Mitch Albom: Formula for Success?

I’ve been following Mitch Albom since 1985, when he was hired to replace Mike Downey as lead sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Barely twenty-seven years old, Albom’s credentials were already impressive: he’d freelanced for Sports Illustrated, GEO, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. In 1983, he was hired as a full-time feature writer for The Fort Lauderdale News Sun Sentinel, eventually promoted to columnist. In 1985, he won the Associated Press Sports Editors award for best Sports News Story. During his tenure with the Freep he’s won many awards for his sports writing.

I liked him then ─ he was hungry, his columns had bite, he held athletes accountable, and I held to many of his opinions. It didn’t hurt that he was an accomplished jazz pianist. But as is often the case with success, something happened to Albom over the years, or maybe it’s just that I’ve grown more cynical, developed a more discerning eye, become envious. Or maybe it’s a little of all of the above.

One can’t, or perhaps shouldn’t, argue with success, and everything Albom touches turns to gold: he’s authored a number of anthologies, co-authored, with former Michigan Head Coach Bo Schembechler, Bo: Life, Laughs, and the Lessons of a College Football Legend (Warner Books), which became a New York Times bestseller. He appears regularly on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters, and has, since 1996, hosted an afternoon talk show on WJR. He has been honored by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters as the top afternoon talk show host, and was voted best talk show host in Detroit by Hour Detroit magazine. His books, including Tuesdays with Morrie (the bestselling memoir of all time), The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and For One More Day, have sold more than 26 million copies worldwide. He’s a playwright, having co-authored a stage version of Tuesdays, which ran off-Broadway in 2002, and two others that have been staged at Jeff Daniels’ Purple Rose Theater in Chelsea, Michigan. He performs with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band of writers composed of Dave Barry, Stephen King, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan and Scott Turrow. Their annual performances raise funds for a variety of children’s literacy projects nationwide. Finally, he’s founded three charities in Detroit. He once spent a night in a homeless shelter and raised over $350,000 in less than two weeks.

And what follows will no doubt make me sound the envious wannabe.

As a talk show host, he berates callers who don’t agree with his politics. Sure, controversy sells, and maybe this is what WJR hired him to do, but not letting callers express their views is hardly what I’d call freedom of expression. He can be abrasive, downright nasty.

His books, as do many of his articles, all pretty much follow a formula perfected by Hallmark long before Mitch came along, designed to manipulate the reader to tears.

Notwithstanding that the Freepress briefly suspended Albom in 2005 for misreporting ─ he stated that two college basketball players were in the crowd at an NCAA tournament game when in fact they were not ─ Albom’s columns also have evolved into formula. Yes, sports often leaves itself open to cliché, but that doesn’t mean that writing about sports should be done in a cliché fashion. While this is perhaps what the majority of readers in my community want to read, it’s not what I wish to read. I don’t like having my feelings manipulated. I was moved by the passing of Bo Schembechler a few years ago; I didn’t need Albom’s words to make me feel the way I did. A reader should be free to relate to any text in his or her own way. In the Schembechler tribute, Albom made much of the article about himself, his own relationship with Bo. By the end of the piece I felt excluded.

Small potatoes? Maybe. Maybe, as one of what Nietzsche called “the bungled and the botched,” I’m envious of his success. It’s tough to make it in the publishing industry, even tougher to stay on top. And staying on top usually means “always leave them wanting more.” Reading between the lines that often translates to “more of the same.”

Photo courtesy of Aim Net Couple.