Don McNeil Jr.’s press passes from his student days at Berkeley.

“I Have a History of Getting in Trouble by Speaking My Mind”

Donald McNeil Jr. on the lessons of the pandemic—and his own sudden ouster from The New York Times

By Nicholas Clairmont

What do you do when, nearly 45 years into your career as a journalist, you find yourself the top reporter on the biggest story in a generation, and then you are driven out by your own colleagues over a single word?

If you’re Donald G. McNeil Jr., you move to the beach and take up fishing. You buy a car that can go off-road. You learn to be stoic, but you also get a little bit more defensive, perhaps refusing to agree to talk to reporters by phone because you have “a tendency to pop off,” your “thoughts are sometimes libelous,” and you “can’t afford a libel lawyer.” (Know thyself, as the oracle said.) Also, you keep reporting, on the Web site Medium. And you write a book.