W.C. Heinz covered World War II in Europe for The New York Sun, and when he returned in 1945 he had his pick of what to do next. Maybe cover politics in Washington. But Heinz wasn't interested in that. He wanted to write about sports, which he did, first for the Sun and then, starting in the early '50s, for various magazines. Heinz's magazine work was a precursor to what would be called The New Journalism a few years later, using the elements of fiction—scene, character, and dialogue—to tell a non-fiction story. Gay Talese and David Halberstam were hugely influenced by Heinz. And in the world of fiction—where Heinz's novel The Professional is ranked as one of the finest boxing novels ever written—he had an ardent admirer in Elmore Leonard.
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