Mitchell Fink<\/a>, whose career as a celebrity gossip columnist and entertainment journalist included stints ranging from People magazine to the New York Daily News to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, died Tuesday at 82 in West Palm Beach, Florida. No cause of death was given.<\/p>\n\n\tIn addition to print columnist jobs that made him well-known in the entertainment community on both coasts, and regular appearances on television entertainment news programs, Fink was the author of several books, including \u201cNever Forget: An Oral History of September 11, 2001,\u201d co-authored with his wife, Lois Mathias, which made the New York Times\u2019 bestseller list.<\/p>\n
\n\tFink\u2019s first prominent entertainment news job was as editor of the music magazine Record World in the 1970s. Upon moving over to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, he continued doing music criticism before transitioning to hard news and then ultimately taking over the daily\u2019s well-read \u201cPage 2\u201d column, reporting on the doings of boldfaced celebrity names.<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter the Her-Ex folded in 1989, Fink joined People magazine and initiated the \u201cInsider\u201d column, reporting much the same celebrity news but for a national audience. Later he joined the New York Daily News, where his gossip column rivaled the Post\u2019s Page Six and ran until 2002.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe was also a contributor to celebrity.land\u2019s\u00a0\u201cShowbiz Today\u201d\u00a0for six years and held positions with\u00a0\u201cAccess Hollywood,\u201d\u00a0\u201cGood Day New York,\u201d \u201cCBS Morning News\u201d and KTTV\u2019s\u00a0\u201cFox Entertainment News.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBeyond his bestselling 9\/11 account, Fink\u2019s other books included\u00a0\u201cThe Last Days of Dead Celebrities,\u201d\u00a0\u201cChange of Heart\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cFrank Sinatra, Miriam and Me.\u201d Reps for the family say that at the time of Fink\u2019s death, he had just finished writing\u00a0\u201cSecond Chances,\u201d an oral history of shoe designer Steve Madden, and produced the documentary\u00a0\u201cMaddman: The Steve Madden Story.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFink\u2019s connection to Madden ran deep, as he represented Madden\u2019s brand when he moved into PR, serving in his later years as CEO of 1on1 Public Relations.<\/p>\n
\n\tFink is survived by his wife, Lois, sons Jesse and Brian and grandchildren Samson, Alice and Cameron.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mitchell Fink, whose career as a celebrity gossip columnist and entertainment journalist included stints ranging from People magazine to the New York Daily News to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, died Tuesday at 82 in West Palm Beach, Florida. No cause of death was given. In addition to print columnist jobs that made him well-known […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2364411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[459420],"class_list":["post-2364410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-mitchell-fink"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Mitchell-Fink-Dead-Gossip-Columnist-Entertainment-TV-Personality-Was-82.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2364410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2364412,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364410\/revisions\/2364412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2364411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2364410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2364410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2364410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}