Road-tested
IM from Nate: Your boy Dan Neil won a pulitzer
He sure did. Los Angeles Times auto columnist Dan Neil yesterday won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
I couldn't have agreed more with the jurors. Spotted highlights of his work have appeared in this space before — like March 8th's Guy Lambardo and January 3rd's Phrasing of the Day. Highlights would have appeared even more if I read the Times regularly.
The lede on his most recent column certainly stood among the best: "Riding a motor scooter in Los Angeles is a religious experience. And that religion is Calvinism."
The paper honored Neil and his work yesterday, showing him to look much like Thomas Hayden Church (best known as Lowell from Wings). But my favorite plaudit came in the form of a letter on Jim Romenesko's media page. According to the letter writer and his cited sources, the Raleigh News and Observer fired Neil in 1997 after he "described sexual congress with his fiancee in the back of Ford's largest sport utility on New Year's Eve."
The firing drew reaction on the triangle.general newsgroup at the time. Two posters were against his firing; three supported it. "As far as Dan Neil goes," one poster wrote, "I still think he's lousy writer."
Sic.
