Stephen Fried
Encyclopedia
Stephen Fried is an American
investigative journalist
, non-fiction author
, essayist and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
in New York City
. His first book, Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (Pocket), a biography of model Gia Carangi
and her era, was published in 1993. He has since written Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs (Bantam 1998), an investigation of medication safety and the pharmaceutical-industrial complex; The New Rabbi (Bantam 2002), which weaves the dramatic search for a new religious leader at one of the nation's most influential houses of worship with a meditation on the author's Jewish upbringing; Husbandry (Bantam 2007), a collection of essays on marriage and men; and Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Empire that Civilized the Wild West (Bantam 2010), the first biography of restaurant and hotel entrepreneur Fred Harvey.
Fried is also an award-winning writer, a two-time recipient of the National Magazine Award
, and has written for GQ, Rolling Stone
, Vanity Fair
, Glamour
, Parade
, Ladies' Home Journal
and Philadelphia
magazine, where he was also editor-in-chief in 1999 and 2000. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres.
. He enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania
in 1975, where he wrote for and co-edited 34th Street, the university's weekly magazine. While in college, he also became part of a small network of future journalists, authors and editors taught and nurtured by Nora Magid, a Canadian-born editor and professor whom Fried has referred to as a "one-woman journalism school." The self-dubbed "Nora-ites" — whose ranks include bestselling author and publisher David Borgenicht, ABC News
writer and producer Joel Siegel, GQ contributing editor Lisa DePaulo and Eliot Kaplan, editorial talent director at Hearst
magazines — created a mentorship prize in Magid's name in 2003. Fried eulogized Magid eleven years earlier in a piece for Philadelphia
magazine, in which he shared experiences from her first-ever Advanced Expository Writing class in 1977. He graduated with a B.A.
in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979.
, in 1993. Titled Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia, the book grew out of a lengthy Philadelphia
magazine piece and was reviewed positively in The New York Times
and The Boston Globe
upon its release. Fried's book was optioned by Paramount
but was also used as the basis for the 1999 HBO film Gia
, which went on to win an Emmy Award
and two Golden Globe Award
s, including one for Angelina Jolie
in the title role. Fried is also credited with having invented the word "fashionista" for Thing of Beauty, which he used as shorthand for anyone involved in the creation and manufacturing of high fashion. His name appears in the Oxford English Dictionary
entry for the word.
In 1998, Fried published his second book, Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs. An outgrowth of his award-winning Philadelphia
magazine piece "Less Than One Percent," prompted by his wife's serious adverse reaction to one pill of a new antibiotic, the book investigated prescription drug manufacturers, the safety of their products and FDA regulation (or lack thereof). The New York Times Book Review called it "the best popular book on the subject," the American Journalism Review
named Bitter Pills one of the fifteen best books in the genre of investigative reporting, and The San Diego Union-Tribune
said the book "could save your life." It was also a finalist for the Investigative Reporters and Editors
book prize, was named one of the best books of the year by The Philadelphia Inquirer
and Men's Health
, and was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show
and Dateline
.
His third book, 2002's The New Rabbi, combined several years of reporting on the effort to choose a new spiritual leader at Philadelphia's influential Har Zion Temple with Fried's own spiritual search after the death of his father. The book, initially controversial among some clergy, went on to receive very favorable reviews from The New York Times
, The Washington Post Book World
and The Philadelphia Inquirer
, which called it "brave...remarkable...a book about leadership you don't have to be Jewish to appreciate." It was also named one of the ten best spiritual books of the year by Beliefnet
, and is used as a seminary textbook and read by congregations preparing to choose new leaders. His following book, Husbandry: Sex, Love & Dirty Laundry—Inside the Minds of Married Men, was a collection of 31 essays about men and relationships, originally written for his Ladies' Home Journal
column "Heart of a Husband."
Fried's fifth book, titled Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West, was published in March 2010. The product of five years of cross-country research, the book is the first-ever full-length biography of restaurant and hotel mogul Fred Harvey, his innovative family business, the Harvey Girls, the Santa Fe railway, and the America they helped create. The book draws on newly-discovered datebooks and letters of Fred Harvey and his son, Ford (who actually ran the company much longer than his father), which had been in family hands for decades. In support of the book, Fried embarked upon a train tour along the old Santa Fe route from Chicago to Los Angeles, visiting many of the classic mid- and southwestern cities where Harvey establishments thrived from the late 19th century well into the 20th. He was also interviewed by Melissa Block
of NPR's
All Things Considered
, and the book won accolades from The New York Times
and The Wall Street Journal
upon its release — the second of which complimented Fried's "crisp prose and delightful detail" and praised the book as "sweeping social history populated with memorable characters." The Wall Street Journal
also named the book one of its Ten Best of the Year for 2010. It earned the same honor from The Philadelphia Inquirer
, was named one of the ten best business books by Amazon.com
and won the Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award, a prize given to Philadelphia-area writers since 1949, for non-fiction.
, where he began in 1982, worked full-time until 1989 and remained for another decade as a contract writer and editorial consultant. During that time he was also a contributing writer and music columnist at GQ from 1987 to 1991, a contributing writer at Vanity Fair
from 1994 to 1997, a contributing editor at Glamour
from 1996 to 1998, and a regular contributor to The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone
and others. In 1999, he began a two-year stint as the editor-in-chief of Philadelphia
, after which he returned to writing, editorial consulting and teaching. He returned to Glamour
as a contributing editor from 2001 to 2008, was a contributing writer and columnist at Ladies' Home Journal
from 2003 to 2008, and in 2003 began teaching magazine writing at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
. He currently writes for a variety of publications.
Fried's best-known magazine piece is "Cradle to Grave," the April 1998 Philadelphia
cover story that led the biggest maternal homicide case in history to be reopened and solved. In it, he investigated the family tragedy of Art and Marie Noe
, a Philadelphia-area couple who lost ten infant children from 1949 through 1968 to undetermined causes. Fried explored whether the Noes might have been responsible for those deaths, and his investigation lead the Philadelphia homicide unit — which had officially closed the Noe file three decades earlier — to begin reexamining the deaths. One day after his story ran, the police interrogated Mr. and Mrs. Noe and received a confession from Marie that she had suffocated eight of her own children (two died of natural causes), leading to a guilty plea and a controversial sentence — which was to include house arrest and probation, along with her cooperation in an unprecedented analysis of her medical history and actions by top experts in fields that study post-partum violence (an analysis which was never carried out). For his work on the Noe case, Fried became the first journalist to receive the Medal of Honor from the Vidocq Society, an elite international group of criminologists, pathologists and police investigators. The piece was also part of his winning entry for the 1999 National Headliners Award for Outstanding Feature Writing, it won a Clarion Award from national Women in Communications, and was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting.
Among his earlier notable magazine stories are "Over the Edge" (Philadelphia
, October 1984), an investigation of a series of teen suicides in a small town in Bucks County, which won a Clarion Award and was a finalist for the Livingston Award, and "Boy Crazy" (Philadelphia
, November 1987), about a homosexual pedophile police chief in a community nearby to Philadelphia, which won the national Sigma Delta Chi/Society of Professional Journalists award for Magazine Reporting. His January 1989 Philadelphia
story "The Three Mrs. Lymans," about the battle over the estate of singer Frankie Lymon
, inspired the Warner Brothers film Why Do Fools Fall in Love
.
In 1993 he won his first National Magazine Award
in the field of Special Interest as one of the writers on a Philadelphia
feature about the simple pleasures of life in and around the city. Fried's contribution, an essay on returning to fishing after many year's absence, was later expanded into a 1995 Philadelphia
feature called "Reeling in the Years," which was selected as a notable story of the year in Best American Sports Stories.
The next year, Fried won his second National Magazine Award
in the field of Public Interest Reporting for a series of three stories in Philadelphia
on the prescription drug Floxin. The first piece in the series, titled "Less than One Percent" (April 1993), chronicled his wife's adverse reaction to a single dose of Floxin and examined the FDA's regulatory process for prescription drugs. Parts two and three called for (and later prompted) tougher FDA rules on antibiotic drugs.
Fried went on to publish three major, award-winning pieces about mental health care. "War of Remembrance" (Philadelphia
, January 1994), was the first in-depth investigative treatment of the "false memory syndrome" and the epically dysfunctional Freyds family of Philadelphia, who invented and popularized it. It won a Health Journalism Gold Award and is generally credited with leveling the playing field in the contentious debate over false memory syndrome's validity. His Washington Post Magazine cover story "Creative Tension" (April 16, 1995) was the first major national profile of Johns Hopkins psychologist Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison
, and the first time she "came out" as having manic-depressive illness — the disease she had devoted her life to researching and treating (laying the groundwork for her bestselling memoir, An Unquiet Mind). "Creative Tension" won a 1995 Easter Seals
Equality, Dignity and Independence Award for enhancing the image of people with disabilities, as did Fried's Philadelphia
story the same month, "The Incredible Shrinking Institute," about the rise and fall of the nation's first psychiatric institution (and the birthplace of the American Psychiatric Association
). In 1999, his final year as a writer at Philadelphia
magazine, he received the National Headliner Award for Feature Writing on a Variety of Subjects for his investigation of the Noes as well as "Family Business" (September 1998), the first in-depth story about the family that had built — and was in the process of slowly destroying — the Rite Aid
drugstore chain.
While Fried was editor-in-chief at Philadelphia
, the magazine was a National Magazine Award
finalist for Feature Writing and Profiles in 2000. The same year, it won the Clarion Award for Best Magazine in Philadelphia's
circulation category as well as the award for Most Improved Magazine, and Philadelphia
earned gold medals from the City and Regional Magazine Association for General Excellence and Excellence in Writing. Since returning to magazine and book writing, he won the Epilepsy Foundation's
Distinguished Journalism Award for "How Far Would You Go To Save Your Health?" (Glamour
, August 2004), which followed for a year the case of a young woman having a temporal lobectomy — an extreme surgical procedure — as a last resort to stop treatment-resistant seizures.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
investigative journalist
Investigative journalism
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, often involving crime, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism...
, non-fiction author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, essayist and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is one of Columbia's graduate and professional schools. It offers three degree programs: Master of Science in journalism , Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in communications...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. His first book, Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (Pocket), a biography of model Gia Carangi
Gia Carangi
Gia Marie Carangi was an American fashion model during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Carangi is considered by some to be the first supermodel, although that title has been given to others, including Janice Dickinson, Dorian Leigh, and Jean Shrimpton...
and her era, was published in 1993. He has since written Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs (Bantam 1998), an investigation of medication safety and the pharmaceutical-industrial complex; The New Rabbi (Bantam 2002), which weaves the dramatic search for a new religious leader at one of the nation's most influential houses of worship with a meditation on the author's Jewish upbringing; Husbandry (Bantam 2007), a collection of essays on marriage and men; and Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Empire that Civilized the Wild West (Bantam 2010), the first biography of restaurant and hotel entrepreneur Fred Harvey.
Fried is also an award-winning writer, a two-time recipient of the National Magazine Award
National Magazine Award
The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...
, and has written for GQ, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
, Glamour
Glamour (magazine)
Glamour is a women's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. Founded in 1939 in the United States, it was originally called Glamour of Hollywood....
, Parade
Parade (magazine)
Parade is an American nationwide Sunday newspaper magazine, distributed in more than 500 newspapers in the United States. It was founded in 1941 and is owned by Advance Publications. The most widely read magazine in the U.S., Parade has a circulation of 32.2 million and a readership of nearly 70...
, Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal is an American magazine which first appeared on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States...
and Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
magazine, where he was also editor-in-chief in 1999 and 2000. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres.
Early life and education
Fried was born and grew up in Harrisburg, PennsylvaniaHarrisburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 49,528, making it the ninth largest city in Pennsylvania...
. He enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in 1975, where he wrote for and co-edited 34th Street, the university's weekly magazine. While in college, he also became part of a small network of future journalists, authors and editors taught and nurtured by Nora Magid, a Canadian-born editor and professor whom Fried has referred to as a "one-woman journalism school." The self-dubbed "Nora-ites" — whose ranks include bestselling author and publisher David Borgenicht, ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
writer and producer Joel Siegel, GQ contributing editor Lisa DePaulo and Eliot Kaplan, editorial talent director at Hearst
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...
magazines — created a mentorship prize in Magid's name in 2003. Fried eulogized Magid eleven years earlier in a piece for Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
magazine, in which he shared experiences from her first-ever Advanced Expository Writing class in 1977. He graduated with a B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979.
Books
Fried published his first book, a biography of high-fashion model and AIDS victim Gia CarangiGia Carangi
Gia Marie Carangi was an American fashion model during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Carangi is considered by some to be the first supermodel, although that title has been given to others, including Janice Dickinson, Dorian Leigh, and Jean Shrimpton...
, in 1993. Titled Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia, the book grew out of a lengthy Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
magazine piece and was reviewed positively in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
upon its release. Fried's book was optioned by Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
but was also used as the basis for the 1999 HBO film Gia
Gia
Gia is a 1998 biographical television film about the life of model Gia Marie Carangi starring Angelina Jolie, Faye Dunaway, Mercedes Ruehl, and Elizabeth Mitchell. It was directed by Michael Cristofer and written by Cristofer and Jay McInerney...
, which went on to win an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
and two Golden Globe Award
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...
s, including one for Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the...
in the title role. Fried is also credited with having invented the word "fashionista" for Thing of Beauty, which he used as shorthand for anyone involved in the creation and manufacturing of high fashion. His name appears in the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
entry for the word.
In 1998, Fried published his second book, Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs. An outgrowth of his award-winning Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
magazine piece "Less Than One Percent," prompted by his wife's serious adverse reaction to one pill of a new antibiotic, the book investigated prescription drug manufacturers, the safety of their products and FDA regulation (or lack thereof). The New York Times Book Review called it "the best popular book on the subject," the American Journalism Review
American Journalism Review
The American Journalism Review is a U.S. magazine covering topics in journalism. It is published six times a year by the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. The AJR has been owned since the late 1980s by a foundation of the university...
named Bitter Pills one of the fifteen best books in the genre of investigative reporting, and The San Diego Union-Tribune
The San Diego Union-Tribune
-Predecessors:The predecessor newspapers of the Union-Tribune were:* San Diego Sun, founded 1861 and merged with the Evening Tribune in 1939.* San Diego Union, founded October 10, 1868.* Evening Tribune, founded December 2, 1895.-Ownership:...
said the book "could save your life." It was also a finalist for the Investigative Reporters and Editors
Investigative Reporters and Editors
Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that focuses on the quality of investigative reporting. Formed in 1975, it presents the IRE Awards and holds conferences and training classes for journalists. Its headquarters is in Columbia, Missouri, at the University of...
book prize, was named one of the best books of the year by The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
and Men's Health
Men's Health (magazine)
Men's Health , published by Rodale Inc. in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, United States, is the world’s largest men’s magazine brand, with 44 editions around the world. It is also the best-selling men's magazine on U.S. newsstands. It covers fitness, nutrition, sexuality, lifestyle and other aspects of...
, and was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....
and Dateline
Dateline
A dateline is a brief piece of text included in news articles that describes where and when the story occurred, or was written or filed, though the date is often omitted. In the case of articles reprinted from wire services, the distributing organization is also included...
.
His third book, 2002's The New Rabbi, combined several years of reporting on the effort to choose a new spiritual leader at Philadelphia's influential Har Zion Temple with Fried's own spiritual search after the death of his father. The book, initially controversial among some clergy, went on to receive very favorable reviews from The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The Washington Post Book World
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
and The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
, which called it "brave...remarkable...a book about leadership you don't have to be Jewish to appreciate." It was also named one of the ten best spiritual books of the year by Beliefnet
Beliefnet
Beliefnet is a large multi-faith e-community that aims to provide a free forum for religious information and inspiration, spiritual tools, and discussions and dialogue groups. Beliefnet provides information about various religious and spiritual beliefs, ranging from Christian denominations to...
, and is used as a seminary textbook and read by congregations preparing to choose new leaders. His following book, Husbandry: Sex, Love & Dirty Laundry—Inside the Minds of Married Men, was a collection of 31 essays about men and relationships, originally written for his Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal is an American magazine which first appeared on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States...
column "Heart of a Husband."
Fried's fifth book, titled Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West, was published in March 2010. The product of five years of cross-country research, the book is the first-ever full-length biography of restaurant and hotel mogul Fred Harvey, his innovative family business, the Harvey Girls, the Santa Fe railway, and the America they helped create. The book draws on newly-discovered datebooks and letters of Fred Harvey and his son, Ford (who actually ran the company much longer than his father), which had been in family hands for decades. In support of the book, Fried embarked upon a train tour along the old Santa Fe route from Chicago to Los Angeles, visiting many of the classic mid- and southwestern cities where Harvey establishments thrived from the late 19th century well into the 20th. He was also interviewed by Melissa Block
Melissa Block
Melissa Block is an American radio host. She is one of the hosts of NPR's All Things Considered news program.-Biography:Block was recording an interview in Chengdu, China when the area was struck by a 7.9 magnitude earthquake. Her coverage of the earthquake earned NPR a George Foster Peabody...
of NPR's
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
All Things Considered
All Things Considered
All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...
, and the book won accolades from The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
upon its release — the second of which complimented Fried's "crisp prose and delightful detail" and praised the book as "sweeping social history populated with memorable characters." The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
also named the book one of its Ten Best of the Year for 2010. It earned the same honor from The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
, was named one of the ten best business books by Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
and won the Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award, a prize given to Philadelphia-area writers since 1949, for non-fiction.
Career in journalism
Fried first became known as a writer for PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
, where he began in 1982, worked full-time until 1989 and remained for another decade as a contract writer and editorial consultant. During that time he was also a contributing writer and music columnist at GQ from 1987 to 1991, a contributing writer at Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
from 1994 to 1997, a contributing editor at Glamour
Glamour (magazine)
Glamour is a women's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. Founded in 1939 in the United States, it was originally called Glamour of Hollywood....
from 1996 to 1998, and a regular contributor to The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
and others. In 1999, he began a two-year stint as the editor-in-chief of Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
, after which he returned to writing, editorial consulting and teaching. He returned to Glamour
Glamour (magazine)
Glamour is a women's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. Founded in 1939 in the United States, it was originally called Glamour of Hollywood....
as a contributing editor from 2001 to 2008, was a contributing writer and columnist at Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal is an American magazine which first appeared on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States...
from 2003 to 2008, and in 2003 began teaching magazine writing at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is one of Columbia's graduate and professional schools. It offers three degree programs: Master of Science in journalism , Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in communications...
. He currently writes for a variety of publications.
Fried's best-known magazine piece is "Cradle to Grave," the April 1998 Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
cover story that led the biggest maternal homicide case in history to be reopened and solved. In it, he investigated the family tragedy of Art and Marie Noe
Marie Noe
Marie Noe is an American woman who was convicted in June 1999 of murdering eight of her children. Between 1949 and 1968, eight of the ten Noe children died of mysterious causes which were then attributed to sudden infant death syndrome. All eight children were healthy at birth and were developing...
, a Philadelphia-area couple who lost ten infant children from 1949 through 1968 to undetermined causes. Fried explored whether the Noes might have been responsible for those deaths, and his investigation lead the Philadelphia homicide unit — which had officially closed the Noe file three decades earlier — to begin reexamining the deaths. One day after his story ran, the police interrogated Mr. and Mrs. Noe and received a confession from Marie that she had suffocated eight of her own children (two died of natural causes), leading to a guilty plea and a controversial sentence — which was to include house arrest and probation, along with her cooperation in an unprecedented analysis of her medical history and actions by top experts in fields that study post-partum violence (an analysis which was never carried out). For his work on the Noe case, Fried became the first journalist to receive the Medal of Honor from the Vidocq Society, an elite international group of criminologists, pathologists and police investigators. The piece was also part of his winning entry for the 1999 National Headliners Award for Outstanding Feature Writing, it won a Clarion Award from national Women in Communications, and was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting.
Among his earlier notable magazine stories are "Over the Edge" (Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
, October 1984), an investigation of a series of teen suicides in a small town in Bucks County, which won a Clarion Award and was a finalist for the Livingston Award, and "Boy Crazy" (Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
, November 1987), about a homosexual pedophile police chief in a community nearby to Philadelphia, which won the national Sigma Delta Chi/Society of Professional Journalists award for Magazine Reporting. His January 1989 Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
story "The Three Mrs. Lymans," about the battle over the estate of singer Frankie Lymon
Frankie Lymon
Franklin Joseph "Frankie" Lymon was an American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of a New York City-based early rock and roll group, The Teenagers. The group was composed of five boys, all in their early to mid teens...
, inspired the Warner Brothers film Why Do Fools Fall in Love
Why Do Fools Fall in Love (film)
Why Do Fools Fall in Love is an American romantic drama, directed by Gregory Nava and released by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film is a biographical film of the brief but intense life of R&B/Rock & Roll singer Frankie Lymon, lead singer of the pioneering rock and roll group Frankie Lymon & the...
.
In 1993 he won his first National Magazine Award
National Magazine Award
The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...
in the field of Special Interest as one of the writers on a Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
feature about the simple pleasures of life in and around the city. Fried's contribution, an essay on returning to fishing after many year's absence, was later expanded into a 1995 Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
feature called "Reeling in the Years," which was selected as a notable story of the year in Best American Sports Stories.
The next year, Fried won his second National Magazine Award
National Magazine Award
The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...
in the field of Public Interest Reporting for a series of three stories in Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
on the prescription drug Floxin. The first piece in the series, titled "Less than One Percent" (April 1993), chronicled his wife's adverse reaction to a single dose of Floxin and examined the FDA's regulatory process for prescription drugs. Parts two and three called for (and later prompted) tougher FDA rules on antibiotic drugs.
Fried went on to publish three major, award-winning pieces about mental health care. "War of Remembrance" (Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
, January 1994), was the first in-depth investigative treatment of the "false memory syndrome" and the epically dysfunctional Freyds family of Philadelphia, who invented and popularized it. It won a Health Journalism Gold Award and is generally credited with leveling the playing field in the contentious debate over false memory syndrome's validity. His Washington Post Magazine cover story "Creative Tension" (April 16, 1995) was the first major national profile of Johns Hopkins psychologist Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield Jamison is an American clinical psychologist and writer whose work has centered on bipolar disorder which she has suffered from since her early adulthood...
, and the first time she "came out" as having manic-depressive illness — the disease she had devoted her life to researching and treating (laying the groundwork for her bestselling memoir, An Unquiet Mind). "Creative Tension" won a 1995 Easter Seals
Easter Seals (US)
Easter Seals is a nonprofit charitable organization that assists more than one million children and adults with autism and other disabilities and special needs annually through a network of more than 550 service sites in the United States, Canada, Australia and Puerto Rico...
Equality, Dignity and Independence Award for enhancing the image of people with disabilities, as did Fried's Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
story the same month, "The Incredible Shrinking Institute," about the rise and fall of the nation's first psychiatric institution (and the birthplace of the American Psychiatric Association
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the most influential worldwide. Its some 38,000 members are mainly American but some are international...
). In 1999, his final year as a writer at Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
magazine, he received the National Headliner Award for Feature Writing on a Variety of Subjects for his investigation of the Noes as well as "Family Business" (September 1998), the first in-depth story about the family that had built — and was in the process of slowly destroying — the Rite Aid
Rite Aid
Rite Aid is a drugstore chain in the United States and a Fortune 500 company headquartered in East Pennsboro Township, Pennsylvania, near Camp Hill. Rite Aid is the largest drugstore chain on the East Coast and the third largest drugstore chain in the U.S....
drugstore chain.
While Fried was editor-in-chief at Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
, the magazine was a National Magazine Award
National Magazine Award
The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...
finalist for Feature Writing and Profiles in 2000. The same year, it won the Clarion Award for Best Magazine in Philadelphia's
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
circulation category as well as the award for Most Improved Magazine, and Philadelphia
Philadelphia (magazine)
Philadelphia is a regional monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Metrocorp....
earned gold medals from the City and Regional Magazine Association for General Excellence and Excellence in Writing. Since returning to magazine and book writing, he won the Epilepsy Foundation's
Epilepsy Foundation
The Epilepsy Foundation, also Epilepsy Foundation of America , is a non-profit national foundation, headquartered in Landover, Maryland, dedicated to the welfare of people with epilepsy and seizure disorders. The foundation was established in 1968 and now has a network of 59 affiliates...
Distinguished Journalism Award for "How Far Would You Go To Save Your Health?" (Glamour
Glamour (magazine)
Glamour is a women's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. Founded in 1939 in the United States, it was originally called Glamour of Hollywood....
, August 2004), which followed for a year the case of a young woman having a temporal lobectomy — an extreme surgical procedure — as a last resort to stop treatment-resistant seizures.
Books
- Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (1993)
- Bitter Pills: Inside the Hazardous World of Legal Drugs (1998)
- The New Rabbi (2002)
- Husbandry: Sex, Love & Dirty Laundry—Inside the Minds of Married Men (2007)
- Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West (2010)