Full Court Press

"Every columnist's a watchdog. That's probably about 30 percent of my job, just to keep an eye on things and if the public's getting jobbed to point it out," he says. "My job is to complement local coverage."

He uses humor to get his point across when possible, and some of his most popular columns consist of messages from readers with his comebacks to their comments. "There are a lot of bad things in the paper, and if you can make them laugh, cheer them up, they like that," he says.