Herb Caen
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Herb Caen (April 3, 1916 – February 1, 1997) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist working in San Francisco.
Born in Sacramento, California, Caen worked for the San Francisco Chronicle from the late 1930s until his death, with an interruption from 1950 to 1958 during which he wrote for the San Francisco Examiner.
Caen gained notoriety with his column "It's news to me", which was first published in 1938. His columns were known for their dry wit and his intricate knowledge of the goings-on in his city. Caen had a considerable influence on pop culture and its language; most notably, he is credited with inventing the term Beatnik in a 1958 column.
Caen received a special award from the Pulitzer Prize board in 1996 "for his extraordinary and continuing contribution as a voice and conscience of his city."
Caen played himself in a 1996 documentary called The Hippie Revolution. He died of lung cancer in San Francisco. His funeral was one of the most widely attended events in recent city history. After the last big earthquake, the freeway he loathed and lambasted in his column (The Embarcadero Freeway) was damaged. Rather than repair it, it was demolished and now leads the way down a wide promenade to thew new stadium for his beloved Giants.
External links
- A collection of Caen's columns (http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/caen/)