idea shortly before Schwartz's death, and Albom was able to fulfill his wish to pay for Schwartz's bills.
The resulting book, Tuesdays with Morrie, which chronicled Albom's time spent with his professor, was published in 1997. The initial printing was 20,000 copies. As word of mouth grew, the sales slowly increased, and landed the book a brief appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, nudging the book onto the New York Times Best Seller list in October 1997. It steadily climbed higher reaching the number-one position six months later. It remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for 205 weeks. One of the top selling memoirs of all time, Tuesdays With Morrie has sold over 20 million copies and has been translated into 45 languages.
On November 22, 2005, Albom was the sole and final guest on Ted Koppel's farewell appearance on ABC's Nightline.
Oprah Winfrey produced a television movie adaptation by the same name for ABC, starring Hank Azaria as Albom and Jack Lemmon as Morrie. It was the most-watched TV movie of 1999 and won four Emmy Awards.