Mike Barnicle

Michael Barnicle (born October 13, 1943) is an American print and broadcast journalist, and a social and political commentator. He is a senior contributor and the veteran columnist on MSNBC's Morning Joe. He is also seen on NBC's Today Show with news/feature segments. He has been a regular contributor to the local Boston television news magazine, Chronicle on WCVB-TV, since 1986. Barnicle has also appeared on PBS's Charlie Rose, the PBS NewsHour, CBS's 60 Minutes, MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, ESPN, and HBO sports programming.

Several of Barnicle's columns are featured in the anthologies published by Abrams Books: Deadline Artists: America's Greatest Newspaper Columns and Deadline Artists—Scandals, Tragedies and Triumphs: More of America's Greatest Newspaper Columns with the description: "Barnicle is to Boston what Royko was to Chicago and Breslin is to New York—an authentic voice who comes to symbolize a great city. Almost a generation younger than Breslin & Co., Barnicle also serves as the keeper of the flame of the reported column." Barnicle is also interviewed in the HBO documentary Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists as well as many documentaries on baseball.

Barnicle, a Massachusetts native, has written more than 4,000 columns collectively for the New York Daily News (1999–2005), Boston Herald (2004–2005 and occasionally contributing from 2006 to 2010), and The Boston Globe, where he rose to prominence with columns about Boston's working and middle classes. He also has written articles and commentary for Time magazine, Newsweek, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, ESPN Magazine, and Esquire, among others.

In a recent Editor & Publisher feature article, "the legendary journalist and columnist" warned of the ‘destruction of democracy’ and talked about the plight and promise of newspapers. He mourned the “disappearance of local newspapers,” suggesting that even though most states have at least one or two major metro papers, large swaths of the nation are without a reliable source of local news and voiced his concern about the treasure trove of talent the industry has lost in recent years and all the institutional and community knowledge that left with them. .