Neil Hickey

Neil Hickey is editor at large of The Columbia Journalism Review. He was TV Guide's New York Bureau Chief for 25 years, and a Senior Editor for five years. He has reported from Vietnam and the Persian Gulf; from Northern Ireland, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe before the collapse of communism; from Cuba, Singapore and many other locales, including Wounded Knee during the American Indian Movement's occupation of the hamlet. Hickey has written hundreds of articles on issues relating to the press, television, cable, and telecommunications. He is a frequent panelist on television and radio talk shows, and has lectured widely before civic groups and university audiences. For three years, he was the daily television commentator and critic on the John Gambling WOR radio program.

A special issue of TV Guide which he produced in August, 1992, on the subject of violence on television has been credited with triggering a national debate on that issue, and being impetus for the introduction of a number of anti-violence bills from Congress.

He has interviewed Presidents of the United States (Clinton, Ford, Carter, Nixon, Johnson) as well as major figures in the entertainment industry, (He is a recipient of the Country Music Association's Journalist of the Year Award for his coverage of that industry, a special interest of his). In 1995, he won the Everett C. Parker Award for Lifetime Achievement for his writings on telecommunications. Hickey is the author of a number of books, among them: "Adam Clayton Powell and the Politics of Race" and "The Gentleman was a Thief," a biography of Arthur Barry, the legendary 1920's jewel thief (currently under film option). He is a former naval officer, having served three years at sea aboard a destroyer. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in Baltimore, and later was an editor/writer at Hearst's American Weekly Sunday magazine and True, the Fawcett men's adventure magazine. A graduate of Loyola (Maryland), he is married to the former Lisa Lane, and lives in Manhattan and Carmel, New York. He has been a member of the Indo-U.S. Subcommission on Culture and Education, and agency of the U.S. State Department and the Indian Government. For three years, he was a member of the board of trustees of Westmar University in Sioux City, Iowa. He serves on committees of Ireland House, the Irish studies center at New York University, and is a member of the James Joyce Society and P.E.N.