<\/p>\n
\n\tMitchell Fink, the author and entertainment journalist who wrote gossip columns for the Los Angeles Herald Examine<\/em>r, People<\/em> magazine and the New York Daily News<\/em>, died Tuesday in West Palm Beach, Florida, his family announced. He was 82.<\/p>\n \n\tWidely recognized for his \u201cgolden Rolodex\u201d and list of contacts spanning New York, Washington and Hollywood, Fink also was a contributor to celebrity.land\u2019s Showbiz Today<\/em> for six years while appearing on such other programs as Access Hollywood<\/em>, Good Day New York<\/em> and the CBS Morning News<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter graduating from the State University of New York at Buffalo, Fink served as the editor of Record World<\/em> magazine before he moved to the Los Angeles Herald Examine<\/em>r, where he transitioned from music criticism to covering politics and hard news.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1987, he took over the newspaper\u2019s \u201cPage 2\u201d column, and that got him on the air as an entertainment reporter for KTTV in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n \n\tFollowing the shutdown of the Herald Examiner<\/em> in 1989, Fink joined People<\/em> magazine and launched its popular \u201cInsider\u201d column. He joined the New York Daily News<\/em> in 1998 and wrote a column six days a week through 2002.<\/p>\n \n\tAs an author, Fink achieved New York Times Best-Seller status with his 2002 book, Never Forget: An Oral History of September 11, 2001<\/em>, written with his wife, Lois Mathias.<\/p>\n \n\tHis other books included 2006\u2019s The Last Days of Dead Celebrities<\/em>, 2011\u2019s Change of Heart<\/em> and 2014\u2019s Frank Sinatra, Miriam and Me<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tMore recently, he completed Second Chances<\/em>, an oral history of shoe designer Steve Madden; produced the 2017 documentary Maddman: The Steve Madden Story<\/em>; and served as CEO of 1on1 Public Relations.<\/p>\n \n\tIn addition to his wife, survivors include 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 www.hollywoodreporter.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mitchell Fink, the author and entertainment journalist who wrote gossip columns for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, People magazine and the New York Daily News, died Tuesday in West Palm Beach, Florida, his family announced. He was 82. Widely recognized for his \u201cgolden Rolodex\u201d and list of contacts spanning New York, Washington and Hollywood, Fink […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2364431,"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":[25172],"tags":[22064],"class_list":["post-2364430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-obituaries"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Mitchell-Fink-Dead-Entertainment-Journalist-Gossip-Columnist-Was-82.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364430","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=2364430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2364432,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364430\/revisions\/2364432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2364431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2364430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2364430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2364430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}