Alan Lupo, 70, “The Hub’s Herodoutus”
From The Boston Globe — 9/30/2008
Alan Lupo, chronicler of Boston, dies
He was no stranger to the inner sanctums of City Hall but was more at home with regular folks on Boston’s stoops and sidewalks. He knew people — and people knew him — from the North End to Southie, from Dorchester to Doyle’s pub in Jamaica Plain. And there, immortalized in a barroom mural, he forever soaks up stories amid the sandwiches and the elbow-benders. …Mr. Lupo, one of few columnists whose work appeared in the latter-day troika of Boston newsprint — the Globe, the Herald, and the Phoenix — died yesterday …
The Hub’s Herodotus, Mr. Lupo captured the city’s unfolding histories as they played out in courts, schools, and discreet handshake deals among the powerful. Reaching beyond the confines of newspaper stories, he left the Globe in the early 1970s to serve as an editor and reporter on the WGBH-TV show “The Reporters,” which he helped found. …
To read an Alan Lupo newspaper column was to hear his voice, the Boston accent saturating every syllable.
“Alan stood out in a distinctive generation of reporters, activists, and politicians who will forever be identified with the era of [former editor] Tom Winship at the Globe and [former mayor] Kevin White in City Hall,” said Christopher Lydon, a journalist and radio talk show host. “They, or should I say we, were interested in every inch of city turf, in the scoundrels and the saints, in the ancient history and all the present-day choices before the town. Alan stood for localism at maybe its all-time best.”
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